A History of the Wife (9 page)

ence for the love of boys, the apologist for marriage insists there is no greater unity than that which “Eros sets up within a conjugal union.”
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It is significant that the
Eroticus
ends with a heterosexual wedding, to which all are invited.

FROM OWNERSHIP TO LIMITED PARTNERSHIP

During the thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization that extended from Homer to Nero, the idea of the wife underwent formida- ble changes. One of the most notable concerned her “ownership.” In ancient Greece, a young woman was her father’s possession until she married. Then she was “given” by her father to her husband. Remnants of this idea still exist in the Western marriage ceremony when the min- ister asks, “Who gives this woman?” and the bride’s father responds, “I do.” A marriageable woman was a human commodity, to be transferred from her father’s home to her husband’s, where she assumed the latter’s name and was subject to his control. Husbands had no reason to ques- tion this arrangement, and wives accepted it, though some undoubt- edly chafed at the bit.

But over time, in the Roman world, the notion of the bride’s consent gained legal and social weight. Theoretically, she could “give” herself of her own free will, if she had her father’s approval. In practice, this prob- ably meant that fathers consulted daughters on the choice of a husband and that it was difficult to marry them against their will.

Similarly, divorce possibilities opened up for Roman women under the empire that did not exist for their Greek predecessors. A wealthy Roman wife of this period enjoyed a remarkable degree of emancipa- tion. Indeed, if we are to believe only a fraction of Juvenal’s satirical pic- ture of Roman society, an imperial wife took for granted her freedom of mobility and sexuality. Juvenal put into the mouth of a Roman matron addressing her spouse the following very modern credo: “Long ago we agreed . . . that you could do as you liked, and that I should be able/to please myself.”
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In many ways, Roman marriage was conceived of as a reciprocal partnership, with aspects foreshadowing our own idea of marriage. Yet it would be naive to assume that Romans were motivated by the marital values we now espouse. Remember that marriage throughout the ancient world was largely a family affair arranged for economic, social,

or political reasons. No one expected the bride and groom to be “in love”—in all probability, they had scarcely seen each other’s face. In this respect, I am reminded of Indian arranged marriages today where par- ents still make choices for their children and give them spouses “to love.” How different from our own idea of choosing a mate for oneself because one has fallen in love! Both for traditional Indian families and for classical Romans, it was normal for love to come after marriage. If not, marital harmony was quite enough.

In both ancient Greece and Rome, the job of husband and wife was to contribute to a stable social order. Two principal assumptions were at work here: the Greek ideal that one should “avoid excess” and the Roman ideal that one should “be true,” which meant loyal to one’s fam- ily, one’s friends, and one’s homeland. As the ideal of loyalty between spouses began to take precedence over the other loyalties, the stock of the wife began to rise. Roman respect for the monogamous union of husband and wife permeated the empire, and subsequently, in ways that we shall see, worked its way into the Judeo-Christian morality that we claim today.

T W O

Wives in Medieval Europe, 1100–1500

“. . . it is impossible/ that any clerk wol speke good of wyves”

Chaucer,
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

W
hat do a noble lady in her feudal castle, a city-dwelling burgher’s wife, a poor woman working for wages, and a country peasant have in common? How can we group together

women from such different social categories, different countries, and different centuries? One approach is to look at the legal and religious statutes that affected medieval wives. Another is to examine prevailing ideas about marriage from the advice literature of the period. As for the daily activities of wives, there are manuscript miniatures, woodblocks, engravings, and even portrait paintings that show them in a variety of occupations. But nothing is more valuable, to my mind, than the few precious documents that preserve a particular wife’s view of her own situation. From these different sources, it is possible to construct a mosaic of married women’s lives, which, however unfamiliar, still share some traits in common with our own.
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LEGAL AND RELIGIOUS CONSIDERATIONS

During the early Middle Ages, the Catholic church gradually took over the jurisdiction of marriage. Previously, much of Europe had fol- lowed the Roman model that required the consent of the bride, groom, and their fathers. But from the mid-twelfth century onward, church law

known as canon law made two changes that were to have long-term effects. First, the church pressured individuals to marry in the presence not only of witnesses, but also of a priest, and to perform this ceremony “at church.” Second, it downplayed the need for parental consent, and foregrounded the mutual will of the intended spouses as the major cri- terion in the making of a valid marriage. This revolutionary doctrine would endure and flourish over the centuries.
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Moreover, once marriage was declared a sacrament (a ceremony through which one obtained God’s grace), it could not be undone. The sacramental nature of marriage was accepted broadly from the eighth century onward, although it was not made canon law until 1563 at the Council of Trent. Medieval men and women entered marriage with the knowledge that there was no way out of it, even if it proved to be disas- trous for one or both parties. On the whole, the indissolubility of mar- riage was probably favorable to women, since most divorces had traditionally been initiated by men.
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It provided wives with a sense of security unknown to single women, except for those in religious orders. Medieval society was essentially hierarchical: serfs and peasants served their masters, while their masters served yet greater lords and ladies, and everyone served the king. Within this feudal system, the wife—no matter what her social station—was subservient to her hus- band. As the thirteenth-century English jurist Henry de Bracton formu- lated it, a woman was obliged to obey her husband in everything, as long as he did not order her to do something in violation of Divine Law. He related a case in which a wife and husband forged a royal writ, and though the husband was hanged, the wife was acquitted on the grounds that she had been ruled by her husband.
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Both French and English law went so far as to declare that a woman who killed her hus- band be tried for treason, rather than than the lesser crime of felony,

since she had taken the life of her lord and master.

