Chinese culture is broad and profound, has a long history, and is all-encompassing, and one of the branches is the colloquialism. Saying is thousands of years, through generations of people, oral transmission to the present day, the saying is the ancient people for the daily production and life of the nuanced thinking, is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancients, is a reflection of the life of the ancients.
Since the saying comes from life, the field naturally covered is very extensive, and some of the sayings are related to marriage, and there are many such sayings, such as "men should marry women when they marry", "men are afraid of entering the wrong line, women are afraid of marrying the wrong man", "marrying chickens with chickens, marrying dogs with dogs" and so on.
There are also some sayings about marriage, relatively unpopular, there are not many people who know, for example, today's sentence - "Rather poor death, do not marry a wife", the saying is often concise, easy to understand, the literal meaning of this saying is also very simple: refers to the willing to die poor, rather than to marry a "raw wife" as a wife. Obviously, in the eyes of the ancients, "giving birth to a wife" is not good, so what is "giving birth to a wife"?
The word "to give birth to a wife" originated from the Western Han Dynasty writer Li Ling's "Reply to Su Wushu", which first mentioned the concept of "giving birth to a wife", saying: "Ding Nian served the envoy, Hao returned with his head; the old mother finally went to the church, and the wife went to the curtain", and later the Tang Dynasty scholar Li Shan explained in his "Debate on the Book of Han": "Ziqing's wife is young, and she is smelled to be married"
From this, it can be seen that the so-called "birth wife" refers to a woman who has been divorced, whose ex-husband is still alive and will be remarried. In short, "birth wife" can be understood as "woman after divorce"
The sayings left by the ancients cannot be interpreted from the perspective of the gods of modern people, but must be substituted into the background of the ancients' times. Modern marriage is very different from ancient marriage, and the reasons for modern people to divorce are also different from those of the ancients.
For example, people also have some misunderstandings about the marriage system of the ancients, thinking that ancient men were "three wives and four concubines", in fact, it is not, the ancients practiced the marriage system of "monogamy and polygamy", and the three wives in the idiom "three wives and four concubines" respectively refer to concubines, partial wives, and subordinate wives, in addition to wives, the rest belong to concubines.
In the Tang Dynasty law "Tang Law Household Marriage", it is once recorded: "Those who have wives and more wives, apprentice for one year", in the Peking Opera "Pear Garden Spring. In the case of Chen Shimei, Chen Shimei failed Qin Xianglian, and when Bao Gong asked Chen Shimei to behead Chen Shimei, one of Chen Shimei's crimes was "bigamy"
Similarly, the ancients could not divorce their wives casually, and a letter of resignation was not as easy to write as described in film and television works. The ancients had to respect the principle of "seven out of three not going".
Seven outs refers to the seven situations in which a wife can be divorced.
1. Disobedience to parents. The ancients paid attention to filial piety, believing that filial piety was the first, and if the wife was not filial to the parents of both sides, she could divorce her wife.
2. Childless. As the saying goes: "No filial piety has three, no queen is greater", if the wife can not extend the heirs, the ancients believed that they can also divorce their wives.
3. Have a bad disease. The reason why it is believed that a person with a bad disease can divorce his wife, the reason given by the ancients is: "Do not be prosperous together", thinking that this can not participate in family sacrifices. "Sacrifice" is also a manifestation of filial piety in the eyes of the ancients.
4~7, fornication, jealousy, polyphony, theft. Whether it is "disobedience to parents", "childlessness" or "having a bad disease", it is somewhat related to filial piety. The latter four situations are all personal conduct, and some are extenuating circumstances, such as "fornication". Some are too harsh, such as "jealousy" and "over-talking"
Because "giving birth to a wife" is likely to be divorced because of the above seven situations, the values of the ancients could not accept such a woman as a wife, so the saying goes, "It is better to die poorly than to marry a wife."
"Three outs" is a supplement to the "seven outs", the so-called "three outs", for:
1. There is no return for the marriage. Refers to the homelessness of the wife after she was laid off. 2. Three years of mourning. His wife participated in the observance of filial piety for three years. 3. Former poor and lowly and then rich. Refers to the wife of chaff.
Let's take a simple example. If the wives of the ancients were childless, they could divorce their wives in accordance with the seven outs. But after the wife was divorced, there was no mother's home to return, and even if the wife had no children, she could not divorce her wife.
If a wife has no children and cannot divorce her wife, is it not contradictory to the ancients' "no queen is greater"? In order to solve this contradiction, the Tang Law records that "lishu is the eldest", that is, the wife has no children, and the concubines who can be concubines can be the eldest son.
Today's divorce situation is different from that of ancient times, and the specific problems are analyzed on a case-by-case basis. In real life, the example of a happy second marriage is not less to say. Today, the phrase "I'd rather die poorly than marry a wife" has been put into modern times and is no longer useful. What do you think? Comments are welcome.