[lbo-talk] lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Terry Eagleton: In Praise of Marx

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Aug 29 12:43:51 PDT 2013


Major Barbara was grounded in the fact that this kind of marriage was not allowed in the UK but was not only allowed but encouraged in the Dominions. Hence someone legitimate in Australia would be a bastard in England. I believe I saw a footnote in the text observing that in frontier societies a man with children _had_ to have a wife to survive. And since death in childbirth was common . . . .

Carrol


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of michael yates
> Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 2:27 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Terry Eagleton: In Praise of Marx
>
> Shane Mage notes this quote: "No doubt there is a tribe somewhere in the
> Amazon Basin that believes no social order can survive in which a man is
> allowed to marry his deceased brother's wife."
>
> Sometimes it was a matter of being expected to do so, rather than allowed
to
> do so. My Italian grandmother was expected to live with and take care of
her
> deceased husband's brother. Fortunately, her mother (my great
> grandmother) said nothing doing and got her out of town. No doubt the
> social order would have survived if she had married her brother-in-law.
But
> her life would have been a hell of a lot worse. And this is saying
something,
> given how bad it in fact turned out to be.
>
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