Pecunia non olet? (was: Gender, Race, and Publishing on theLeft)

[Dhlazare at aol.com]

This is amazingly crude.  Admittedly, the 19th Century saw a great increase in
the sentimentalization of marriage.  But it is a gross exaggeration to say
that, prior to this, a strictly contractual concept prevailed.  The Puritans
who pioneered capitalism saw marriage as a Christian sacrament held together
by faith, love, respect, mutual obligation, etc. etc.  Literature abounds in
so many shrews, termagants, nags, and so forth that there is little doubt
that, within their station, housewives gave as good as they got.  The idea
that "women received support for life as long as they performed their wifely
duties," is one-sided in the extreme.  Men also had husbandly duties to
perform, and suffered severely if they did not.  In "Rip Van Winkle," poor
good-for-nothing Rip suffers the torments of hell under what Washington Irving
calls "petticoat government."

Dan Lazare

<< actually, the romanticization of marriage is a relatively recent

 phenomena -- it arrived in this country roughly about the time the housewife

 myth was developed amongst the upper classes in boston about the middle of
the

 1800s.  Marriage was traditionally a contract -- a lucrative, MONEY contract

 in almost all countries until well into the twentieth century (money being

 dowry or bride price) with the rights and duties of the husband and wife

 either spelled out or commonly accepted.  Women received support for life as

 long as they performed their wifely duties.  i.e., they were paid for sex,

 amongst other items (these depended on the class of the family).  Further,

 embodied in the concept of the family wage as a gender specific/male notion,

 [which Wotjek has pointed out will not change to a gender free concept any

 time soon],  is the idea that a man can PAY his wife to stay in the home and

 perform home production and one of those assumed duties is sex.

 

 maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com 

 

  >>