(Full text 2900 words, reading takes 5 minutes)
In my previous article "The Game of Capital, "Consumerist" Marriage", it was said that in ancient times when social productivity was relatively backward, men held the economic power of production and output, women needed men to support them because of insufficient labor, and men wanted their descendants to inherit their lifelong production surplus, so there was a demand for chastity for women, requiring women to form a relationship with men in the form of marriage. Of course, this is talking about men who have the ability, and those who are not capable, and it is difficult to even support themselves.
The Book of Rites and Fortunes once said: "The journey of the great road is also the common good of the world, the selection of the wise and the able, and the cultivation of faith." The old man does not kiss his relatives alone, does not have only sons and sons, so that the old have an end, the strong have usefulness, the young have growth, widows, widows, loneliness, and diseases have some support, men have points, women have returns. ”
Among them, the widower who is "widowed and lonely" refers to an elderly man who has no wife. Why is there such a man? One situation is because of some factors, such as illness, giving birth to children (in ancient times having children was a high-risk thing), and there is also a situation where such a man never married a wife.
Ancient widowers
On the issue of marriage and love, the assumption that "the vast majority of people are going to get married and have children" is a misunderstanding, and this assumption is valid for the previous generation or the previous generation. However, if you push it further to the Republic of China, the Qing Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty... This assumption does not stand.
In ancient China, a considerable number of men could not get married in a lifetime, this proportion I have no data, some say 20%, some say 5%, but no matter how much, there is a reality: every generation, there will be a considerable number of men because of the "extinction" and their genes are eliminated. It is this cruel elimination rate that ensures the continuous improvement of the overall quality of men. Moreover, most men in ancient times accepted this law: men who could not get a wife would not only not be sympathized with by the public, but would also be ridiculed and even discriminated against, and even ignored in most cases. This is also why the ancient patriarchal system on the mainland is so strong, because men are constantly evolving themselves in the game with the same sex.
In ancient times, the people's groups were divided into "scholars, peasants, industrialists and merchants", of which "scholars" developed into a bureaucratic system, "peasants" developed into a gentry culture, these two things ruled ancient China for thousands of years, men through hard work, once they became the leaders of these industries, it is equivalent to completing the class leap, in ancient times will occupy an absolute monopoly position, they can provide women with enough production surplus.
In the towns of ordinary prefectures and counties in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the male masters of large households could have multiple concubines, and although the rest of the men could not talk about one-on-one, the children of ordinary urban families could marry rural women. But there are also poor people in the city, which is what we call men who cannot feed themselves, for them, marrying relatives is an unattainable dream, and in many areas of the poorer counties and rural areas, it is a widower. Since ancient times, it has been the norm for men in poor places not to marry their daughters-in-law. The reason why the poorer the place, the higher the bride price, is here, and things are rare and expensive.
The harem in The Biography of Zhen Huan
So, those women who marry into famous families, are they happy?
Patriarchal society is bound to oppress women as a whole, from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Republic of China, China has been adopting a polygamous marriage system for more than two thousand years. However, in ancient times, men could have concubines and concubines, but the legal wife could only have one. That is to say, only monogamy is a legal marriage, only the children born to the wife are concubines, and the others are all outgoing, which is in a relatively low position in family relations.
Therefore, taking a wife was an extremely important and serious matter in ancient times, with various such rules, such as:
1, the Western Zhou implementation of the same surname non-marriage principle, in the view of the ancients, the same surname of men and women for marriage will affect the development of the entire nation, prohibit the same surname for marriage, more intermarriage with different surnames, through marriage to strengthen the connection with the nobles of different surnames, further consolidate the world and the patriarchal system.
2, "the order of the parents, the words of the matchmaker", this is more familiar to everyone, under the ancient patriarchal system, parents have the right to directly decide the marriage of their children, through the matchmaker intermediary to promote the completion. Otherwise it is indecent and illegal, known as "obscene running", listen to this word, the story of Tian Xiao'e and Heiwa in "White Deer Plain" has a more profound description of this, for the ancients who believe in "Heaven and Earth King's Master", they are not recognized by the clan and society, and what hope can be lived.
The tragedy of Heiwa and Tian Xiao'e
3, the wedding procedure is extremely complicated and cumbersome, the marriage of etiquette and legality, must be completed through the "six rites" procedure,
Natche: When the man arrives at the time of marriage, the parents ask the matchmaker to propose to the parents of the woman who have already been found, expressing their desire to marry each other.
Asking for a name: Natchez gets permission, that is, the woman's family accepts the gift, and the two sides ask each other about the names, ages, birthdays, places of origin, etc. of the men and women, so that the other party has a preliminary understanding, which is the so-called "please eight characters".
