In the past, there were some rural sayings, but now people find it too absolute, inconsistent with real life, and even contradictory. "The threshold for a sister to go to the threshold is broken, and the brother dies and the uncle is a sister-in-law", which is such a rural saying, which is only a part of the phenomenon of rural society in the old era, not a universal phenomenon.
Sister went to the threshold broken
In the past, in the countryside, the marriage between the man and the woman was likened to the "even threshold", that is, the threshold between the two families was connected together, and the exchanges between each other were frequent and close.
Therefore, the phrase "sister goes to the threshold is broken" means that after the death of the sister, the brother-in-law and the brother-in-law, or the son-in-law and the parents-in-law, have broken off their relationship and have no contact. This is like a threshold connected together, the two thresholds are connected by a wooden fir, the wooden fir is gone, and the two thresholds are naturally disconnected. This threshold is the sister or sister who marries out. Is the real society in the countryside really like this saying? In fact, this is not the case, not only in the countryside of the past, but also in the countryside of the present, and there are many examples of cases that can negate this proverb.
For example, sisters and sisters and husbands are a husband and wife, and after a hundred years of age, they always have to enter the loess, which is a natural law, and no one can stop them. In the past, loving couples swore an oath, saying that "they do not seek to be born on the same day of the same month of the same year, but to die on the same day of the same month of the same year", and the couples who can really do exactly "die on the same day of the same month of the same year" are not nothing, but very few. The vast majority of couples, when they are white-headed and old, there is always one who goes first and one who goes later. If the woman goes first, for the brother-in-law and brother-in-law, it can also be regarded as "sister death" or "sister death", is it true that rural people are so desperate, and the threshold is really broken?
This is not the case. In the past, rural customs, the old girl (many places call the married daughter a girl) and the old aunt are old, no matter which one goes first, after the mother's family receives the funeral report, they must first "see the life" or "see the life", that is, they will go to see the deceased for the last time, but also to visit and comfort the person who is alive in the couple. Regardless of whether it is the girl or the aunt who finally leaves, the mother's family must go to the solemn memorial and send off.
For example, in the old days, there was a saying in the countryside that "forty do not marry a wife, fifty do not make clothes." Some men lose their wives in middle age, they do not continue the string, and the contacts with their father-in-law's family are still very frequent and intimate as when their wives are alive, and they have fulfilled the obligation of filial piety to their parents-in-law.
In the past, the above examples were common in rural areas, so in rural areas, not all people are "sisters to the threshold". In fact, in the past, the concept of kinship among rural people was much stronger than that of people now, and relatives were much more affectionate with each other.
In the past, there was still a more humane custom in the countryside, if the girl who married out died early, and the girl gave birth to a child in the son-in-law's house, the son-in-law later continued the string, the original parents-in-law recognized the son-in-law's wife as the "substitute daughter", and the original brother-in-law's brother-in-law recognized the wife of the continuation as a "substitute sister" or "substitute sister". They still have continuous exchanges as relatives, there is no severance, the flesh and bones of their own girls remain there, as the saying goes, "the flesh and bones of relatives are fragrant", and the affection is also left there.
In the countryside, it is often encountered that after the death of a male elderly man, he has to go to the homes of two maternal uncles to report the funeral, and there are also two mother-in-law teams who come to the funeral, and both teams are righteous maternal uncles. This is because the old man took two wives before he died, because after the death of his ex-wife, he married another one, and both the ex-wife and the post-wife had sons, and the sons of the ex-wife and the sons of the latter-wives had their own maternal uncles. Of course, if it is a divorce and then married to the second wife, there will be no family situation, after the divorce of relatives will naturally be broken, even if the former wife has offspring, generally will not come and go, there is no meaning to come and go again, the name is not correct, it is not smooth.
The phenomenon of "sister going to the threshold is broken", in the past rural areas, usually refers to the fact that after the girl marries the man, she dies without giving birth to offspring, and the mother's family has no worries, and the son-in-law's side also has no family bond with the father-in-law's side, and it will no longer have contact. Of course, if the girl divorces the son-in-law (in the old days, there were two kinds of dissolution, one was the husband's divorce, and the other was "peace and separation"), it would naturally break off the family, and now the same is true, and the divorce will not have the bond of relatives, and it cannot be regarded as relatives. Judging from the contextual meaning of the sentence "sister goes to the threshold, brother dies uncle on sister-in-law", "sister goes" refers to the death of the sister, not to divorce, and the divorce of husband and wife does not belong to the category of this saying, and should be another matter.
However, the interaction between people in rural society is difficult to describe. Whether in the countryside of the past or in the countryside of the present, there are also some men who, after the death of their wives, marry another wife, and even if the ex-wife has children with them, they rarely have contact with the father-in-law's family in front of them. However, such people are only a part, not all people are like this. It is also because of the existence of this social phenomenon that there is a sigh of "sister to the threshold break".
