ABSTRACT
The forms of domesticity described in The Wedding Present are specific to married households. For example, a hierarchical domestic material culture that allots one of the highest places to wedding presents, preserving these objects as embodiments of family relationships or even as potential inheritances is not, of course, reproduced in homes that do not contain any such gifts. The testimony of this chapter albeits in quite different ways, indicate the power of the marriage gift to confer approval and to evoke a traditionally dominant version of the family household: respectable, large, long lasting and matrilineal. Indeed, the prohibition of wedding presents at non-traditional weddings demonstrates the difficulty of appropriating gift giving for alternative forms of domestic life. The chapter notes before, the 1998 Giving and Receiving Presents directive was addressed primarily to married people but unmarried correspondents were also encouraged to reply.
