The Wedding Day

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.4

Word count: 35K words
Chapters: 4

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Wedding Day by J. F. HurstAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: HQ: Social sciences: The family, Marriage, Sex and Gender, Release Date: Jan 5, 2008

Editor's review

This is a public-domain ebook in the Project Gutenberg collection, classified under social sciences—family, marriage, and gender issues. In length and format, The Wedding Day is better suited as material for observing early wedding customs and social attitudes than as a systematic theoretical work. Its value lies in offering a light entry point: through the ritual scene of a wedding, readers can understand how society at the time imagined and regulated marital roles and family order. The electronic edition is easy to search and excerpt, making it suitable for thematic reading or for reading alongside similar public-domain texts. For research, it is best treated as a primary popular text and cross-referenced with historical and sociological scholarship; for leisure, it can be read chapter by chapter during commutes or short sessions, with attention to details about gender division of labor and family expectations in the narrative.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers interested in wedding customs and family history
Students who need public-domain English materials for thematic reading
Beginners in research who want to understand early social views on gender
Readers who prefer short ebooks that can be read in sections

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting systematic sociological theory or data-driven research
Readers seeking practical modern relationship advice
Beginners unused to reading English public-domain texts

Reading tips

Start with the table of contents and chapter titles to locate key passages on wedding rituals and family relations.
Prepare a character relationship chart and note descriptions of marital roles and gender division of labor as you read.
Read alongside public-domain texts on family themes from the same period and compare how rituals are written.
Write two or three summary sentences after each chapter to avoid skimming the plot and missing conceptual clues.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable as a main reference for an academic paper?

It is better used as supplementary primary popular material than as a core theoretical source. It can provide textual examples of wedding customs and gender attitudes, but it lacks systematic argumentation and data support. It is advisable to use it alongside historical and sociological monographs and to note, when citing it, that it is a public-domain popular text.

I have only a basic command of English. Will this book be very difficult?

This is an English public-domain text with a relatively early style; long sentences and old-fashioned expressions may pose obstacles. Readers with basic English can read it slowly chapter by chapter with a dictionary, or choose a bilingual edition. If you only want to learn about wedding customs, you can first read relevant Chinese-language studies and then return to the original.

What is an effective way to take notes when reading the electronic edition?

Take notes by theme rather than by page number: record three types of information separately—details of wedding rituals, expectations about family roles, and descriptions of gender division of labor—and note the chapter locations. This makes later searching and comparative reading easier and helps avoid being led by the plot while missing conceptual content.

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Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.