Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was assumed that an unmarried woman, unless she was a nun, had missed the chance of marriage. She got the epithet of ‘old maid’ when barely 30 (with quite different connotations from ‘old bachelor’). Nobody thought she could ever refuse a proposal however unattractive the suitor, or that she would voluntarily choose to remain unmarried. The sole reason for her single state was because no man had asked her to be his wife. Pressures of this and other kinds often forced women into loveless marriages.
Marriages were also the result of conquest, wars or treaties. Sometimes payment might be asked or offered for a bride. A bride price is rarely heard of today, but only 30 years ago, African students in London might joke about a female accountancy student, saying that her qualifications made her worth a bigger bride price, two cows perhaps instead of one.
Economic or social pressures did not unduly affect rich women. They had plenty of applicants for their hand and what went with it. Unless a dynasty, title or treaty was involved, or they were very young, they accepted or rejected offers as they pleased. For poorer women, it was different. Marriage provided for them and their children, financial security and status, in theory if not in fact.
Modern Relationships
With the coming of the welfare state, and the liberalisation of laws on illegitimacy, abortion and divorce, such pressures disappeared. Religion, however, still has a strong influence on marriage partners.
Parents, too, for these or other reasons (financial, dynastic, tribal, social) are sometimes extremely forceful about whom their offspring should wed. These pressures linger on in certain countries, and within some immigrant families in the UK who bring their own customs with them.
However, the majority of western women today have choices never previously open to them: sex without marriage, sex without children, children without sex and children without men, or at least without a man’s physical presence. ‘Beddings’, though still not as popular as weddings, have become more acceptable than ever before. The lifestyles of women in developed countries today, with independence, professional careers and incomes of their own, were never available to their mothers or grandmothers. Today’s women no longer need men to support them financially and seem to want love not marriage, apparently assuming that one excludes the other.
The attitudes of 50 years ago: of marriage, sex, children, in that order, of choosing between sin for earthly pleasure, abstinence for heavenly joy, have disappeared. With them have also gone words suggesting impropriety or immorality. Euphemisms have taken their place, such as ‘love child’ for the cruel epithet of ‘bastard’, and ‘gays’ replacing the equally unkind ‘queers’. ‘Friends’ can mean anything from a longstanding sexual relationship to the innocent liking of one person for another and ‘partners’ no longer refers only to business associates. Romance is still with us though no longer coupled with marriage, which is fast becoming a threatened institution.
When a couple enter into a partnership or relationship, become an ‘item’ or whatever a temporary sexual pairing of a man and woman may be called, they can terminate it without legal difficulty. Ending a marriage costs legal fees and possibly months or years of acrimony, but the tie can always be ended by divorce after five years at most, even against the wishes of the other spouse. So, the argument goes, what’s the point of marrying? Why not just slip into bed together, enjoy life and when the enjoyment passes, go off with somebody else?
This is not such a halcyon existence as it sounds. Enjoyment is not always easily come by, in spite of today’s craving for happiness. Though around one marriage in four ends in divorce, unmarried partnerships break up even more frequently. So if a child arrives, wanted or not, it can be a spanner in the works.