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Love in Marriage The pursuit of material gain is probably the most noticeable factor in human existence. How to accomplish this is dependent on an individual's skills, ambitions, talent, as well on the social and natural environment. One person might be highly ambitious and highly motivated to work, but few opportunities might be available. Another person might be poorly motivated, yet have numerous opportunities opening up all around him. Obviously, motivation and occasion are not always related, but few would say that they have no intention or interest in gaining something socially tangible from life. The means to this gain vary by time and place; however, most people in any society know what is required in order to obtain money, power, status, and, ultimately, gratification. Moreover, it is a universal requirement that to make headway in life, a chain of events must be followed — education must come first, followed by establishing an occupation, then accumulating significant savings, then followed by increased social status. Although it was only in the early 19th century that this chain of events became formalised, where 'institutions' arose to meet the need for clear fulfilment of each stage, the deliberate enactment of personal progress has been around probably since the beginning of the human race. We should not make the mistake of believing that people in the past simply moved to one household to another as part of a subsistence strategy. The farmer in Spain or Norway went through the same stages of development as the modern stock-broker in New York or London. Both cultures are linked in a very basic way by the desire to achieve contentment, a condition that is truly beyond 'culture'. The difference between these ages lies in the intensity of experience of each stage, not in nature of experience. The final factor in the chain of life's milestones — contentment — could not and cannot be possible unless the full potential use is made of social engagement, education, and career in the establishment and maintenance of love. We should appreciate the fact that this linkage of the profoundly physical with the profoundly emotional is buried deep in human history and psyche. In spite of the recent creation of support institutions, neither the desire for true love nor these factors leading to contentment is modern. What our generation might call 'quaint' or 'cherished and dear' feelings about one's spouse are neither recent 'romantic' ideas nor are they unattainable. For example, the ancient Romans unabashedly extolled the virtues of marriage, looking upon life-long union as indicative of stability and fidelity. The giving of life to such important concepts was rewarded by the community and even in some cases, by the gods, as in the myth of Philemon and Baucis. The Hebrews also knew about the importance of emotional attachment, as Ecclesiastes 9:9 (NIV) says to 'Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun'. Following Judaic traditions, the Christian Church from the beginning expected only the most caring and empathetic relationship between husbands and wives. Note that this expectation had nothing to do with material considerations, either before the fact or after the fact. Emotional fulfilment was openly promoted as the focus of marriage, as when St Paul, in Ephesians 5:28 (NIV), enjoins husbands to love their wives as 'their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself'. Traditional Christianity, despite its praise of celibacy, recognised that extraordinary happiness could be achieved in marriage as well, as we can see in the lives of many canonised men and women throughout the last two millennia. Some of the more major figures were Paula (347-404), Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231), Frances of Rome (1384-1440), Nicholas von Flüe (1417-1487), Joan de Lestonnac (1556-1640). Many intellectuals, poets, painters, musicians, composers also had happy marriages. John Donne (1572-1631), whose poems and sermons are considered some of the best of the 17th century, openly credited his wife for his emotional strength and inspiration. One of the most charming descriptions of domestic tranquillity comes from the life of composer Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672). Although an author of exquisite sacred pieces, and totally imbued in mellifluity, it was said that he 'never knew or heard a more lovely sound or song than when he heard the voice or word of his precious wife'. '[S]he cared for him daily...when he came home from his work she was overjoyed to see him and ran with happiness to greet him'.(1) Both Donne and Schütz lost their wives tragically early and neither remarried, which as a pragmatic matter was rather unusual for their time. Fortunately, both used their respective losses as an inspiration to make the love they had felt resonate through the word, voice and instrument. No one can regard the warm thoughts of literate people of the past without acknowledging that affection was common, and was not considered abnormal, unusual, or strange.(2) That these types of loving unions were praised by contemporaries shows both high regard for affection between spouses and the absence of concern about uxoriousness.