|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
Medical Women This essay is focused on to provide a general view of the marriage in the middle ages and the changing ideas of marriage during the middle ages. I will introduce the views on ‘what makes marriage, Love and Marriage and to be a good Wife’ to support my understanding of this topic. Before we look into more details of what makes a marriage, we need to define what marriage is. According to New Oxford Dictionary, “Legally recognized personal union entered into by a man and a woman usu., with the intention of living together and having sexual relations, and entailing property and inheritance rights” (p. 1209). It is also worth nothing that marriage contains both secular and sacred aspects. To quote French historian Georges Duby, “Marriage, which is necessarily overt, public, ceremonious … is at the center of any system of values, at the junction between the material and the spiritual. It regulates the transmission of wealth from one generation to another … because marriage also regulates sexual activity concerned with procreation it belongs to … the realm of what is numinous and sacred” (Duby, 1983, p.19). Therefore, marriage is secular because it involves the transfer of property. On the other hand, it is sacred because it can result in procreation, and because the bond between husband and wife mirrors the bond between mankind and the Divine. During Middle ages, Western European cultures recognized more than one form of socially acceptable and binding union between men and women. In contrast to 12th century society, where the only legally recognized union is marriage, early medieval society held concubine, as well as marriage to be socially acceptable and legally valid. The main difference between concubine and marriage seems to have been the social status of the woman in relation to the man. As was mentioned earlier, marriage serves to transfer wealth or property and to continue the family line. It therefore follows that to achieve these ends it is preferable to marry one of the same social status or higher. So while marriage fulfilled the desire of a family to maintain or improve its social standing, concubine, in contrast, fulfilled the desire of the individual for companionship and/or sexual satisfaction. This is not to say that concubine was not a formally recognized relationship.
Approximate Word count = 1482
Approximate Pages = 5.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|