The same conception of marriage as a contract still persists to some extent also in the United States, whither it was carried by the early Protestants and Puritans. No definition of marriage is indeed usually laid down by the States, but, Howard says (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 395), "in effect matrimony is treated as a relation partaking of the nature of both status and contract."
This point of view has been vigorously set forth by Paul and Victor Margueritte, Quelques Idées.
I may remark that this was pointed out, and its consequences vigorously argued, many years ago by C. G. Garrison, "Limits of Divorce," Contemporary Review, Feb., 1894. "It may safely be asserted," he concludes, "that marriage presents not one attribute or incident of anything remotely resembling a contract, either in form, remedy, procedure, or result; but that in all these aspects, on the contrary, it is fatally hostile to the principles and practices of that division of the rights of persons." Marriage is not contract, but conduct.
See, e.g., P. and V. Margueritte, op. cit.