The statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are repeated at the end of this article
In the troubled times of the late Qing Dynasty, the poor could not eat enough and could not afford to marry a wife, but they were able to successfully complete the task of passing on the ancestry. What methods did they use to accomplish this difficult task? [White-eyed]
01
The phenomenon of marriage in ancient times
The Qing Dynasty, the last feudal society in China, is the closest era to us, and the story of the late Qing Dynasty has been handed down in its entirety. In the worldview of the ancients, the absence of offspring is the greatest unfilial piety.
This sentence was very powerful at the time, and it was their innate task to pass on the lineage. But what should the poor people who have four walls of the family do, the rich family has three wives and four concubines.
The poor family couldn't afford to get married, so they came up with an unkind method, and over time the Qing Dynasty even gave birth to a new industry.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the social status of women was very low, especially the wives and daughters of poor families. Their fate was often in the hands of their husbands, and a system of "pawn marriage" was born.
What is embarrassing is that pawn wife marriages generally occur in poor families. The rich family has a group of wives and concubines and has many heirs, and they will not act as a pawn at all.
On the contrary, it is the same poor family, who was lucky enough to marry a daughter-in-law, but it is very difficult for the family to support themselves. At this time, another poor family will propose to pawn the married woman, advocating that the married woman be sold to their own family and be the man's wife for a period of time.
Of course, the purpose of the family is to have a son, and only when a married woman gives birth to a baby boy can this pawn wife marriage business be completed.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the phenomenon of pawn wife marriage was very popular among the people, and the government wanted to ban it after learning about it, after all, it was too unkind.
However, if you can't complete the task of inheriting the lineage, it will be regarded as a great unfilial piety, and the marriage of the pawn wife is still carried out in secret. Later, a set of professional processes was formed, generally by an intermediary matchmaking, and the two parties signed a contract in black and white.
It is stipulated that within a certain period of time, the woman must give birth to a child for the employing family. Because neither family is wealthy, and the pawn is a person who can't afford to marry a wife, the price can't be too high.
At most, the price is slightly inflated based on the woman's looks, albeit in an inhumane manner. But for the people of the late Qing Dynasty who took what they needed, the three obedience and four virtues could no longer be taken care of, the woman's family needed financial resources, and the employer also had their own children.
02
The oppression of women in feudal society
Pawn wife marriage is such a thing as a marriage now, and no matter which family can accept it. Everything is the tears of the times, and the people in the late Qing Dynasty were unwilling to marry a daughter-in-law in the name of justice.
However, there are too many jackals, tigers and leopards, and they have been cut off from living. In fact, it was women who were most seriously injured under the marriage system, and the famous writer Roushi described the tragic experience of women in that era in his short story "The Mother of a Slave".
Chun Bao Niang is an honest and kind rural woman, her husband is lazy and lazy, the family is extremely poor, and an eldest son is hungry and unkempt, with a yellow face and thin muscles.
Chun Bao Niang was aggrieved, but she had no family status and could only endure it silently, who knew that the more painful was still to come. There was a Xiucai in the village who was almost 50 years old, and he failed to pass the imperial examination every year, and he did not marry a wife and have children, so he could not complete the task of passing on the ancestry.
So Xiucai found her husband and hoped that the yellow leatherman would pawn his wife to him, and he was willing to pay a hundred dollars. The yellow leatherman, who was short of silver flowers, blossomed, and he immediately nodded and agreed to Xiucai.
The two went to find an intermediary together and wrote a pawn contract, which looked very formal. The treaty stipulates that Chun Bao Niang will be sold to Xiu Cai as a wife for three years, during which time she will not be allowed to return home until Chun Bao Niang gives birth to a son for Xiu and the contract expires.
After Chun Bao Niang learned of this cruel transaction, she couldn't wait to hit her head and die in the past, and the feudal society often said that "if you are not married, you will follow your husband."
This sentence can make Chun Bao Niang miserable, after she came to Xiucai's house, in addition to completing the task of giving birth to a son for Xiucai. She also has to do the housework that Xiucai ordered, yes, she is now Xiucai's wife, but there is a 3-year deadline.
Chun Bao Niang counted the days in a daze, she missed her eldest son very much, and she didn't know if the lazy father had taken care of him after she left.
But what's the use of missing? She can't go home until the pawn expires. Later, Chun Bao Niang became pregnant and gave birth to a white fat son to Xiucai, and Xiucai smiled happily and Chun Bao Niang also lived a comfortable life for a while.
Because she missed her eldest son at home, Chun Bao Niang named the newborn "Qiu Bao". She watched Qiu Bao grow up, this child was also her own, and she couldn't put it down.
However, the three-year lease period is about to expire, Xiucai drove her out cold-blooded and ruthless, Qiu Bao belongs to Xiucai according to the pawn wife marriage contract, and Chun Bao Niang cannot be taken away.
So she felt the pain of separation of flesh and blood again, and Chun Bao Niang numbly returned to the yellow leather craftsman's house, and she saw her eldest son.
He hadn't grown taller at all in three years, probably malnourished, and her son was slender. When the eldest son saw his former mother, he was also a little timid and didn't dare to recognize him.
