[The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning & Tourism at Niagara Falls]

Abstract

Karen Dubinsky's The Second Greatest Disappointment is feminist history at its most fun. It brings a fresh and yet substantive account of the politics of heterosexuality to bear on one of its most cherished institutions: the honeymoon. Along the way, it questions received accounts of the falls, tourism, the wedding, the politics of race, class and sexual orientation and leaves on stone unturned. Simultaneously cultural studies, popular history and political economy, this book brings something new to each of its areas of concern. Because the method here is interdisplinary and holistic, this book is a satisfying historical romp.Characterizing Niagara Falls as a theme park for heterosexuality, Dubinsky turns her eye on the increasing disciplinary knowledge unleashed on the practices of the honeymoon over the last century. With its roots in the "wedding tour" of the British ruling class of the nineteenth century, the honeymoon was originally a way for the new couple to meet far- flung family members unable to attend the wedding. In this sense, its roots were not explicitly sexual, but rather a way to cement family ties. At the end of the nineteenth century, then, the honeymoon tour was the exclusive preserve of the privileged and the wealthy. However as the century matured, it became do rigueur for middle and working class couples to travel to exotic locations after the wedding. And in the wake of psychoanalysis, with the erotic as the presumed "core" of the emerging modern individual, sexual compatibility became an important ingredient in married life for the first time. The increasing availability of mass transportation as well as these changing social and sexual mores meant that "honeymoon" became a sly reference to the unspeakable: sex, and lots of it.Thus, throughout its transformations, the honeymoon attracted experts whose task it was to distinguish between normalcy and deviancy. Doctors, psychiatrists, counsellors and other marriage experts turned their gaze on the practices of honeymooning in an effort to regulate, discipline and control married sex. As these experts pointed out, many possible dangers lurked inside the presumed ignorance of the newly wed -- such conditions as honeymoon shock, impotence, exhaustion and hysteria -- and these opening night disasters could lead to marital disharmony. Happy honeymoons were more than simply devices to begin married life; the fate of the family, and indeed the nation, was at stake. In this sense then, the case presented in this book shows in fascinating detail the ways that the ideologies of gender and of the presumed "naturalness" of married heterosex are thoroughly worked up through strategies of governance that pinpoint what appears to be the deepest most natural thing in the world. As the story Dubinsky tells unfolds, the point that "sexuality, like gender, is learned, acquired, ritualized and performed" finds a compelling new case study (p. …