One Hundred Years of Marriage: A Novel

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE by LOUISE FARMER SMITH "Note To Reader: What was your father thinking the night he proposed to your mother? Why did she say yes? By the time we ask, all the compelling details have cooled into whatever myths they've chosen to tell us. Our grandparents' stories are even more frozen, and the truths of our great-grandparents' unions have perished in the airless memories of the dead." In a series of interlocked stories Louise Farmer Smith, the author of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE, pierces the myths through four generations of one American family's mismatched marriages-the teenage girl lifted out of the hunger and chaos that followed the Civil War; the suicidal wife isolated on the Oklahoma prairie; the struggling milliner bound to a cheerful husband whose improvidence is destroying the family. Dark? Yes, but full of humor too. Each of the six stories is told from the point of view of the child who observes his or her parent's marriage and tries with only a child's insufficient experience to interpret the veiled mysteries of their union. The novel moves backward in time to search out the influences on each generation's children-the standards, prejudices, and overheard conversations that they carry with them when they choose a spouse. With a Family Tree for the reader to refer to, Smith embeds a deep sense of family relationship throughout the generational stories while drawing each character as a vivid, unique individual. The mother in each new story is aware of the stories of her grandmother, usually in a mythologized form. Victoria, whose husband fed them only by selling off pieces of the beloved family homestead, causing her infinite suffering, is mythologized in future generations as the exemplary loving wife who stood by her man and not as the victim that another, truer history would make her. Victoria's own mother died, leaving her to be raised by a cold, remote, and stingy businessman who ultimately drove her into the arms of his opposite-the warm but hapless and improvident man. Why do women marry as they do? Louise Farmer Smith tells stories of marriages women make for survival,for emotional fulfillment, to satisfy a sense of duty or social expectation. All the women in this book marry with secrets and sacrifices at the hearts of their unions, bidding the reader to wonder about the nature of love and marriage. As one reader asked, "What about the role of women in marriage? Has the institution of marriage changed? If so, how? Do the readers think that these women acted as the products of their times, or in a universal way?" ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE can also be read as a pre-history of the women's movement and as a substantial addition to the social history of American women. Thoroughly researched stories compellingly paint daily life for Great Plains pioneers, for turn-of-the-century women fearing spinsterhood, and for wives in 40s, living in a feminine world the men have left for faraway war.