: Cathedral Cities of Spain by Collins W W William Wiehe - Spain Description and travel; Cathedrals Spain

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MARRIAGE, AS IT WAS, AS IT IS, AND AS IT SHOULD BE

A PLEA FOR REFORM

Second Edition

London: Freethought Publishing Company

MARRIAGE: AS IT WAS, AS IT IS, AND AS IT SHOULD BE.

--Condorcet.

In savage times marriage was a matter either of force, fraud, or purchase. Women were merchandise, by the sale of whom their male relatives profited, or they were captives in war, the spoil of the conqueror, or they were stolen away from the paternal home. In all cases, however, the possession once obtained, they became the property of the men who married them, and the husband was their "lord," their "master." In the old Hebrew books--still accounted sacred by Jews and Christians--the wife is regarded as the property of her husband. A man may "sell his daughter to be a maidservant" i.e., a concubine, as is shown by the following verse , and Jacob served seven years for each of his wives, Leah and Rachel; his other two wives were his by gift, and were rather concubines than recognised wives, their children counting to their mistresses. If a Hebrew conquered his enemies, and saw "among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to thy wife," he might take her home, and become her husband, "and she shall be thy wife" . After the destruction of Benjamin, as related in Judges xx., it was arranged that the survivors should possess themselves of women as wives by force and fraud: "Life in wait in the vineyards, and see and behold if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife.... And the children of Benjamin did so, and took their wives according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught" . The same plan was adopted by the Romans in their earliest days, when they needed wives. Romulus invited the people of the Sabines and the neighbouring towns to see some public games, and in the midst of the show the Romans rushed in and carried off all the marriageable maidens they could lay hands on . These instances may be objected to as legendary, but they are faithful pictures of the rough wooing of early times. Among some barbarous nations the winning of a bride is still harsher: the bridegroom rushes into the father's house knocks the maiden down, picks up her senseless body, flings it over his shoulder, and runs for his life; he is pursued by the youth of the village, pelted with stones, sticks, &c., and has to win his wife by sheer strength and swiftness. In some tribes this is a mere marriage ceremony, a survival from the time when the fight was a real one, and amongst ourselves the slipper thrown after the departing bridegroom and bride is a direct descendant of the heavier missiles thrown with deadly intent thousands of years ago by our remote ancestors. Amongst many semi-barbarous nations the wives are still bought; in some parts of Africa the wooer pays a certain number of cows for his bride; in other places, money or goods are given in exchange. The point to be noted is that the wife is literally taken by force, or bought; she is not free to choose her husband; she does not give herself to him; she is a piece of property, handed over by her original owner--her father--to her new owner--her husband--in exchange for certain solid money or money's worth; hence she becomes the property of the man who has paid for her.

"As Aristotle long since remarked, among savages women and slaves hold the same rank. Women are bought primarily as slaves, to drudge and toil for their masters, whilst their function as wives is secondary and subordinate. It is more right to say of polygamous people that their slaves are also their wives, than to say that their wives are slaves. They are purchased as slaves, they work as slaves, and they live as slaves. 'The history of uncultivated nations,' it has been said, 'uniformly represents the women as in-a state of abject slavery, from which they slowly emerge as civilisation advances.' In Canada a strap, a kettle, and a faggot are placed in the new bride's cabin, to indicate that it will be henceforth her duty to carry burdens, dress food, and procure wood for her husband. In Circassia it is the women who till and manure the ground, and in parts of China they follow the plough. A Moorish wife digs and sows and reaps the corn, and an Arabian wife feeds and cleans and saddles her master's horse. Indeed, the sole business of Bedouin wives is to cook and work, and perform all the menial offices connected with tent-life.... From the absolute power of a savage over his slaves flow all those rights over a woman from which the marital rights of our own time are the genealogical descendants.... A trace of it is found in the following customs of old English law:--'The woman at the church-door was given of her father, or some other man of the next of her kin, into the hands of her husband, and he laid down gold and silver for her upon the book, as though he did buy her.'" This custom is still maintained in the Church ritual; the priest asks: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" and when the man gives the ring to the priest, he gives money with it, receiving back the ring to give the woman, but the money remaining, a survival of the time when wives were literally bought.

One other point must be noticed, before dealing immediately with the English marriage laws, and that is the influence exerted over them by ecclesiastical Christianity.

The Old Testament expressly sanctions polygamy; but while the New Testament does not proscribe it--except in the case of bishops and deacons--ecclesiastical Christianity has generally been in favour of monogamy; at the same time, both the New Testament and the Church have insisted on the inferiority of the female sex; "the husband is the head of the wife" ; "wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands" ; "your women... are commanded to be under obedience" ; "ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands... even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well" . The common law of England is quite in accordance with this ancient Eastern teaching, and regards men as superior to women; "Among the children of the purchaser, males take befadiz; and it was with intense regret, so pleasant was the change from the grey skies and cold winds of England, that I took my final stroll along the broad Alameda bordered with palms of all sorts, and lined with other exotic growth--that I bid good-bye to the Parque de Genoves where many a pleasant hour had been spent in the grateful shade of its trees. I shall probably never again lean idly over the sea-washed walls and watch the graceful barques with their cargoes of salt, spread their sails to the breeze and glide away on the long voyage to South America.

Looking out eastwards over the marshes I was at first much puzzled to know what were the white pyramids that stood in rows like the tents of an invading host. Then I was told. Shallow pans are dug out in the marsh and the sea let in. After evaporation this is repeated again and again, until the saline deposit is thick enough to be scraped and by degrees grows into a pyramid. Every pan is named after a saint from whom good luck is implored. No, I doubt if ever my eyes will wander again over the blue waters to the marsh lands of San Fernando.

Life is short and I can hardly hope that Fate will carry me back to those sea walls and once more permit me as the sun goes down to speculate on the catch of the fishing-fleet as each boat makes for its haven in the short twilight of a southern clime. I cannot but regret that all this is of the past, but I shall never regret that at Cadiz, the most enchanting of Spain's seaports, began my acquaintance with her many glorious cities.

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