"Starvation is small, loss of control is big", this is a sentence said by Cheng Yi in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the descendants gradually evolved into chains and shackles set on women, burying the happiness of countless women's lives.
In ancient society, for women, chastity is undoubtedly the most important thing for a woman, in the most serious time of feudal etiquette, as long as a woman loses her virginity, whether she is willing or not, she will be rejected by the whole society and even her relatives, and finally can only die to apologize.
However, can you imagine that in ancient times, when women's chastity was greatly valued, there would be a husband who took the initiative to rent his wife to someone else to have children? Moreover, this perverted form of marriage is not a private transaction, nor is it an isolated case, but a temporary form of marriage recognized by the clan and society.
This is the so-called "pawn marriage", a perverted form of marriage that existed for a long time among the poor in middle and lower society, and was still popular until the Qing Dynasty. So why can a wife marriage exist? This has to mention the traditional Concept of "Continuing Incense" in China.
The reason for the existence of the marriage of the wife
On the surface, the cannibal wife is incompatible with the feudal etiquette, but in essence, this is the product of the feudal ritualism oppressing women in a specific social environment.
Under feudal etiquette, women's status is underground, they have no independent personality, they are accessories to their husbands, so they must be loyal to their husbands and adhere to chastity. At the same time, their greatest task is to bear children for their husband's clan. If a family does not have a male, it means that the ancestral inheritance incense is broken, which is the greatest filial piety.
Therefore, if the wife is unable to have children, men often take other ways to pass on the inheritance, and the marriage of the wife is one of the ways. Although this approach is contrary to the principle of common ethics, in the face of the greatest principle of "passing on the generations", the concept of ethics and chastity has to regress.
At the same time, it has to be pointed out that the internal logic of the marriage of the pawn wife is still to treat women as pawn goods, rather than a person with human dignity, so this is still the destruction and persecution of women by feudal etiquette.
Of course, in addition to the pawn wife, there are other ways to pass on the lineage, of which the most common in feudal society is to take concubines. So why would people not choose to take concubines, but willingly pawn their wives? The reasons for this are manifold.
The most fundamental reason is poverty, rich families can marry several houses or even a dozen wives and concubines, but for the poor, there is no economic strength for concubines, at this time they can only retreat to the second place, choose a lower cost of the wife. And the wife is not only a tool for childbearing, but also a free labor force.
For example, in the novel "Mother for Slaves", the Chunbao Niang who was sold needed to push and grind every day, grind flour, and do all kinds of heavy agricultural work.
Another reason is that compared with concubines, the status of the pawn wife is lower, and the child born to the pawn wife is called "dianzi", which is lower than the status of the concubine in the patriarchal law. In this way, if the wife later gave birth to her own child, there was no need to worry about the noriko threatening her position.
Moreover, the wife has a "lease period", once the period expires, or gives birth to a child, the wife will return to the original home, so that you can avoid many family conflicts between wives and concubines competing for favors. Therefore, compared with concubines, the right wife is often more willing to let her husband pawn his wife.
So, what are the specific forms and processes of the wife?
The form and process of the wife
The so-called "pawn wife" is to pawn the wife to others like a pawn item, and after the expiration of the waiting period or the completion of the task of "continuing the incense" for the pawn, the wife returns to the original family.
Generally speaking, the wives will also have "matchmakers", but instead of calling them matchmakers, it is better to call them "intermediaries", because they are not matching marriages, jade into good things, but making a deal.
People who want to pass on their wives to pass on their lineage find "intermediaries", and then the intermediaries go to the eight villages of Ten Miles to find poor couples who cannot eat, and persuade them to agree to the wives. In addition to husbands pawning wives, there are also widows who pawn their own in order to support their ex-husbands' children.
Under the pressure of life, they have to sell themselves and continue the incense for others.
In some places, there is also a ceremony of "marrying" wives, but this is not a glorious thing after all, and the marriage ceremony is usually carried out at night.
For example, in the novel "Giving Birth to a Wife", when she married, it was on a quiet night of a black man in a month, and the heroine rode in a small car and walked more than ten miles of mountain roads to her "temporary husband" home.
During the pawn period, the wife usually resides in the pawn's house and is considered a member of her family, and is not allowed to have any intimate behavior with her former husband. There are also some places where wives live in the original home, and the pawn stays at home for a few days to ten days a month, while the original husband needs to leave for a reason.
The pawn period is usually three to five years, if the pawn wife gives birth to a child during the pawn period, the child belongs to the pawn, after the expiration of the period, the pawn wife returns to the original home, and has nothing to do with the child. If, within the time limit, the pawn wife does not give birth to a child, or does not give birth to a boy, the pawnbroker and the canon's original husband negotiate to increase the money to extend the period.
In short, in the whole process of pawning wives, the will and dignity of women are not taken into account, whether in the eyes of the original husband or the pawnbroker, they are just an item that can be bought and sold, a tool for bearing children and prolonging their children. So what is the fate of these poor wives?
The fate of the pawn wife
In feudal society, the status of women was inferior, and the status of these wives who existed because of the continuation of incense was even lower to the point of no return.
The wife is either the wife of the poor or a widow who is unable to make ends meet but is unwilling to remarry for the sake of her children. To become pawn wives, they first face the torture of their own conscience and moral condemnation. This mental torture is long-lasting and will accompany them for the rest of their lives.
After being pawned, if they meet a family with a good heart, their life is better, but if they are sold to a family with a bad temper, then they must not only endure the insults of the pawnbroker, but also endure the insults and punishments and abuses of the pawn's wife, and will also be instructed to do all kinds of dirty work.
For the wives, the most intolerable thing is that the children they give birth to in October can only belong to others. The day the wife returns home is often the time when the mother and child are separated.
Moreover, after the pawn wife returns home, the husband does not say it in the open, and secretly he will dislike her experience of being "pawned", and even resort to verbal and behavioral violence. For example, in "Mother of Slaves", after Chun Bao Niang returned home, not only did her husband punch and kick her, but even her child Chun Bao laughed at her with other children in the village.
epilogue:
A history of feudalism is the history of the humiliation of countless women. The exploitation system of feudal society led to the poor having no place to stand, and the poor transferred the oppression of society to women, so under the dual factors of poverty and succession, the marriage of wives was able to appear, and the official prohibition continued until the Qing Dynasty was still common in poor areas.
When we look back on history, we cannot ignore the suffering of women. If our civilization wants to progress, it must also face up to the status and rights of women.