The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    38/546 (page 8)
    people, one individual for a permanent union, how can anyone hope to score any advantage over the method of parental choice, choice by lot, or random selection ? Many exceptionally wise people have favoured the méthod of parental choice. Among strict Jews the parents of both parties arrange everything, and the age at which a daughter was and often still is married precludes free choice. The Mishnah fixes thirteen as the age of puberty for boys, and twelve and a day for girls, 1 and early marriages are enjoined. 1 2 The custom, still prevailing in Eastern Europe, of a father-in-law taking his son-in-law into his own house with free board and residence, shows that a husband was not even old enough to be established in life. 3 At such ages, young people cannot resist their parents’ wishes. Alexander von Horst, however, tells us that parents’ wishes were rarely resisted, 4 and the young bride often saw her husband for the first time under the “ huppah ”. 5 In regard to Indian marriage, Rabindranath Tagore says definitely that “ room cannot be found for the personal wishes of the people concerned”; 6 but again here the practice of be trothing young adolescents makes parental authority supreme. The “ Gandharva ” rite of marriage, which springs from choice, is stigmatized by Manu as a “ blamable marriage ”, and the offspring from it are supposed to be undesirable. 7 The father’s authority is supreme in the marriage of his daughter, and only when he fails to find her a husband is she allowed to choose one for herself. 8 But in that case both daughter and father suffer penalties. 9 Dr. Hans Licht says of the Greeks that it is improbable that young people saw much of each other before betrothal, 10 11 while both F. Warre Cornish and Letourneau state that in Greece marriage was settled by the parents of the parties. 11 1 Trans, by H. Danby, D.D. (Oxford, 1933), Niddah, V, 6. 2 T.J.C., p. 33. 3 Ibid., p. 34. 4 La Vie Familiale Juive (Brussels, 1922, p. 37). 6 Ibid. 6 B.M., p. 108. 7 L.M., III, 32. 8 L.M., VIII, 205, and IX, 4, and 88. 9 L.M. IX, 90-92, 93. 10 S.L.A.G., p. 39. 11 A Companion to Greek Studies (Cambridge, 1905, p. 519, and Miss Harrison’s confirmation in the same vol.) and The Evolution of Marriage (London, 1891, p. 193). _