(3) That we do not know more about such marriages is more attributable to the lack of detailed knowledge about the private lives of men and women of the past rather than some silent denigration of romance. Ironically, the people that we know most about, the kings, queens, dukes, duchesses and other high-born nobility and aristocracy, often had the worst marriages, suffering through loveless relationships as the products of early and arranged marriage. Perhaps this is one reason why we think of the past as wrapped in such cold emotional desolation. Academia has attained a fairly dichotomised view of society where the past is 'pragmatic', the present is 'romantic' when it comes to marriage.(4) The truth may be that it is precisely the other way around. Compared to the pre-industrial age, society of our time looks at the married couple not as a 'simple unit of production, but a focus of affection and solidarity'.(5) From the point of view of the 20th century, the history of the Western world could be reduced to simplistic metaphors of winter and summer: A cold, sterile pre-modern folk, marrying only for money; and passionate, steamy romantic modern people, where romance is by far the overriding factor. To look at marriage in merely economic terms grossly underestimates the value of affection in pre-modern times. It is true that material aspects were more of an anxious concern than in our day, but this does not mean that fondness and deep emotional satisfaction were irrelevant. Many today see the two issues as mutually exclusive: Either a couple is materially orientated or it is romantically orientated.(6) Our ancestors certainly did not view marriage as necessarily lacking in affection or thoughtfulness; most would certainly have been shocked if told that affection does not have to be at the centre of the ideal or proper marital relationship. Further, simply because they would have thought of a love-only relationship as reckless, they should not be condemned as unfeeling pragmatists. As respect, cooperation, consideration, all key ingredients of affection, were expected and experienced of and by family members, friends, and relatives, to have it lacking between a husband and wife would have been strange indeed.(7) In the long history of Western civilisation, it is fair to say the themes of money, occupation, matching in personality, and opportunity have all played major roles in the decision to marry. Material concerns lay at the heart of previous generations' male-female relations though for very different reasons than the ones posited by historians. Status and occupation were often matched due to a conscious search for similarity and complementarity in background. Hence, in previous generations, greater external or public emphasis was put on material concerns than emotional compatibility. Perhaps the extent of dissimilarity between people in material factors was larger than in moral factors, thus the discussions to reconcile differences in status and not in personality. The demands of the economy inevitably impacted the decision to marry, and in turn affected relations between men and women. Although customs varied from one region to the next, and were sometimes quite untypical, there was enough similarity within and between regions so that a European set of 'norms' might be constructed. In understanding individual dynamics, whether a town, village, district or territory was part of this standard is largely irrelevant, as local norms are often the product of the universal disposition, character, or the 'spirit', of a people set to contend with specific social circumstances. Other customs, however, cannot be explained in such a way, and are likely the result of a greater than normal variation in inherent genetic disposition. Thus, the 'character' of a local ethnic group is due to influences that are part economic, part demographic, part organisational, part genetic and part undetermined. We must therefore determine the extent to which human beings allow themselves to be influenced by external forces and the extent to which they freely and consciously choose their own course. If people largely allow external forces to shape their destiny, then our work in history, psychology and sociology should be edifying and fruitful; if not, then it will be impossible to predict behaviour, and the work of scholars is wasted. In studying the past, clear evidence of autonomous behaviour, whether by the individual or some social unit, is difficult to obtain, and so assumptions about 'similarity' and 'diversity' among cultures must be clarified. All science revolves around the simple fact that in order to establish dynamics, we need to see patterns in data. It is entirely appropriate, and indeed necessary, to carefully categorise the manifestations of a phenomenon, and thus note the apparent 'differences' between two regions or communities by putting them into two different 'categories'. But to reduce the number of categories, whether for the sake of expediency or following some partisan ideological programme, is a mistake. If one is trying to prove the existence of a phenomenon, say that economic activity has a decisive impact