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Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage
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Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage Customer Reviews
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Marriage: it's like the weather, been around forever
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Marriage: it's like the weather, it's been around forever, has a great effect on everyone's lives, and is about as well understood. Or at least, until this extremely readable, higly detailed and well documented book on the history of marriage was written. Marriage hasn't always been the way it is today; in fact today it's not the way (we think ) it is. Over the ages, marriage has varied from a simple exchange of promises to a potent political force to a structured process to a romaticized illusion to a political football in today's acrid environment. Sooner or later, almost everyone either marries or come close to marrying, so what's all the fuss about?
Stripped of unessentials, marriage is an exchange of promises, or vows, between two consenting people. Therein is the source of the problems. Who or what, if any, defines who can and who can't be a consenting person? For the early Greeks, it could be two males, two females, or a male and a female. In the Middle Ages, childern six months old were married off by their parents or guardians, usually to form political alliances. IN some societies, and one time or another, it could be one male and several females, or one female and several males. In some countries, and in some religions, neither of the participants had any say as to who their partner was to be. This still exists today in some parts of the world. Over time, control over the process shifted from the two individuals involved to their tribes of families, to the church or religious leaders to the state. What is happening today in the United STates is an attempt by some churches to wrest control of the process from the state, and dictate the terms and conditions.
In today's world, there are two types of marriage ceremonies: a civil ceremony, taxed by the state by requiring a marriage license, and recorded in state controlled archives. and an ecclesiastical ceremony, sanctioned by the church, and requiring certain things to happen and certains conditions to be met. In the United States and in Canada, religious weddings combine these two ceremonies. But not so in parts of South America, where a civil ceremony proceeds by a week the church ceremony.
It's useful to sort out the terms: marriage, which occurs between two people; matrimony, a blessing bestowed by the partipants on each other and usually scantioned and administered by a church; and wedding, which is the event at which the marriage usually takes place. But since marriage is in fact an exchange of promises between two people, this exchange can take place and has over the eons taken anywhere: in a church, in the office of a justice of the peace, sixty feet underwater, hanging in the sky from parachutes, in a pile of hay in the loft of a barn, literally anywhere. And until extremely recently, any of these locations and ceremonies would have been accepted as valid and legitimate.
If you want to know about the sociatial state most of us participate in, this is the book for you. If you'r spring loaded to a closed minded position and think you have all the answers, then watch the Simpsons.
My personal opinion: this book should be read by every person over twelve, and should be in every person's library, for reference from time to time. |
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