In fact, if the brothers and sisters do not humble each other and do not get along harmoniously, the threshold for the sister to go to the threshold is broken, and the sister is still alive. Even if the brothers and sisters are very harmonious and the feelings are very good, there is no unbroken feast in the world, and there is no threshold that is constantly connected forever. As the old saying goes, "One generation of girls, two deputies, three generations and four generations are no longer in contact", and we have to admit that this is an objective fact.
Brother dead uncle sister-in-law
The meaning of this sentence refers to a marriage custom in the countryside in the old era that people generally considered "reasonable", that is, the so-called "transfer of relatives" custom, which was an ugly custom in feudal society. The "uncle" in "uncle is sister-in-law", the sister-in-law refers to her husband's younger brother as her own children. Therefore, the "uncle is the sister-in-law" that is, the little uncle wants to start a new family with the sister-in-law of the deceased husband. This "just" word is very profound, that is, as long as the little uncle does not marry a wife, whether he wants to or not, he must marry the newly widowed sister-in-law, of course, as the newly widowed sister-in-law has no choice.
During the feudal society period, the status of women was very low, and men could marry three wives and four concubines as long as the family conditions permitted, that is, those rich and noble families, and imprisoned women in the feudal etiquette of "from one end to the end" and "keeping chastity". After the death of a woman's husband, she asks that she cannot marry again, even if she remarries are often discriminated against by society, and there are some local rural rules, widows remarry, and after death, even the ancestral grave of the remarried husband's family cannot enter.
However, in the old countryside, men from wealthy families could have multiple wives and concubines, while men from poor families had difficulty marrying wives and could only be single. Let's take a look at the 1930, the great man interviewed the peasants in Xingguo County, Jiangxi Province, and wrote the famous work "Xingguo Investigation", which contains the following passage:
"In Xingguo, landlords and rich peasants not only have wives, but also a number of concubines, ten percent of the middle peasants, thirty percent of the poor peasants and craftsmen, ninety percent of the homeless, ninety-nine percent of the peasants, and not even wives."
From this passage, it is not difficult for us to see that the marital status in the rural areas of the old era, and at the same time, it is not difficult to see the marital status of the rural areas of the Qing Dynasty. As a result, a new marriage custom "transfer" has emerged in society, that is, from sister-in-law to wife, or from younger sister to wife. According to the rural saying at that time, after the death of the brother, the sister-in-law married someone else, called not "keeping the festival". However, if a new family is formed with a brother who is unmarried by her husband, it is not considered to be remarriage, and it is still considered to be "observant", and it will not be discriminated against by society, but it is considered to be "reasonable". After the death of such a woman, because of her "contribution" to the family, she can legitimately enter the ancestral grave.
The custom of "changing relatives" has different rules in different places in the old countryside. For example, in some places, "transmutation" is limited to siblings, and not siblings, even cousins, are still considered remarried. In some places, it is divided into successive, priority brothers "transfer", if there are no brothers, or brothers have married, then choose unmarried brothers from among cousins (brothers of grandparents) to "transfer relatives".
This custom of "changing relatives" in the rural areas of the old era seemed to people at that time to have three major advantages: First, it solved the suffering of young women who were widowed and preserved the "honor" of widows; second, the family was not separated, and some people raised the children born to their previous husbands like their own parents; and third, they solved the problem of brothers in some families, because it was difficult to marry wives.
However, this custom of "transferring relatives" is also a very cruel side, mainly manifested in two aspects: one is that widows have completely lost the freedom to remarry, no matter what kind of person their husbands' unmarried brothers are, they have to form a family with them; second, unmarried brothers have lost the freedom to choose to marry their wives. Thus, in the countryside of the old era, the custom of "switching" was not only victims of widows, but also some brothers.
This is why it is said that the custom of "changing relatives" in the countryside in the old era was because in the people's ideological concepts at that time, there was a kind of idea that fertile water did not flow to the fields of outsiders, which also gave rise to this ugly custom.
However, the ugly custom of "changing relatives" in the countryside in the old era has long disappeared in the countryside. Even in some individual cases, such as when a sister-in-law marries her unmarried husband's brother or a younger sister marries her husband's brother after the death of her husband, it is on the basis of the voluntariness of both the man and the woman, that is, on the basis of compliance with the current marriage law, that is, the marriage of the legal couple. Strictly speaking, this kind of marriage is fundamentally different from the "transfer of relatives" in the old era.
All in all, for the past rural sayings such as "sister goes to the threshold, brother dies uncle is sister-in-law", when interpreting, we must carefully screen it, do not obstruct the eyes, to be partial and comprehensive, to be false and true, and to identify with a scientific attitude.