The Evolution of Marriage and of the FamilyLetourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Science
The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family
Letourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Families; Marriage
Among the Sonthals also, an aboriginal tribe of India, whose marriages
are celebrated simultaneously once a year, the candidates for marriage
must first live six days together, and it is only after this trial
that it is lawful for them to marry.[155] With certain Tartar tribes
of Russia in Europe and of Siberia there existed an institution of
experimental marriages lasting for a year, if the woman did not become
a mother during that period.[156] In the island of Ceylon, according to
Davy, there are also provisional marriages, confirmed or annulled at
the end of a fortnight.[157]
Among the Jews in Morocco the Rabbis consecrate temporary marriages,
for three or six months, according to agreement. The man only engages
to acknowledge the child if needful, and to make a certain donation to
the mother.[158]
Strabo tells us of an analogous custom prevailing in antiquity among
the Tapyres (Parthians), according to which a woman, after having
had two or three children by a man, was forced by law to change her
husband.[159] This is almost exactly what Marshal Saxe demanded for
Frenchwomen in the last century.
We must not confound these experimental marriages, which are regulated,
and in some sort legal, with free and easily cancelled unions still
more common, as, for example, those of the Nouka-Hivians, that are
broken at will, provided there are no children;[160] those of the
Hottentots;[161] those of the Abyssinians, who marry, part, and
re-marry at will.[162] These last unions, founded merely on individual
caprice, have nothing extraordinary about them, and we know that they
are not rare in civilised countries.
Much more curious, from a point of view of sexual and conjugal
morality, are the partial marriages, which only bind the parties for
certain days of the week. This is a rare kind of marriage that seems
improbable to us, yet it has been proved to have existed among the
Hassinyehs of the White Nile, of Arab or perhaps Berber race.
By an agreement, which is sharply discussed beforehand, the Hassinyeh
woman engages to be a faithful wife for a fixed number of days in the
week, generally three or four, but this is in proportion to the number
of heads of cattle given to the parents by the bridegroom as the price
of their daughter, and it is the mother herself who makes the bargain.
Naturally, on the days that are not reserved the woman is free, and she
has a right to use her liberty as she pleases.[163]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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