Now Chun Bao Niang has a new concern, the second son who lives in Xiucai's house and can't walk. What's even more infuriating is that the yellow leatherman looked at her very indifferently, and marrying a wife is not a glorious thing after all.
Now that the village has already spread the news of their family, Chun Bao Niang can feel the strange eyes of others. However, wasn't it the yellow leatherman who resolutely abandoned his wife in the first place?
The fate of women in the old society was often more tragic than hell, and Chun Bao Niang gave birth to a son to Xiucai in one child, which is already a blessing in misfortune.
If she is unlucky to give birth to a daughter, the fate of the mother and child may be even darker.
03
The dangers of feudal dross
The irony is that on the one hand, feudal society requires women to be chaste, and on the other hand, it has derived such an outrageous system as pawn wife marriage. In ancient societies, many moral norms were imposed on women.
Whether or not you can keep your own chastity is the only criterion for judging the value of women. And women who lose their virginity often suffer from the spurning of their families and even society.
Because in the feudal patriarchal society, a woman is an appendage of the male from birth. The three obedience and the four virtues require that the woman obey the father's words in order, followed by the elder brother, and after marriage, obey the husband.
Such endless obedience makes the woman lose her subjective initiative. In a feudal society where men and women are not equal, women are often easy to fall victim to power.
The king of Shang once recruited 3,000 beauties from all over the world to enrich the harem, and many of these people were obtained by officials by forcible robbery. They were incapable of revolting, and the king enjoyed great privileges in society.
Pawn wife marriage first originated in the Han Dynasty, and it was prohibited at the legal level in all dynasties. The household department of the Qing Dynasty also issued a marriage law, which clearly stipulated that if someone sells his wife and concubine in exchange for property and gives it to others as a wife and concubine, the husband will be given 80 boards.
If the buyer knows that the woman has been married, but still pawns the marriage, he will also have to hit the 80 board. The contract was forcibly annulled and the property confiscated.
At that time, the 80 big boards were no joke, and the officials usually beat them with sticks thick at the wrists, and the prisoners who had been punished were generally unable to walk.
It is a pity that the strict punishment law still failed to prohibit the marriage of pawn wives, and such a phenomenon was still relatively rare in the prosperous era of Kangqian. However, the invasion of Western powers at the end of the Qing Dynasty left the treasury empty and the people impoverished, and the internal and external contradictions were extremely acute.
The phenomenon of land annexation is severe, and the government has introduced harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes to make the people miserable, and Lafayette only cares about his own pleasure, exploiting and oppressing the people, making the displaced people all over the mountains.
The number of people who were unable to marry and have children increased, and pawn marriages flourished again. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court was worried about internal and external troubles, and there was no time to take care of such trivial matters.
The long-term propagation of the feudal society of the idea of continuing incense forced them to give birth to offspring through the slave wife system under the harsh living environment.
The strange thing is that after the marriage of pawn wives matured, it was also handled decently. There is not only a dowry but also a matchmaker certificate, and then there is a marriage contract, and it will not fall behind the wedding etiquette that should be there.
But no matter how formal the etiquette procedure is, it can't hide the cruel reality, it's just a fig leaf for civilization.
04
Ancient marriage customs
In addition to pawn marriage, there is also an ancient feudal bad custom called "exchanging relatives". Changing relatives is also a bad thing that poor families have to do in order to continue the incense.
Under normal circumstances, the change of parents is mostly matched by the parents, which is a bit of a finger for marriage. This kind of feudal arranged marriage is extremely inhumane in deciding lifelong events for children.
Sometimes there are two families, and sometimes there may be three or four, all of which change the daughters of the other party's families to their own homes to be a "child daughter-in-law".
The result of arranged marriages is often unhappiness, and the most intuitive manifestation is that the marriage is unhappy. Or a family suddenly regrets the marriage, causing a series of explosive reactions, and their son is about to beat a bachelor again.
On the other hand, there may be blood ties between the families of the exchange family. This leads to the birth of defective babies, which can only cause more harm to each other.
Whether it is a marriage swap or a pawn marriage, it is essentially human trafficking. This kind of behavior was quite frequent in the late Qing Dynasty, and after the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China government vigorously banned it with little effect.
In many places, they were still secretly trafficked behind their backs, and later women were emancipated after the establishment of New China. The old culture of feudal ideology was broken, and women had fair social treatment, and such things as pawn wife marriage and family exchange were gradually eliminated.
Nowadays, young people are pursuing individuality and independent development, and they are not married even when they have reached marriageable age. This is a taboo in feudal society, and the government will even regard not getting married as a crime and forcibly find you a partner to make do.
Thankfully, we live in a world of freedom and equality, where women are no longer a tool and cannot control their own destiny. Feudal arranged marriages were also abandoned in favor of free love, which avoided many tragedies.
Resources:
[1] CCTV: 2009-04-10 Qing Dynasty Wedding Customs
[2] "The Biography of Zheng Chong in the Book of Han": "Zheng Chong of the Gaomi clan and the Wang family have been married for generations, and they have married each other"