on human behaviour, then one might be tempted to categorise observations in such a way (by putting them into the 'same' category or two or more 'different' categories) so as to further a theory. The success in proving the decisive impact of any phenomenon necessarily attenuates the influence of that most basic, irreducible factor called free will. In studying any society, we must determine whether people make a choice due to an unquantifiable internal force (free will); due to identifiable internal forces, such as social concerns, ideology, apathy, habit; due to some other force external to the specific problem; due to a lack of an alternative, i.e. externally imposed 'choice'; due to ignorance about the alternatives. We touched upon this issue earlier in relation to the concept of whether a marital union was by fate or by choice. If people do act out of free will, then theories about the 'inevitability' of choice due to economics or culture are seriously jeopardised. For example, it is a well-known and consequently ubiquitous phenomenon that economic considerations in pre-modern agricultural areas prompt couples to have many children (high fertility). It would be a major mistake, though, to simply assume that whatever variations in fertility we see are due mainly to economic considerations, or even worse, to dismiss the fertility difference between two economically identical regions as 'negligible' when the percentage difference might in some other instance be called 'significant'. The fact is that a couple might consciously choose to have a large number of children and might consciously reject advanced procedures that would increase agricultural productivity, and thus their economic standing. Contemporary accounts sometimes make a point of saying that the squalor that was witnessed was as much the result of indolence of people as that of exploitation, inflation, unemployment or usury.(8) However, this is usually not stated explicitly, with the cause for the social situation being left open to interpretation. We must make careful use of the information derived from various, though not necessarily competing, sources, such as census data, parish information, school curricula material, proverbs, legends, and personal testimony. Some are actual facts, some act as ideals, others as counter-ideals. We should bear in mind, that we cannot look at these observations with the same reliability as numerical evidence. What might be perceptible to the scientist in a statistical sense might not be so to an observer, even if trained. Further, the necessity to cite something in one's report depends on the object or event's moral quality. One describes a place or situation because something goes wrong, rather than when something goes right, and chances are that the authors of historical documents, on the whole, overemphasise the bad and neglect the good. Differences in the size of the community might engender different rules about interpretation of data; smaller communities might be held to different standards than larger ones, or rural versus urban. Also, the men who wrote the reports had to match the expectations of the time in order to maintain their social and governmental position — ideological 'purists' who might make accurate descriptions but only within a limited scope of observation. Defects in information might be attributed to the interviewee, as much as the interviewer. In addition, lying, boasting, exaggerations might have been prevalent, perhaps as a way to denigrate a culture or family and so elevating one's own.(9) Systematic analysis came slowly; observers converged their mental and physical resources on things that they understood, things that interested them, or things that they were assigned to view. The level of error can therefore be high in contemporary 'anthropological' reports, giving false impressions that can persist for many years.(10) Thus, because of the emphasis on always separating free choice from forced choice, in considering the past we cannot overstress the importance of acknowledging the considerable diversity of family situations, whilst also paying attention to the similarity within a culture. However, human beings have a tendency to reduce diversity as a way of simplifying a problem. Although our ancestors in Europe shared fundamental moral precepts, to the point where we can confidently say that certain attitudes were universal, other beliefs were adiaphorous which varied according to processes of the natural environment, individual temperament, collective temperament, challenges external to the community. Yet one can read in many texts that 'wives were beasts of burden', 'girls were not wanted', 'clans had a strong, tight hold on their members'. These are powerful statements, and should not be made off-handedly as they sometimes are. Such factors might exist locally or regionally, but do not necessarily capture the deeper 'Spirit' of a people. Thus, one should exhibit the greatest care when making the assumption that any nation or region can be consolidated into one category. One can and should do so when required, but with the understanding that upon critical investigation, researchers usually find little justification for such a procedure.