Arts and Humanities Commons^™

I Don't: A Study Of Marriage, Ethnicity, And Citizenship In Ethnic Women's Writing, Shannon Mcmahon

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

For the 19^th and well into the 20^th century, marriage was the most formative institution that defined women’s civic presence in the American community. Nancy Cott’s Public Vows provides crucial context for my study. Cott shows how marriage not only implied a structure for private life but also participated in public order, namely the wife’s civic status was subsumed by the status of her husband. An unmarried woman’s civic identity was ambiguous absent a husband who could represent her in the public sphere. For ethnic women, marriage did not guarantee access to the benefits and protections of U.S. …