For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made Modern Egypt

by Hanan Kholoussy

For many Egyptians in the early twentieth century, the biggest national problem was not British domination or the Great Depression but a "marriage crisis" heralded in the press as a devastating rise in the number of middle-class men refraining from marriage. Voicing anxieties over a presumed increase in bachelorhood, Egyptians also used the failings of Egyptian marriage to criticize British rule, unemployment, the disintegration of female seclusion, the influx of women into schools, middle-class materialism, and Islamic laws they deemed incompatible with modernity. For Better, For Worse explores how marriage became the lens through which Egyptians critiqued larger socioeconomic and political concerns. Delving into the vastly different portrayals and practices of marriage in both the press and the Islamic court records, this innovative look at how Egyptians understood marital and civil rights and duties during the early twentieth century offers fresh insights into ongoing debates about nationalism, colonialism, gender, and the family.

Genres: Egypt, Middle East

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2010

Reviews

[Salma · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read. It touched on several topics (e.g. the family shifting from including extended family to only including the nuclear unit, feminist movements, etc.) tangentially that I kind of wish it delved a bit deeper into, but I understand this is just one book, it can't do everything.

Fundamentally though, I kind of have a problem with the link between marriage and nation building. I couldn't really swallow that people believed the family was the foundational building block of the nation. I don't know, maybe the actually really did, but that seems like such a simplistic and narrow view, especially at a time when people were actually in the midst of trying to gain independence and build their a nation! I felt like the book didn't really focus as much on the link as it should have. Like I needed to see a lot of support for that connection. Or maybe because this is the focal topic of the book, the importance of marriage and the family are kind of blown out of proportion a bit and this was actually kind of a minor focus at the time (I think the author even says as much at certain points).

What struck me most though, was how similar Egyptian public discourse was in the early 1900s to current discourse. Like it was honestly so upsetting and disappointing and frustrating. It feels like we've been having the same conversations for so long and we're not really getting anywhere. It was really disappointing to see that Egyptians in the early 1900s also kind of revered the West like we do today, even though they were in the midst of trying to gain their independence! And it was especially frustrating how tame people's ideas for reforms were. There weren't really any people advocating for radical change RE the role of women and men, religion's place in the nation. It all just felt very cliche and not really revolutionary at all. Of course, there were people advocating for change, and women were finding clever ways of using the system to get what they want, and all that. But I guess I just kind of went into this book hoping to read about some kickass stuff and it just felt very bougie and mundane. Which is not the books fault.