(11) One of the most common errors made about the vitality of the human Will is in relation to marriage; did previous generations find the process for the most part voluntary or involuntary? The prevailing attitude among modern laypeople is that it was the latter, that men and especially women were forced to marry against their will, having to do so in order to meet society's expectations of fulfilment of mother or father roles, to provide children for society's well-being, to become a productive, and honourable member of the community. One wonders, in light of the evidence of history, whether this is not some sort of psychological projection of our own age on that of our ancestors. That some were forced, coerced or cajoled into matrimony is beyond question, but there is no evidence whatsoever that at least in post-conversion European civilisation, there was any long-term, widely-accepted 'duty' to marry, a breach of which carried serious penalties. Most often, pressures to marry can be divided into four main categories: Economic rationality, pregnancy, family obligation, and cultural duty. The last is one of the easiest to ascertain, and it is the easiest to dismiss as a major factor. We know that traditionally the Roman Catholic Church and conservative Protestantism emphasised the absolute right of the individual to refuse marriage, and the absolute right to marry whomever he or she chose. The Council of Trent's Decree Concerning the Reform of Matrimony made a forceful statement about the illegitimate linkage of financial imperatives, social prestige and marriage: Worldly inclinations and desires very often so blind the mental vision of temporal lords and magistrates, that by threats and ill usage they compel men and women who live under their jurisdiction, especially the rich or those who expect a large inheritance, to contract marriage against their will with those whom these lords or magistrates propose to them. Wherefore, since it is something singularly execrable to violate the freedom of matrimony, and equally execrable that injustice should come from those from whom justice is expected, the holy council commands all, of whatever rank, dignity and profession they may be, under penalty of anathema to be incurred ipso facto, that do in any manner whatever, directly or indirectly, compel their subjects or any others whomsoever in any way that will hinder them from contracting marriage freely.(12) Not only does this restate long-standing Church moral tenets on marriage, it also indicates that there were serious enough lapses to justify issuing this statement. Of course, if such restrictions were promulgated for the high and mighty, then they would apply to all the lesser classes as well. The latest revision of Canon Law is also passionate in its condemnation of any kind of persuasion which 'boxes in' a person, altering a person's life negatively with the only option being to marry that person or someone else. A marriage is invalid if it is entered into due to force or grave fear inflicted from outside the person, even when inflicted unintentionally, which is of such a type that the person is compelled to choose matrimony in order to be freed from it (Canon 1103).(13) What exactly 'force' or 'grave fear' means is not specified, but one could read into this any kind of duress, including interminable nagging by a parent if it causes depression or other significant distress that can only be alleviated by giving in to the persistent demands. The validity of a marriage might therefore be a function of the subjective opinion as to the nature of the 'force'. Additionally, the Church is so concerned with the freedom to enter into marriage, that even unintentional coercion makes the union invalid. As marriage was one of the most important decisions one could make in one's life, if not the most important, and happiness within it of paramount importance, any kind of coercion was unconscionable. Thus, the cultures of Europe, as they are derived in large part from biblical teaching, the canons of the Roman Catholic Church, the catechism, and the writings of the early Church Fathers, must have had an unequivocal adherence to the principle of free will in matters matrimonial. Besides the loud, unhesitant proclamations of the Church, which found their way into the parishes, the common sayings of European peoples about marriage, love, husband, wife, and children, as compiled by Meider (1986), betray a definite concern with wise deliberation. One hears very infrequently statements bemoaning the inevitably of marriage; in fact, there is quite commonly an urging to forestall or forego marriage. Why should anyone be urged to do something unless he or she maintained a clear choice in the matter? If pressure to marry had historically been great (or at least over the period from the 18th to 19th centuries, when these expressions were formed and most commonly used), then certainly the sayings of the plain folk would have informed us of them. As for the pressure to marry due to economic reasons, here indeed there is evidence of conditions that non-facilitate early marriage and favour late marriage. When real wages in England are compared to crude marriage rates in the period 1551 to 1851, we find that the tendency to marry was predicated on changes in the economy.