The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture

The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture. Elizabeth Freeman. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2002. 288 pp. ISBN 0-822-32989-1. $19.95 (paper). What does it mean when so many people desire a wedding but not necessarily a marriage? This is what The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture examines. Using queer theory and social history, Elizabeth Freeman explores the meaning of weddings, intimacy, and long-term commitment in various texts, films, and plays. In particular, she looks at texts in which "the wedding did not necessarily instantiate a legal marriage but instead tapped into fantasies that were irreducible to the wish for long-term domestic couplehood recognized by the state" (p. xi). Instead of weddings being seen as the final event culminating in heterosexual marriage, they are seen as situations that provide the opportunity for showing attachments to family members, friends, religion, or even consumption. Numerous novels are examined, including Carson McCullers' (1946) The Member of the Wedding, William Faulkner's (1936) Absalom, Absalom!, Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1850) The Scarlet Letter, and Vladimir Nabokov's (1955) Lolita. Several films from 1950, 1967, 1972, and 1991 are analyzed, as well as Princess Diana and Prince Charles's wedding; various White House weddings (daughters of American Presidents); and the interactive, Off-Broadway play Tony n' Tina's Wedding (1994). The concept of the wedding is used to reorganize gender. Moreover, race, ethnicity, and class also are examined in Freeman's analysis. For example, her analysis of The Member of the Wedding points out that wanting a wedding does not necessarily translate into wanting a marriage. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! reveals how weddings are sites for renegotiating race. In general, Freeman's analysis illustrates how "weddings can conjure up sites other than the state within which relationships of many kinds might become visible and preserved in cultural memory" (p. 210), such as gay and lesbian relationships, nonparental relationships between adults and children, and other bonds that are considered nonnormative from a wedding standpoint. Although the premise of the book is important, I did find it difficult to follow. Because the style of writing is very dense and detailed, I found it difficult to find the main point at times. The writer is trained as a literary critic, and likely writes in a way consistent with that literature. As a result, this book may be more helpful to literary scholars than to family scholars. …