Modern Western culture has a peculiar
horror of the arranged marriage.
Historically, however, it was the norm.
For the gentry, that is to say; given the difficulties of travel, for
the peasantry the choice was determined by who else happened to be in your
village. But for upper-class parents,
parental choice seemed the obvious way of deciding who their offspring married.
We see this principle at work in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet’s mother was married and gave birth to Juliet when she was fourteen. Juliet has reached puberty, and is fourteen herself. Time to marry in turn and give birth; for mortality is high and life may be short. Juliet’s father is “old”; although he is probably not yet fifty.
We see this principle at work in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet’s mother was married and gave birth to Juliet when she was fourteen. Juliet has reached puberty, and is fourteen herself. Time to marry in turn and give birth; for mortality is high and life may be short. Juliet’s father is “old”; although he is probably not yet fifty.
If the parents decide when she should marry, they also decide to
whom. Old Capulet has found the eligible
Count Paris for her. Animal impulse
will take care of procreation.
Similarity of background - class
and income - will encourage friction-free cohabitation which might in time grow
into affection, and even love. If not,
there is at least the prospect of reasonably-compatible co-existence: for there
is no divorce.
That parental choice, however, may have its limitations is seen in the literary
tradition of Courtly Love. Parental
decision may determine whom you marry, but not to whom you give your affections. Arthur may have Guinevere’s hand, for
dynastic reasons, but Launcelot has her heart.
And that goes, of course, for Romeo
and Juliet. As a dutiful daughter,
Juliet might have married Paris if she had not encountered Romeo. Despite parental disapproval, including a
threat of disinheritance, and all the distancing power of the family feud, the
attraction is immediate, and lasting, and defeated only by death unless renewed
in the afterlife.
What we have here is the concept of the soul mate: the one person right for you in every
respect, provided that person can be found.
Where does the idea come from?
Probably it is an intensification of the idea of the other half that we
find expounded by Aristophanes in Plato’ Symposium. Aristophanes suggests that there were
originally three types of being:
male/male, female/female, female/male.
When they rebelled against the gods, Zeus
had Apollo cut them in two. They then
sort reunion with the missing halves of themselves. If one half died, the survivor would seek
union with another of the same type.
If you’re a hermaphrodite male and female, therefore, in Aristophanes’
terms, any member of the opposite sex will do.
In practice this is not the case.
An individual man, for instance, is not generally attracted to each and
every woman, but to a certain type, or types, of woman. A more accurate representation than that of
Aristophanes is given in Jane Eyre, and
the compatibility or otherwise of the elements. Jane (air) is compatible with
Rochester (earth) but not with St John Rivers (water). Rochester is not compatible with Bertha Mason
(fire): a spectacular example of when an arranged marriage does not work. I do
not suggest for a moment that Charlotte Bronte took the idea literally, but as
a metaphor for why a woman will be attracted by one type of man rather than
another, and vice versa, the concept is interesting.
There is a superficial similarity between the concept of the other half with
the Genesis idea of woman having been
drawn from man, and the two becoming one flesh, but there are significant
differences. In the Symposium myth, if you were originally part
of a same-sex unit, you will seek a same sex union. Aristophanes thus gives parity to heterosexual and homosexual
parings, which the Bible does not countenance. His myth also suggests that everyone is
incomplete and seeks another half. The New Testament, by contrast, says that
some people are self-contained and have no need of marriage. Singleness, indeed, may give the opportunity
for better service to God.
. The
concept of the other half, and its development the soul mate, therefore, is not
biblical. At most, if you give your life
to God, God will guide you to someone compatible with whom you will become one
flesh. Your partner will become your
soul mate through the process of co-existence, but not come pre-prepared. And even then it is a temporary
arrangement. There will be on marriage
in Heaven. Your ultimate soul mate, so
to speak, is God not another human.
The biblical concept of one flesh is not
an easy one. If your partner dies, are
you still one flesh with him/her while you are alive? Clearly not; for the Church allows
re-marriage for widows and widowers. But
what if you divorce? Are you still one
flesh while your former partner is alive?
Again, clearly not. Christ
allowed for divorce on grounds of unchastity.
(Matt 19:9). Paul says that if
one of a couple becomes a Christian, the unbelieving partner may wish to
divorce, and that is allowable. (1 Cor
7:15).
If you’ve been one flesh, can you, then, cease to be; or can you be one
flesh with more than one person simultaneously?
What about polygamy?
Interestingly, although adultery is unequivocally condemned in the Old
Testament, polygamy is not. There is
nothing to say that you may not have more than one wife. Solomon had seven hundred wives, and three
hundred concubines.
The toleration of polygamy in the Old Testament may have had a humane
purpose: to safeguard the financial status of women who might have no other
opportunity of marriage, and who might otherwise have been financially
destitute.
In the New Testament, however, there are
to be new ways of caring for widows, orphans and the poor. The Genesis
ideal of one flesh and lifelong monogamy between a man and a woman is re-iterated
by Christ. Paul points out that to
have intercourse with a prostitute is to become one flesh with her (1 Cor
6:16): emphasising the desirability of married monogamy. Perhaps what most
knocks polygamy on the head in the New Testament is the requirement that a
bishop shall be the husband of one wife.
(1 Tim 3:2). There can be debate
from this about whether a bishop may be single, but what is clear is that a
bishop may not have more than one partner at a time.
Taking its lead from Christianity, the
West adopted a pattern of lifelong monogamous marriage that served it
reasonably well for centuries. True,
there was the odd bohemian challenge.
Shelley liked to surround himself with a harem. Wilkie Collins, who disapproved of marriage,
cohabited with two women. But things
rubbed along more or less and finally collapsed only in the 1960’s when
cohabitation as a serious alternative began to take off.
Cohabitation can take many forms.
It can be marriage in everything but name. It can be serial monogamy. It can be relationships with more than one
partner simultaneously. This last opens
the way to acceptance of polygamy for Muslims as they become a greater presence
in the West.
The standard argument against polygamy is that marriage must be between
one man and one women. But who now says
it must be? That mould has been broken
with same-sex marriage, and if a man may marry a man, why should a man not marry
more than one woman? (Polyandry, where
one woman has more than one husband, might take off in China as a result of the
one-child policy, but is unlikely to take off in the West because it not an
issue within Islam in the way that polygamy is.)
Are we going forwards or backwards?
Back to the Old Testament, or back even further to Aristophanes and the Symposium? Traditional marriage, same-sex-marriage,
polygamy and cohabitation (or various combinations of all four) are competing
with one another to be the future model for the West. It will be interesting to see which model
will prevail
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