(14) France followed a similar pattern, where a negative correlation existed between grain prices and marriage rates in the 19th century.(15) However, in England there was a thirty-year lag on average between a change in wages and a change in marriage rate. This might be the result of a whole generation experiencing a declining economy, for example, and then entering this into the cultural 'record', where the next generation reacts to it. However, from this reliable data we do draw an important insight into the internal disposition of Western Europeans. As we do not see any evidence of inflexibility on the upward or downward side throughout this period, we conclude that people were not innately more inclined to marry or not to marry. Further, personal choice still prevailed in many cases. Although economic factors clearly influenced the decision to marry, there were many who went against the trend. In fact, during the steep declines in income of the period from about 1751 to about 1771, most people in England went ahead and married 'foolishly', and during the periods of improving economy of 1625 to 1671, and 1820 to 1840, most failed to react swiftly and forwent marriage 'unwisely'. These periods of counter-trend behaviour (the 'lag' mentioned above), when so many people quite deliberately married in the midst of a clearly slumping economy, is hard to understand, but does not diminish the strong larger conventional trend. Hence, although the economy had a major influence in the decision to marry, it was by no means absolute. It is easy to say that pregnancy was not a factor in rushing marriage as illegitimacy rates, with some exceptions, were low until the 20th century, and pre-nuptially conceived births were also quite uncommon.(16) Finally, much more difficult to gauge is 'family pressure', but if folk sayings are an indication of family disposition, then we can say that family pressure was not overwhelming, although certainly was greater than that passed on by the community. In toto, people of the past indeed had the ability to make up their own minds about marriage, based on cultural, religious, and economic decisions. There was an expectation that the individual would carefully deliberate this decision, not rush into it on account of the push from mother or father, or the pull of infatuation, status, sexuality or financial advancement. We might ask the question, why would some cultures have a low opinion of marriage, as preserved in their aphorisms, when they undoubtedly had periods when married life was quite good, that is during times of lower mortality, economic growth, older age of first marriage? We might say that most people had a good opinion of the concept of marriage, which they attempted to implement, but might have had a poor opinion of the marriages that they saw in their own communities. Perhaps it was this high valuation of the concept of 'Marriage' that made people react quite negatively to 'marriage' of everyday life when they witnessed others misuse this institution. Since a good marriage has always been difficult to come by, people might have been somewhat harsh about marriage in line with another very common saying, 'better safe than sorry'. -----------------------
1. Rifkin & Timms, 1985, p 18. 2. As presented for example in Ozment (1986), Mersmann (1986), and Kermode & Kermode (1995; especially letters 3, 19, 23, 25, 34, 61, 192). 3. Germans of the 16th century were not reluctant about showing great devotion to their wives, to marriage, and to domestic life (Ozment, 1983, p 65). And perhaps the most 'wintry' people of all, the Puritans, were hardly averse to praising emotional attachment and deepest love and affection in marriage. 'Such marriages were commonplace among the Puritans. They were grounded in a union not of this world but of the world to come'. (p. 269; J. Adair, 1982, Founding Fathers, The Puritans in England and America, J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, London). 4. Ozment (1983) makes this clear when he says that 'Several recent studies...argue that little genuine affection existed in the early modern family...for wives and children the traditional family was a kind of bondage that stifled self-realization' (p 2). Gillis (1997) maintains that many, if not most concepts of marriage, sex, family, and children are of fairly recent invention, since they evidently incorporate 'civilised', and therefore untraditional, views empathetic of personal rights. 5. Burguière, 1987. 6. The top five reasons as to why people would divorce are: Infidelity, loss of affection, emotional problems, financial problems, physical abuse. Relatively few will escape experiencing these predicaments as less than 60% of contemporary couples will still be together after 20 years of marriage (Chadwick & Heaton, 1992, C1-3., p 86; C3-5., p 97). It would appear that although modern people claim that marriage is only based on love, finances are also of great concern, no doubt as they were in the past. It is ironic that people of the present day think that their ancestors laboured in loveless, stifling marriages, racked by financial woes when they themselves suffer from precisely this fate. Perhaps a classic case of psychological projection? 