Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Child Bride" in English language version.
If, as the census demonstrated, the largest number of child brides were among the native born (and of native born parents, to boot) then the Winsteads' status as "white trash" explained their consent to Eunice's marriage and exemplified backward backwoods sexuality more generally. I also focus on the film, Child Bride, which itself makes the "old stock" whiteness of the Tennesseans a key issue. I argue that the film, released at the height of the Great Depression, spoke to anxieties about falling marriage and birth rates and single women's supposed promiscuity. By displacing these fears on to the forced child marriage depicted in the film, which itself bore little resemblance to Eunice Winstead's adamant declaration of her own choice to marry Charlie Johns, Americans could ignore what were perceived as real threats to the institution of marriage in favor of an imagined sex exploitation hidden in the hills of Appalachia.
In January 1937, 22-year-old Charlie Johns married his 9-year-old neighbor, Eunice Winstead. Johns was a quiet, tobacco farmer in Hancock County, Tennessee. The couple falsified Winstead's age in order to get a marriage license. At the time, however, there was no minimum marriage age in Tennessee and minors did not need parental permission. News of their union prompted outrage around the country. National magazines and newspapers jumped to report the story. In a photo essay entitled, "The Case of the Child Bride" published in LIFE magazine, Winstead smiled tentatively next to her lanky, six-foot tall husband.
If, as the census demonstrated, the largest number of child brides were among the native born (and of native born parents, to boot) then the Winsteads' status as "white trash" explained their consent to Eunice's marriage and exemplified backward backwoods sexuality more generally. I also focus on the film, Child Bride, which itself makes the "old stock" whiteness of the Tennesseans a key issue. I argue that the film, released at the height of the Great Depression, spoke to anxieties about falling marriage and birth rates and single women's supposed promiscuity. By displacing these fears on to the forced child marriage depicted in the film, which itself bore little resemblance to Eunice Winstead's adamant declaration of her own choice to marry Charlie Johns, Americans could ignore what were perceived as real threats to the institution of marriage in favor of an imagined sex exploitation hidden in the hills of Appalachia.