In the German-speaking world, the rights of a husband over his wife were clearly outlined in the
Sachsenspiegel
and the
Schwabenspiegel
— two books that provided the basis for the laws of many German towns. These rights extended to a wife’s assets, as well as her person. A hus- band could dispose of his wife’s property, her clothes, her jewelry, even her bed linens. And he had the legal right to beat her, if she did not accede to his wishes. In most countries, husbands could punish their wives however they saw fit, short of murder.

Battering was an accepted practice, sanctioned by law and custom, that allowed husbands to enforce authority over their wives. It was a staple of folk wisdom and literature, and provided comic caricature in the popular reverse images of wives beating their husbands. But the reality was far from comic, as shown from court records that often con- doned the behavior of brutal husbands abusing their wives as a matter of course. Even when concerned family members and neighbors inter- vened and brought the matter to the attention of the courts, the hus- band usually got off with only a fine or a pledge to “receive his wife in his house and treat her agreeably.”
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Legal wife beating did not disappear with the Middle Ages. It hung on in many places into the nineteenth century; and even after it was no longer legal, battering has continued to maim countless wives from every ethnic and social sector. Our recent efforts to provide shelters for battered wives and to stamp out this now criminal offense run counter to centuries of practice.

Marriage was thus an institution by which men were confirmed as the masters of their wives on religious and legal grounds. But it was also a union intended to provide for the well-being of both parties and even- tually their children. At the peasant level, marriage was largely an eco- nomic arrangement that took place when two people were able to put together sufficient resources for joint survival. A bride’s dowry consist- ing of money, goods, animals, or land was essential to the founding of a new household. At the least, she was expected to provide a bed, a cow or household utensils. She was also expected to posses those skills nec- essary for living on a farm—tending livestock and poultry, milking the cow, making butter, spinning and sewing. The groom was expected to provide shelter and support for his wife. In territories and countries where Roman law still applied, especially south of the Loire, it was understood that if the bride’s family did not pay the groom what had been promised, the marriage was essentially null and void.
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In areas of Europe that held onto Germanic law, peasant marriage was primarily a contract between two families who came to an agree- ment about the size of the dowry and the wedding day. The wedding ceremony was essentially a legal transfer of the bride to the groom, presided over by her father or another elder within a circle of family members. A thirteenth-century poem in Middle-High German describes such a scene.

Now we must give young Gotelind As wife to youthful Lämmerslint

And we must give young Lämmerslint As man, in turn, to Gotelind.

A grey-haired man now did arise Who in the use of words was wise; Well versed he was in marrying. He stood both parties in a ring.

Then first he spoke to Lämmerslint: “And will you take this Gotelind

To be your wife? If so, say ‘aye.’ ” “Gladly,” the young man did reply.

. . . . .

The man then spoke to Gotelind: “And do you, too, take Lämmerslint Willingly, your man to be?”

“I do, sir, if God grants him me.”
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Still, we should not assume that peasant marriage was
only
a legal and economic affair. Mutual attraction could also play its part. Country youth found opportunity in forests, fields, and haystacks for pre- marital dalliance. Numerous couples did not bother to marry until the female had proved her fertility by becoming pregnant. Childbirth soon after marriage carried little shame, and even the stigma of illegitimate birth does not seem to have been very strong in peasant society, at least not in England.

At the other end of the social ladder, members of the nobility were guided by property concerns on a grand scale. Marriage was the means by which the powerful made alliances and transmitted inheritances. Fathers had the responsibility of finding the best partners for their sons and daughters so as to ensure proper unions and maintain their status into the next generation. Therefore, daughters were carefully super- vised and allowed little opportunity to lose their precious virginity before they married, usually at an early age.

Sons, on the other hand, were allowed the freedom of “youth” in the form of liaisons with girls of lower station, concubines, and prostitutes. With the institution of primogeniture, whereby title and estate passed to the eldest son, younger sons generally had nothing to offer a

prospective bride and were unable to marry. This situation made for an imbalance in the number of unmarried men available to prospective brides. Since it was understood from the start that a daughter’s marriage was to be made in the interest of her family’s economic and social well- being, as well as her own, only a truly recalcitrant young woman would have opposed the wishes of her father or guardian. In general, it seems that the more wealth and status one had, the less say one had in the selection of one’s spouse.

Daughters from the merchant class probably had greater latitude in meeting and choosing mates, since they were often their fathers’ helpers. Merchants, painters, brewers, doctors, tavern keepers often depended on their daughters, as well as their sons and wives, for assistance, and many of these daughters married men related to their father’s business and continued to work after marriage. The rise of towns and cities from the twelfth to the fifteenth century provided what one scholar has called a “window of freedom” for European women.
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The daughters of burgher families in such places as Paris, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Basel, Venice, London, and the German cities of Lübeck, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Leipzig had more opportunities than either nobleowomen or peasants to see men from different stations of life and to contract clandestine liaisons, though, in general, they too had their marriages arranged by their elders.

When the financial arrangements between the families of the bride and the groom had been settled, their betrothal was officially contracted. In the early Middle Ages, this settlement was almost as binding as mar- riage. For example, when Christina of Markyate, member of a noble Anglo-Saxon family in England at the beginning of the twelfth century, delayed her marriage for several years after she had been pressured into an unwanted betrothal by her parents, they were afraid of being seen as “the laughing stock of our neighbours, a mockery and derision to those who are round about.” The priest brought in to persuade Christina to wed referred to her betrothal as if she were already married: “We know that you have been betrothed according to ecclesiastical custom. We know that the sacrament of marriage, which has been sanctioned by divine law, cannot be dissolved, because what God has joined together, no man should put asunder.” In the end, Christina’s case was brought