Marriage, a History

by Stephanie Coontz

  31 Dolores Jewsiewicki, “Lineage Mode of Production: Social Inequalities in Equatorial Africa,” in Donald Crummey and C. C. Steward, eds. Modes of Production in Africa: The Precolonial Era (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981); Suzanne Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500-900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Collier, Marriage and Inequality in Classless Societies; H. K. Schneider, The Wahi Wanyaturu: Economics in an African Society, (Chicago: Aldine, 1970); Schneider and Gough, eds., Matrilineal Kinship (see chap. 2, n. 9); Jonathan Friedman and M. J. Rowlands, “Notes Towards an Epigenetic Model of the Evolution of ‘Civilization,’ ” in Friedman and Rowlands, eds., The Evolution of Social Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), pp. 207-13; Hayden, “Pathways to Power,” pp. 42-44; Kristian Kristiansen and Michael Rowlands, Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1998); Colin Haselgrove, “Wealth, Prestige and Power: The Dynamics of Late Iron Age Political Centralisation in South-East England,” in Colin Renfrew and Stephen Shennan, eds., Ranking, Resource, and Exchange: Aspects of the Archaeology of Early European Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 81. I thank Brian Hayden for his helpful clarification of the role of bridewealth in putting junior men in debt to elders.

  32 Studies of genetic material from the remains of prehistoric people show that many populations interbred much more widely than would be expected if marriage was occurring between the same communities and kin groups over and over again, as happens once marriage becomes a way of concentrating people and resources in a few linked kin groups and excluding others from participation in the exchange. Only over time did highly restrictive marriage systems develop. Archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen suggests that exogamous and endogamous forms of marriage alternated in Europe during the Neolithic Era and the Bronze Age. In times of expansion based on raiding or war, elites constructed marriage alliances with distant kingdoms, whereas during periods of territorial consolidation or intensification of agriculture, marriage was more likely to take place with neighbors and local kin, in order to concentrate and preserve property. Lawrence Straus, “The Last Glacial Maximum in Cantabrian Spain,” in Olga Soffer and Clive Gamble, eds., The World at 18,000 BC (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), vol. 1, p. 106; Janette Deacon, “Changes in the Archaeological Record in South Africa,” ibid., vol. 2, p. 183. John Bintliff, “Iron Age Europe in the Context of Social Evolution from the Bronze Age Through to Historic Times,” in Bintliff, ed., European Social Evolution; Brenda Kennedy, Marriage Patterns in an Archaic Population; Strauss et al., Humans at the End of the Ice Age; William Marquardt, “Complexity and Scale in the Study of Fisher-Gatherer-Hunters: An Example from the Eastern United States,” in Price and Brown, Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers; Stringer and Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals; Whittle, Europe in the Neolithic; Silvana Tarli and Elena Repetto, “Sex Differences in Human Populations: Change Through Time,” in Mary Ellen Morbeck, Alison Galloway, and Adrienne Zihlman, eds., The Evolving Female (see chap. 2, n. 3); Cohen and Bennett (1993), cited in Roosevelt, “Gender in Human Evolution”; Kristiansen, Europe Before History. The ultimate endogamous marriage is between brother and sister, a practice that was surprisingly common (and was considered sacred rather than sinful) among aristocrats and rulers in several ancient kingdoms, such as Egypt, Hawaii, and the Inca Empire in Peru. See Keith Hopkins, “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980); Roger Middleton, “Brother-Sister and Father-Daughter Marriage in Ancient Egypt,” American Sociological Review 27 (1962); W. H. Davenport, “The Hawaiian ‘Cultural Revolution’: Some Political and Economic Considerations,” American Anthropologist 71 (1969).

  33 Roland Lardinois, in Burguière et al., Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds.

  34 Frank Alvarez-Pereyre and Florence Heymann, “The Hebrew Family Model,” ibid., p. 181.

  35 Yan Thomas, “Fathers as Citizens of Rome,” ibid., pp. 230-32; Karen Lang, “Women in Ancient Literature,” in Bella Vivante, ed., Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations: A Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 44. Unlike European Christians, Romans and Greeks had no objection to adopting unrelated children or adults in order to perpetuate their family succession. But they were downright paranoid about the possibility that their wives might present them with children they hadn’t fathered. The difference was logical. An adopted heir had to relinquish all ties to his family of origin. But when a child was born into a family under false pretenses, there was always the danger that the mother might someday activate the child’s ties with the biological father or his family.

