Source:

Charles Dickens, American Notes (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1961), pp. 120-122. .

Family Law

Ideals.

The law governing relations among family members illustrates the interplay between legal concepts and the pressures of everyday life. The patriarchal family had been the starting point for English settlers' ideas about other types of authority, including that of the state. When traditional family customs in America began to erode, many colonists also began to reconsider the nature of governmental authority. In turn, the political upheaval of the Revolution, and especially the value placed on national independence, led to a profound transformation of social relations within families. As the United States had chosen to become a self-governing republic separate from England, for example, so the institution of marriage must be based on the free choice of both parties, with the possibility of an eventual divorce not...