7. Admittedly, it is difficult to determine the parameters of the everyday life. People undoubtedly made their most intimate thoughts known in their letters, but few of these are published. Instead scholars have sought to bring forward into public view supposedly more interesting matters relating to politics, government, economics, law and so forth. But what could be more important than human relations of the most spiritual kind? No doubt there are thousands of letters and diaries, from people of all classes, revealing all sorts of deep emotional sentiments, gathering dust in archives. Until scholars have the resources and see the necessity for exhuming them, we must do with what we have. What is clear, however, is that when people speak of affection, and give it central place in their personal writings, they do not see it as curious or unusual, or something that needs to hidden because decent people would find it inappropriate. If we are to consider the writers to be normal with respect to reflecting the tastes and standards of the time, we then have some idea as to the current customs. 8. For examples, see Blum, 1974. 9. We can see similar problems that anthropologists face in their observations of primitive peoples. For example, Margaret Mead's work on the Samoan people (as described and critiqued in E.F. Torrey, 1992, Freudian Fraud, HarperCollins, New York, pp 72-74) has been rendered dubious following subsequent investigations by others, who found a culture quite different from the one she describes. It would appear that Mead's bullying tactics and difficulty with the language, as well as the natives' purposely inaccurate statements (made often as 'jokes'), all yielded a highly artificial view of their a society, which was then further processed through a disposition of mind which favoured those ideas that fit in with a personal and political agenda. The resulting 'culture' was as mythical as anything the Samoans themselves could have invented. 10. There is little doubt that contemporary observers could be confused or mistaken, and from this we find apparent contradictions. For example, whereas early to mid-19th century observers found the peasantry of southern France dressed in rags, vulgar, hardly civilised, brutal, hardly better than animals (Weber, 1976, p. 4), early 17th century Languedoc and Provence contained villages and towns where women had who dress in many different materials colours, so much colour in fact that some observers found them excessive (S. Kettering, 1978, Judicial Politics and Urban Revolt in Seventeenth-Century France, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p 14-15). Further, depiction of peasants in various Books of Hours of the 15th century depict the French people as basically well-fed, well-dressed, in colourful, perhaps nearly 'bourgeois' clothing. Are these differences a reflection of changes over time, are they the result of faulty observation, or are they simply a result of our own prejudices not allowing us to accept the concept of the 'prosperous peasant'? There is no doubt that many farm families were very poor, but a well-to-do rustic? Is that beyond belief? It would appear that in Europe there has almost always existed a standard-of-living scale with many gradations, not only amongst town-dwellers, but also amongst the country people. Authors writing about the cultures of their own time not infrequently gave widely different assessments of living conditions of the same land, as for example in the cases of early 19th century England, France, Poland, Hungary and Romania. 11. Using the criteria discussed, statistics derived from Flinn (1981) of parish data from different regions from different nations (England, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland), show in general great similarity when it comes to marriage age, illegitimate births, and premarital conceptions, but not so with age-specific fertility, birth intervals and age of birth of last child. When it comes to testing for the existence of free deviation and choice from the norm, we do find positive evidence in virtually all recorded life areas, except for illegitimacy. Economic expediency certainly might explain some or all of the variation. We are constrained, however, from being more certain about this, since we do not know the economic conditions that applied in these diverse areas. Furthermore, when it comes to something like premarital conceptions (and by connection ideas about courtship, fondness, and affection), economics does not seem particularly relevant, and thus individual choice might be quite germane as an explanatory mechanism. 12. Chapter IX, Twenty-Fourth Session; Schroeder 1978, p 189. 13. Catholic Church, 1908, p 401. 14. Wrigley, 1987, Figure 9.5, pp 232-233. 15. Weber 1976, p 18. This correlation disappeared by 1876, however, perhaps due to less concern about the impact of economics on satisfaction in married life. 16. Flinn, 1981, pp 118-123. France and Germany, but not England, were below 20% for premarital conceptions. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder. |
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