  36 Joan Huber, “Comparative Gender Stratification,” in Janet Chafetz, ed., Handbook of the Sociology of Gender (New York: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 70-76; Marvin Harris, “The Evolution of Human Gender Hierarchies,” in Barbara Miller, ed., Sex and Gender Hierarchies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, “Introduction,” in Robertson and Berger, eds., Woman and Class in Africa (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1986), p. 5; Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 83. On the variety of gender systems, see Peter Stearns, Gender in World History (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 8-37. For a description of changing gender roles with the development of the plow and of warrior aristocracies in prehistoric Italy, see Robb, “Gender Contradictions.”

  37 Hayden, “Pathways to Power,” 59; Nikki Keddie, “Introduction,” in Keddie and Baron, eds., Women in Middle Eastern History, p. 2 (see chap. 1, n. 11); Howard Levy, Chinese Foot Binding (New York: W. Rawls, 1966).

  38 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 14-15; Karen Nemet-Nejat, “Women in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Vivante, Women’s Roles, p. 91.

  39 Peta Henderson, “Women in Mesopotamia,” unpublished paper, the Evergreen State Colllege, 1978; Stephanie Dalley, Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities (Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2002); Peter Stearns, Gender in World History (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 9-18; Jerry Bentley and Herbert Ziegler, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to 1500 (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2000); Barbara Lesko, “Women of Ancient Egypt and Western Asia,” in Renate Bridenthal, Susan Stuard, and Merry Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), pp. 39-40.

  40 Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, pp. 45, 50 (see chap. 1, n. 23).

  41 Karen Sacks, “Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production, and Private Property,” in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Women, Culture, and Society (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974). On the varying costs and benefits of marriage in different ancient states, see Barbara Lesko, “Women of Ancient Egypt and Western Asia,” in Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible.

  42 Harry Willekens, “Is Contemporary Western Family Law Historically Unique?,” Journal of Family History 28 (2003).

  Chapter 4. Soap Operas of the Ancient World

  1 For information on Mari, see Jean-Jacques Glassner, “From Sumer to Babylon,” in André Burguière et al., Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds (see chap. 1, n. 11); B. F. Batto, Studies on Woman at Mari (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Stephanie Dalley, Mari and Karana (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2002). For other examples of marriage politics in the ancient Middle East, see William Hallo and William Simpson, The Ancient Near East: A History (New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 1998), p. 33; Annie Forgeau, “The Pharaonic Order,” in Burguière et al., Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds, p. 132; Letters from Mesopotamia: Official, Business, and Private Letters on Clay Tablets from Two Millennia, trans. and with an introduction by A. Leo Oppenheim (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

  2 The quotation is from Dalley, Mari and Karana, pp. 108-09.

  3 For this and the next paragraph, see Anne Kinney, “Women in Ancient Chi
na,” in Vivante, Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations, p. 25 (see chap. 3, n. 35).

  4 Retha Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Early Modern England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 3-4.

  5 Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 120. For an account of how the Incas used the same techniques in Peru many centuries later, see Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Susan Niles, “Women in the Ancient Andes,” in Vivante, ed., Women’s Roles, pp. 323-26.

  6 Barbara Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt (see chap. 1, n. 17).

  7 Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 34-35.

  8 Kristian Kristiansen and Michael Rowlands, Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1998); Daniel Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties (London: Duckworth Press, 1999).

  9 Beverly Bossler, Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (960-1279) (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1998).

  10 Melvin Thatcher, “Marriages of the Ruling Elite in the Spring and Autumn Period,” in Rubie Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 66-67.

  11 Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt.

  12 Thatcher, “Marriages of the Ruling Elite in the Spring and Autumn Period.”

  13 Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), p 183.

  14 Lerner, Creation of Patriarchy (see chap. 3, n. 31), p. 113; Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt, p. 157; Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs, pp. 65 and note 59, p. 264.

  15 For this and the next two paragraphs, see Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt, p. 151; Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt, p. 32; Glassner, “From Sumer to Babylon”; Forgeau, “The Pharaonic Order”; Elizabeth Carney, “The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt,” La Parola del Passato 237 (1987).

  16 Rubie Watson, “Marriage and Gender Inequality,” in Watson and Ebrey, eds., Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society.

  17 Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt.

  18 Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken, 1975).

  21 Plutarch, “Life of Marcus Antonius,” in William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (New York: New American Library, 1964), p. 195.

  22 The material in this and the following paragraphs is based on Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores; Ogden, Polygamy; J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Roman Women: Their History and Habits (New York: John Day Co., 1963); Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  23 Jo Ann McNamara, “Matres Patriae/Matres Ecclesiae: Women of Rome,” in Renate Bridenthal, Susan Stuard, and Merry Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible (see chap. 3, n. 39).

  24 Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).

  25 Patricia Tsurimi, “Japan’s Early Female Emperors,” Historical Reflections 8 (1981).

  26 Giulia Sissa, “The Family in Ancient Athens,” in Burguière, Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds; Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores.

