Marilyn Yalom examines the history of marriage "from a female point of view." The heroines of this book are ancient Greek and Roman wives, Catholic and Protestant, wives from the time of the conquest of the frontier and the Second World War. There are stories here about those women who suffered from the brutality of society and their own husbands, about those for whom marriage became a desired happiness, and about those who successfully fought injustice. This excursion into the history of the wife ends in our era, when marriage, which has ceased to be an obligation, is undergoing major changes. Marilyn Yalom is a historian and fellow at the Michelle Kleiman Institute for Gender Studies at Stanford.