Barbara Alpern Engel is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of Women in Russia: 1700–2000, Between the Fields and the City: Women, Work, and Family in Russia, 1861–1914, and Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia and coeditor of A Revolution of Their Own: Russian Women Remember Their Lives in the Twentieth Century, Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, and Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar.

• Introduction: Marriage and Its Discontents1 The Ties That Bound2 Making Marriage: Romantic Ideals and Female Rhetoric3 Money Matters4 Disciplining Laboring Husbands5 Earning My Own Crust of Bread6 Cultivating Domesticity7 The Right to Love8 The Best Interests of the ChildConclusion: The Politics of Marital StrifeAppendix A. Archival SourcesAppendix B. Major Cases Used in the BookIndex

Barbara Alpern Engel provides a captivating and well-researched book in this newest addition to her already impressive bibliography. She uses her remarkable knowledge to analyze an archival source specific to the turn of the nineteenth century. In doing so, she details rich, new glimpses into the lives of both women and men, of all social estates, specifically their perceptions of gender roles within one of the most sacred of Russian institutions—marriage.... This should be a staple for all students and scholars of Russian social and legal history.- Katie Lynn (Slavic and East European Journal) Engel examines how Russians of various classes and estates understood marital obligations and the behavior and conditions that were egregious enough to justify loosening the ties. In the process, she examines perceptions of gender roles, how these varied by estate and class, and how attitudes shifted at the end of the nineteenth century.... The cases are fascinating and provide rare insights into Russian domestic life.... Highly recommended.(Choice)