  27 Yan Thomas, “Fathers as Citizens of Rome,” in Burguière et al., Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds; Treggiari, Roman Marriage.

  28 Marilyn Katz, “Daughters of Demeter: Women in Ancient Greece,” in Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible, p. 65; Dixon, The Roman Family, p. 67 (see chap. 1, n. 16).

  29 Bruce Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 167-68; W. K. Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968) p. 115.

  30 Elaine Fantham et al., Women in the Classical World: Image and Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 123; Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece, pp. 71-72.

  31 Forgeau, “The Pharaonic Order.”

  32 Susan Niles, “Women in the Ancient Andes,” in Vivante, ed., Women’s Roles; Gailey, Kinship to Kingship (see chap. 3, n. 28); Johnson and Earle, Evolution of Human Societies (see chap. 3, n. 10). Slaves, however, were frequently forbidden to marry. Marc Van de Mierop, “Women in the Economy of Sumer,” in Barbara Lesko, ed., Women’s Earliest Records from Ancient Egypt and Western Asia (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy; Rita Wright, “Technology, Gender and Class: Worlds of Difference in Ur III Mesopotamia,” in Wright, ed., Gender and Archaeology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).

  33 Judith Evans Grubbs, “ ‘Marriage More Shameful than Adultery’: Slave-Mistress Relationships, ‘Mixed Marriages,’ and Late Roman Law,” Phoenix XLVII (1993), p. 125; Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, pp. 193-95; Dixon, Roman Family, pp. 92, 124; Jo Ann McNamara, “Matres Patriae/Matres Ecclesiae: Women of Rome,” in Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible, p. 88.

  34 David Cherry, ed., The Roman World: A Sourcebook (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), pp. 70-78.

  Chapter 5. Something Borrowed . . .

  1 My sources for the discussion of Greece, unless otherwise noted, include Sarah Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Lacey, Family in Classical Greece; Katz, “Daughters of Demeter” (see chap. 4, n. 28); Marilyn Arthur, “ ‘Liberated’ Women: The Classical Era,” in Bridenthal et al., eds., Becoming Visible (see chap. 3, n. 39); Victor Ehrenberg, The Greek State (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964); M. T. W. Arnheim, Aristocracy in Greek Society (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); Chester Starr, The Economic and Social Growth of Early Greece, 800-500 B.C. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Gustave Glotz, The Greek City and Its Institutions (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969); Victor Ehrenberg, The People of Aristophanes (New York: Schocken, 1962); Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores (see chap. 4, n. 20); Giula Sissa, “The Family in Ancient Athens,” in Burguière et al., Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds (see chap. 1, n. 11); Cynthia Patterson, The Family in Greek History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); Cheryl Anne Cox, Household Interests: Property, Marriage Strategies, and Family Dynamics in Ancient Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

  2 Aeschylus, The Oresteian Trilogy, trans. Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 47. The quotes in the next few paragraphs come from pp. 50, 147, 168, 169, and 176 respectively. For a somewhat different reading of the play, but one that I believe complements my analysis, Cynthia Patterson, Family in Greek History.

  3 Katz, “Daughters of Demeter”; Thornton, Eros (see chap. 4, n. 29).

  4 Eva Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 46; Fantham et al., Women in the Classical World (see chap. 4, n. 30).

  5 Thornton, Eros.

  6 Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters.

  7 For the first argument, see Arthur, “Liberated Women,” p. 79. For the second, see Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, pp. 179-85. See also Peter Stearns, Gender in World History (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 15.

  8 Unless otherwise noted, the information about Roman marriage comes primarily from Dixon, The Roman Family (see chap. 1, n. 16); Treggiari, Roman Marriage (see chap. 4, n. 22).

  9 Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant, Women’s Lives in Greece & Rome: A Source Book in Translation (London: Duckworth Press, 1992), p. 187.

  10 K. R. Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Dixon, Roman Family; Treggiari, Roman Marriage; David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).

  11 Ulpian’s Rules, excerpted in
Emilie Ant, ed., Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 34.

  12 Treggiari, Roman Marriage, p. 54.

  13 David Cherry, ed., The Roman World: A Sourcebook (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), p. 55.

  14 Ibid., p. 53.

  15 Lefkowitz and Fant, Women’s Life, p. 112; Dixon, Roman Family, p. 51; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, pp. 441-65.

  16 Philip Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).

  17 In addition to Dixon and Treggiari, see A. S. Gatwick, “Free or Not So Free? Wives and Daughters in the Late Roman Republic,” in Elizabeth Craik, ed., Marriage and Property (Aberdeen, U.K.: Aberdeen University Press, 1984).