@article{THESIS,
      recid = {4296},
      author = {Winn, Anna},
      title = {“Let him know he’s your hero:” The Sexualisation of  Marriage in Marabel Morgan’s The Total Woman (1973)},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {M.A.},
      address = {2022-08},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {This thesis argues that Marabel Morgan’s The Total Woman  is a significant cultural artifact, representative of a  shift toward a more liberal sexual ethic within Christian  marriage. The purpose of centring this study on Morgan’s  work is two-fold. Firstly, focusing on a singular text  lends itself to closer analysis, allowing for a fuller  understanding of Morgan’s advice, the change it inspired  and the cultural significance of The Total Woman. Secondly,  by employing Morgan’s work as a cultural lens, larger  movements of the period and The Total Woman’s place within  them can be considered. In taking this approach, a longer  time period is covered, from the 1950s self-help works that  preceded Morgan’s, to the rise of the New Christian Right  in the 1970s and 1980s. From this, Morgan’s advice as  representative of broader cultural changes is considered.  In taking this approach, it is revealed that by commanding  wives to engage in playful sex within marriage, Morgan  sparked a shift in the self-help genre, with other  born-again women following her example by publishing sex  and marriage guides. Yet, this phenomenon was underpinned  by a commitment to traditional values, with sexual  experimentation encouraged to preserve the marital  institution from extramarital affairs in light of the  sexual revolution of the 1960s. Beyond this, Morgan’s  adherence to strict gender roles and ‘family values’  provides an early example of principles that would come to  define the New Christian Right. Overall, this study  provides a more complex narrative of evangelical self-help  literature, sex roles and conservatism, with The Total  Woman at the heart of this new understanding. },
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/4296},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.4296},
}