[Yehia Abo el-nga · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Better, For Worse is a survey of Islamic Marital Law in 1890-1940 Egypt. It is very well researched, and presents the so-called "Marriage Crisis" in Egypt in that period. Kholoussy nimbly notices that the Marriage Crisis is a made-up go-to term whenever Egypt runs into a problem, i.e. the quasi-independence state, after 1919 revolution. The book broadly covers the marriage law, and its real life applications through court cases. It reflects the role of the middle-class in shaping the media/newspapers, its sufferings, and aspirations. In the light of her court cases, it reflects on the state of the men and women in a modern-to-be country seeking independence, and its national identity.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fathers have long served as powerful and effective metaphors for vigorous and strong nations. Characteristics associated with effective patriarchs, such things as being disciplined, loyal, competent, protective, are also all attributes that a nation, especially an emergent one, can use to gain broader recognition. An attempt at this kind of identity-creation nationalism is captured in For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made Modern Egypt by historian Hanan Kholoussy. It describes early twentieth century Egyptian middle-class men confronted with a complicated construction of marriage and their perceived hesitance to take part in such an obligation, at the same time revealing the overarching struggles of a fledgling modern nation.
In For Better, For Worse, a window on the marriage crisis and issues of early modern Egyptian nationalism is erected primarily by using two different types of primary source materials. Kholoussy ingeniously utilizes court documents together with commentaries found in periodicals to gain a greater sampling of wider society. While one could gather a sense of the crisis by only researching the press sources of the day, it would be obscured by the elite perspectives presented in the press at the time. By employing the two types of sources, Kholoussy is able to blur the lines of distinction and highlight the alleged declining trend in marriage supposedly impacting Egyptians of all stripes. The book details the marriages of couples from various socioeconomic situations, Muslims and non-Muslims, the politically well-connected and also the plebs in order to show the perception of it as a matter of national concern. The first chapter of the book frames the marriage emergency and assiduously asserts how marriage served as a metaphor for the success of the new modern nation. Each subsequent chapter explores various explanations for what contemporaries believed to be behind the crisis. These included economic downturns, the incompatibility of traditional Arab women with newly educated Egyptian men, the potential threat of divorce, the responsibilities of childrearing, and a conclusion which positions this episode as a comparative one, both for Egypt in the twenty-first century as well as other historical settings. What is apparent in each chapter is how men in this crisis served as that symbol of nationalism, struggling for full independence along with their country.
Historiographically, this book distinguishes itself by situating the marriage crisis as the issue of most concern in the early days of modern Egypt. Through the use of recently reorganized Islamic court records beginning in 1898, Kholoussy is able to emphasize the crisis as an apprehension for all while adding to the body of historical work on the topic. The implication of using such a wide variety of sources, some of which were previously untapped, allows for a richer “history from below” rarely found in colonial narrative.
Egyptians in the early twentieth century were met with a contradictory and complex marriage structure, visible to us in court documents and the press. In some very public forums, marriage (or lack thereof) was being argued and distressed over in abstract and uncertain terms, and it was reasoned that this severely hindered the fundamental unit for the production and reproduction of future citizens. This perceived problem caused more than just social and domestic turmoil, as it was threatening Egypt from becoming a modern nation that was fully independent. While the courts tell of a different and more balanced story, editorialists (referred to as “nationalists” by Kholoussy) viewed the marriage crisis as one which threatened nationhood, unequivocally contending that a strong nation needs many strong families. Their attention of their criticism was on the bachelors of the emerging middle-class. These were urban and educated professionals or bureaucrats who usually spoke and dressed like their counterparts in the West and carried the title of “effendi.” Even with the careful and considerate analysis of the two primary source types, this urban-rural divide or elite bias seems unavoidable when examining perceptions of the marriage crisis. Although 70 percent of the Egyptian population was made up of illiterate peasants, it is the effendi and other middle-class men who come to represent the modernization of their society in the early part of the century. This is integral to understanding the issue in light of the country’s nationalist aspirations at this time.
In patriarchal Egypt, and especially in Cairo, nationalists placed the onus on the middle-class men to help the country achieve full independence from their British imperial masters. To rid themselves of the colonial yoke, they argued that these men needed to have stability in their own lives to prove they could have a stable and prosperous nation of their own. This required them to hold down a decent job, find a wife and secure her with a dower, and then produce the future citizens of an independent nation. However, the nationalists painted this as frequently problematic for the effendi for a number of reasons. Many were said to be unable to afford marriage due to insufficient salaries and an escalating cost of living. Other trends also apparently made Egyptian men cautious about entering into married life. Middle-class mass consumption was blamed for influencing the expensive undertaking of starting life as newlyweds, and weddings and separate residences away from extended families could prove pricey, especially factoring in a father-in-law who demanded a large dower. The British colonial administration and local governments were not immune to criticism regarding middle-class economic issues affecting men. Unemployment and a stagnant economy were frequently blamed on a lack of indigenous industries. This last point stands out strangely as foreshadowing one of the major causes cited for the Arab Spring revolution occurring in Egypt in 2011.
A nation required its men to be financially established, but also morally sound as well. Nationalist writers liked to claim that a morally depraved society threatened the making of a modern Egypt. Commentators worried over unmarried men and how they spent their time and money. Egyptian men, it was thought, could preserve their manhood and the nation’s ambitions by keeping women in traditional roles. Wives who were not secluded by their husbands in the home were said to be a threat to the emerging nation. While divorce appeared easily attainable under Egyptian law compared with places elsewhere in the world, the press were quick to harangue men responsible for bringing about broken homes. Such situations were no place to raise the future citizens of a free and independent Egypt. This issue became of such great concern that legislation was enacted twice in the 1920s to combat the high rates of separation and divorce believed to be destroying Egyptian society. For families raising children, the weight of the new country seemed to rest on their shoulders. Although nationalist writers rarely encouraged men to take an active role in the nurturing of their offspring, they were said to play a vital role in producing healthy and happy families nonetheless. Competent fathers were needed for the good of the nation and were described as “active observers” at home who needed to provide for his family and control his wife. It is clear from these illustrations that the marriage crisis of early modern Egypt had painted the bachelors to resemble many of the socioeconomic and political difficulties which the country was dealing with in forging nationhood from their quasi-colonial existence.
Understandably, media directs dismay and anxiety when social predicaments appear to endanger the building blocks of any society. However, For Better, For Worse makes it clear that the perceptions of the bachelors and the marriage crisis presented by the nationalist writers in early modern Egypt were unfair. While the country struggled to find its footing in the contemporary world, the press, as if imitating the biblical patriarch Abraham, offered up middle-class men as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of nationhood.

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