Najib: After the man asks for his name and merges the eight characters, he informs the woman of the auspicious omen of the marriage and gives a gift, indicating that the etiquette of the engagement is our engagement today.
Na Zheng: The man gives the dowry to the woman, well, it is the bride price that everyone is talking about endlessly.
Please period: the male family divination, choose the auspicious day of the marriage, let the matchmaker inform the female family, and seek the consent of the female family, which is equivalent to our "fixed date" today.
Greeting: The last procedure in the six ceremonies is our wedding ceremony today. By the way, the wedding of the ancient large family was not completed in one day, but lasted for two or three days, except for the day of the marriage, before and after the extension of one day. It's tiring to think about.
Wedding ceremonies of the ancients
For the ancients, the man's ming media is marrying, which not only reflects the importance attached to the woman, but also the objective requirement of the entire social order. The so-called "wedding line, and then the father and son, the monarch and the subject, therefore, the wedding, the original of the ceremony, and the first place of human morality", in the feudal era that emphasized "the king is the subject, the father is the son, and the husband is the woman", the wedding is considered to be the basis of human morality and the beginning of the wind religion.
Unlike the strict rituals of "marrying a wife", concubines are more casual, only a contract is needed, and the man can buy and sell, which is the meaning of the so-called "concubine trade". It can even be obtained by exchanging or giving away with others, and there is such a plot in "Golden Plum Bottle". Although some dynasties have rules for men to take concubines, and they must be at least forty years old and have no heirs to take concubines, these rules are useless for rich and powerful families.
In ancient times, women were items marked with the price of buying and selling, for the top people in the ancient patriarchal society, there could only be one wife, and there was no limit to concubines, as long as the man's family could afford it, and this alone could see the disparity in the status of wives and concubines.
The late Ming scholar Li Yu once made an image comparison of the status of wives and concubines in the family: "If you marry a wife, if you buy a farm, you do not have grains, you do not breed, you do not have mulberry and hemp, you do not have trees, you are slightly involved in things that you are looking at, that is, you pull them away, they are used for food and clothing, and their soil power is limited, and they cannot be bypassed or otherwise." Buying concubines is like ruling a garden, and the flowers of the knot are also planted, and the flowers that are not knotted are also planted... Originally designed for entertainment, the emphasis is on the eyes and ears, and the mouth and stomach are sometimes light, and it cannot take into account the industry as the name. ”
White Deer Plains
Therefore, the ancients took wives in order to seek "reality", such as maintaining a family and having children; concubines were only for "appearances", so in the Qing Dynasty, there was a saying in Qing Dynasty society that "marrying wives and marrying virtues, marrying concubines and marrying colors".
Therefore, in ancient times, there was a fairly strict hierarchical difference between wives and concubines: wives were called "main rooms" and lived in the main room; concubines could only live in partial rooms, also known as side rooms. When a wife and her husband are together, the concubine can only stand by and wait, not sit. When the three of them are seated together, the concubines do not have the right to sit together, and can only sit at the side of the seat. Judging from these rules, it seems that there is a big difference between being a wife and a concubine, but in terms of their ultimate fate in the old society, the difference is not big.
Just as the giants are as deep as the sea, this matter can be seen by looking at "The Biography of Zhen Huan", the plot should be more dog blood and how much dog blood, what about the emperor's woman? The reality is more dog bloody. From these details, we can feel how depressed the women who made concubines in ancient times were, and what kind of family was willing to give their daughters to others as concubines? Like the men who can't marry their wives, they are all low-level people who can't survive.
In modern society, with the development of productive forces, women gradually have no weaker economic ability than men, and they no longer need to use marriage to rely on men, and they can rely on their own efforts and struggles to obtain a lifelong life security from society. At this time, looking at the ancient polygamous concubinage system, many people feel that it is not right: without you and me, why should we be so depressed?
As a result, some of the women who used to be concubines became the wives of some of the low-level men. At this time, the marriage system has also changed, and the family, as the most basic unit of life in society, requires each member of the family to give full play to their own advantages, and requires men and women to earn money together to support the family. At this time, the marriage system has become monogamous, and at this time everyone needs to be equal, otherwise more than half of the people will not even have the most basic rights. It's better to live by yourself.
End
The monogamous system gives some people who cannot marry a wife the opportunity to get rid of being a "widower", so that some hard-working people who can only "enter the rich as the sea" have the opportunity to be "good families", which protects the people at the bottom.
(End of the full text, thank you for watching, the picture is from the network)
"Parental Love"