Talk:Handfasted

Discussion

• Authorship: 99.4%
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Gonna get started, I'll ping when I'm done for the evening. Snuggle📫 02:44, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

@MCE89: Apologies, life got away from me for a few days. This is my first book GAR so if I am mistaken on anything as far as accepted practices, I would love to learn. I have found every other source but can't find a copy of Handfasted at any of my usual libraries. If you could point me to where I might find it or if you have easy access to the book I would appreciate it if you could email me the few pages that I have listed in the spotcheck table just so I can verify. Snuggle📫 21:17, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

@Snugglebuns: Thanks so much for the review! I've replied below. Happy to send a PDF of the book — if you send me an email I can reply with a the relevant pages attached. MCE89 (talk) 06:17, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

@MCE89:, thanks again for the source. Sources all look good. The article is very well written, I only made one small correction to it. The wikilinks you chose to add were well chosen. Anything else would be nit-picks as far as GA is concerned. Thanks and congrats on another GA =) Snuggle📫 08:36, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Review by section

  – Issues that need to be resolved to pass the review.
B – Issues I see outside of the criteria that are optional but would be great to address.
Y – No longer an issue.

More information No., Section ...

No.	Section	Criteria status	Excerpt	Suggestion
1	Plot summary	Y 2d	He is introduced to the society's practice of "handfasting", which allows a couple to live together for a year and a day before deciding whether they wish to marry.	From the essay: "It is an engagement which allows two people to live together for a year and a day, in order to discover whether or not they wish to marry." This is exactly the same. It either needs to be in quotes or reworded. Fair point, I agree that it's a bit closer than it needs to be. I think parts of the overlap are fairly WP:LIMITED, but I've tweaked it further to ...in which couples live together for a year and one day before deciding whether to marry. MCE89 (talk) 06:17, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
2	Themes	Y		Some wikilinks in this section would be nice, by no means a requirement so I will leave it to your discretion. Agreed and done. MCE89 (talk) 06:17, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Close

Source spotcheck

This table checks 7 passages from throughout the article (17.1% of 41 total passages). These passages contain 13 inline citations (20.6% of 63 in the article). Generated with the Veracity user script. Snuggle📫 02:44, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

More information Reference #, Letter ...

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
He is introduced to the society's practice of "handfasting", which allows a couple to live together for a year and a day before deciding whether they wish to marry.
2	c	Magarey 1989, p. 32.
The third book of the novel contains the journal of Marguerite Keith, one of Columba's founders. She explains that the practice of handfasting arose to facilitate marriages between Native American women and Scottish settlers by allowing time for the women to convert to Christianity.
2	f	Magarey 1989, p. 32.
7		Bowman Albinski 1989, pp. 17–18, 21.
Catherine Helen Spence wrote the manuscript for Handfasted in 1879 and submitted it to a literary competition run by The Sydney Mail for a prize of 100 pounds.
2	k	Magarey 1989, p. 32.
11		Bowman Albinski 1989, pp. 15–16.
The social structures that surround marriage in Columba also provide women with agency in choosing their spouses, contributing to women's economic freedom and allowing them to take on active roles in public life.
18		Bowman Albinski 1989, pp. 19, 21.
19		Thomson 1984, pp. 369–370.
However, the novel suggests that Columba's social development has not been without negative consequences, particularly with regards to its society's lack of interest in literature and the arts.
21	b	Thomson 1984, p. 365.
23	a	newspapers.com
24	a	newspapers.com
In her biography of Spence, Susan Magarey describes the novel as a "remarkable work". She writes that it has many similarities with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's later novel Herland, often regarded as the founding work of feminist speculative fiction.
33		Magarey 1989, p. 31.
Both Magarey and the novel's editor Susan Thomson describe the third book of Handfasted—the diaries of Marguerite Keith—as particularly powerful and moving.
2	o	Magarey 1989, p. 32.
34		Thomson 1984, pp. 368–369.

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.