September 09, 2005
A History of the Wife
From Marilyn Yalom's book of the same name.
Still true?
When I think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity, I am struck by certain basic differences in their conceptions of marriage--differences that have persisted in some form to this very day. Judaism taught that marriage was connected to the mitzvah of procreation--a divine commandment and a blessing. Because marriage was seen as the only sanctioned way Jews could fulfill their obligation to reproduce, men and women were literally obliged to marry. Numerous rabbinical sayings found in the Torah and the Talmud reaffirm this sentiment... Christianity, on the other hand, took an early deviation from this position. Following the models of Jesus and Saint Paul, early Christianity valued celibacy above marriage. In the words of Saint Paul, "The unmarried man cares for the Lord's business; his aim is to please the Lord. But the married manc ares for worldly things; his aim is to please his wife; and he has a divided mind... THe married woman cares for worldly things, her aim is to please her husband" (I Corinthians 7:32-34). Acquiring a wife of husband was seen as interfering with the more primary business of forming a union with the Lord. If, for the Jew, the only way to obey God's commandment was to marry and produce offspring, for the Pauline Christian, the best way to fulfill God's commandment was to abstain fro sex altogether. [p 13 - 14]
Obvious contemporary parallels not even worth saying [But do I "love" those far-off beautiful celebrities then?]:
It has been argued that the French "invented" romantic love in the twelfth century. Its model was the perfect knight and the inaccessible lady, usually the wife of a king. Romantic love existed primarily outisde marriage in an atmosphere of secrecy, which intensified the experience, as in the myth of Tristan and Iseut, the legendary Celtic couple... [p. 65]
Oh, Maryland!
The state of Maryland promoted itself as a paradise for female servants in search of a husband: "That Women that go over into this Province as Servants have the best luck here as in any place of the world besides; for they are no sooner on the shoar but they are courted into a Copulative matrimony..." [p. 141]
Like Winston Churchill said...
The Puritan minister John Cotton, "teacher" of the First CHurch of Boston from 1633 to his death in 1652, expressed what was probably a commonly accepted view: "Womena re Creatures without which there is no comfortable Living for man: it is true of them what is wont to be said of governments, That bad ones are better than none." Such a backhand compliment reflected a considerable change from the medieval religious stance that no wife was better than a good one. [p. 144-145]
It's all about demography:
During the nineteenth century, the birth rate of all American white children declined by almost 50 percent--statistically speaking, from 7.04 children per married mother in 1800 to 3.56 children in 1900. This msut have been due to conscious efforst, such as sexual abstinence, male withdrawal, abortion, and contraceptive devices. Historians disagree over the extent to which antebellum Southern women practiced any of those methods, some arguing that couples from the planter class did not try to limit fertility, and others that they did. One factor that may have added to the greater fertitility of Southern women was their use of slaves to nurse their babies: since many white mothers were not nursing, they could not have profited from the "natural" contraception that breast-feeding afford by delaying the return of menstruation after childbirth. Slave women, on the other hand, began the century with a slightly lower birth rate--an average of six babies per mother, and did not experience a comparable decline in the number of offspring during the next hundred years. This was due to a variety of interconnecting factors, including their earlier age of sexual activity and the expctation on the part of their masters that they would breed new slaves. [p. 213]
The the Nordic countries have been promoting the ancestors of gay marriage for over a century!
The law of 1874 [in Sweden] also permitted wives to possess their own earnings. This provision had special meaning for working-class owmen, many of whom were self-supporting in their premarital years. These women often delayed marriage until they had acquired a dowry on their own and were able to pay for a wedding--a costly ceremony that always devolved upon the bride or her family. During this "engagement" period, which could go on for years, Swedigh working-class women often cohabited with their men, and even became mothers--practices that were unthinkable for middle- and upper-class women. Premarital cohabitation, practiced by an estimated 40 to 50 percent of all working-class couples, gave rise to the expression "Stockholm marriage" for individuals living together without the blessings of church or state. [p. 265]
I wonder if this is related etymologically to the phrase, "going Dutch"?
Posted by Morgan at 01:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (6)
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Comments
I too would be interested in the etymology of the terms "going Dutch" and "Stockholm marriage." There are many words to describe this phenomenon: "shacking up," "cohabitation," "living in sin," "living together," "serial monogamy" etc.
The numbers of cohabitants in the U.S. has risen steadily an average rate of more than 100,000 per year since 1960. This trend has sky- rocketed more than 10 fold in 40 years to nearly five million cohabitants today. It represents a massive cultural change where romantic love and courtship has been giving way to an altogether new alternative.
Interesting!
-Habby
www.cohabiting.org
Posted by: Habby at September 9, 2005 11:36 AM
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