Prenuptial Agreements in the Age of the Gold Digger

This paper will examine a chapter from my new project on the problem of sex across class lines in 20^th century American history. It will particularly look at prenuptial agreements, or as they were also called, ante-nuptial agreements. The paper will investigate when spouses sought to get prenuptial agreements, what their spouses thought of signing them, and why judges so often rejected them for much of the 20^th century. It will focus in particular on the 1930s when the “gold-digger,” an allegedly immoral woman who had sex with exclusively mercenary intentions, gained increased cultural attention in film and music.

This project allows me a unique perspective on class in American history. It is difficult to study class identity since so many Americans identify as middle-class. However, even if class is a category that often remains unspoken, it is nonetheless omnipresent in American society. I argue that class tension sometimes became more visible when men and women of different classes had sex, began relationships, married, or divorced. This tension allows me to probe the meaning of class difference in the United States, and particularly the real and perceived limits of social mobility over time. At the same time, it allows me to see how the changing gender order within the family affected Americans’ willingness to have sex across class lines.