Salt Lake Community College

The Changing Nature of Marriage on a Western Timeline

Dustin Johnson

PHIL 1120 - Ethic and Moral Problems

Dr. Alexander Izrailevsky

21 April 2017
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Dustin Johnson
PHIL 1120
Dr. Alexander Izrailevsky
21 April 2017

The Changing Nature of Marriage on a Western Timeline

Throughout the world, and especially the United States, monogamous marriages are

revered as the cultural norm. This is especially interesting if we look outside the human

community and into the whole of the primate species where monogamy is rare. Only 15% of

primates form monogamous relationships in order to raise their young (Clutton-Brock 335). Our

biological cousins the chimpanzees do not practice monogamy, nor do gorillas, nor orangutans.

So the question arises, why do we human societies prescribe monogamy as the moral form of

marriage? Through the course of western human history, the dynamic of marriage has altered in

forms of the reasons, the benefits, and the societal pressures shaped by the pervading

institutionsor classesof power.

By the time we have written records of civilizations that arose in the ancient world,

marriage had become the way most wealth, land, and power were exchanged between people and

societies. Marriage allowed leading families to expand their social networks by acquiring new

kin (in-laws) and political influence. Marriage also sealed military alliances and peace treaties

between societies because a union of cultures took place by means of marriage (Coontz 53-55).

In Ancient Greece, marriage was the institution that determined the creation of a new

family. Marriage gave a woman the status of wife and it gave her children the status of legitimate

offspring, with the attached legal right to inherit their fathers property (Kats 152).
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As we transition into the eighth Century BC, Greece began to cloister itself in a culture of

warrior kings ruling a collection of regions. City states, such as Athens, began emerging out of

some of these chiefdoms. WIthin these chiefdoms, new social classes arose that made their

living through alternate means such as manufacturing, trade, or administrative skills. It was the

nobles that retained their wealth through family connections and marital alliances, especially

with other city states.. The Nobles disdained these arising powers and were especially irritated

when they surpassed the old aristocracy as well. However, this arising class of merchants were

infuriated that the aristocracies dominated politics by use of their inter-chiefdom marital

connections and placed marital advantage ahead of the broader interests of the city or state in

which they lived (Coontz 71).

Pericles enacted a law in 451 B.C. declaring that a man could not be a citizen of Athens

unless his mother as well as his father was an Athenian (Coontz 75). What this law did was

break down the inheritance of aristocratic allegiances, therefore breaking down the strategic

benefits of aristocratic classes by means of intermarrying. No longer would Athenian aristocrats

be able to ratify connections in other city-states, and if done so, the newly contracted kin and

their children would lose all inheritance to the state. This example illustrates the power dynamic

of marriage quite well, and how laws enacted could manipulate and reduce abilities of achieving

higher social status.

Rome, much like Greece, was strictly a patriarchal civilization: power resided with the

oldest male in a family in that the male had all legal authority over his family. Interestingly

enough, the familial definition in Rome did not include the father as part of the family. They

were entirely separate entities. This separation implied that men were not in families: they ruled
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over them (Coontz 79). This idea would later influence Christian beliefs that would place the

male at the head of the household.

Rome, of course, eventually fell and afterwards, polygynous marriages began to resurge

once again. Large kin groups began, just as we saw with the early Greek city states, forming

alliances through arranged marriages between tribal groups. During this time, however,

Christianity began to take over in influence over the landscape of Western Civilization. Through

the the downward spiral of the Roman Empires final years, Christianity was able to gain control

over large amounts of people by allowing all people, especially lower classes and slaves, in that

principles of humility, charity, and spirituality were superior to the values of wealth and power.

(Coontz 87).

With greater amounts of followers, comes greater power, and about 400 A.D., the Church

(Roman Catholic) began placing bans on polygynous marriages. They not only redirected the

acceptable form of marriage as monogamy, but they also placed bans on divorce and

cohabitation. With these bans, they enacted laws that any children of these relationships were

deemed illegitimate, therefore unable to inherit their parents land, business, or money (Coontz

90-91). So, once again, the powers from the forming aristocracies are stripped of their

inheritance by means of prescribing the monogamous form of marriage, and without any

legitimate heirs, the Church was able to inherit incredible amounts of wealth.

With the Church only recognizing monogamous marriages, the ability to arrange

marriages for economic gains remained. This practice also fell under the scrutiny of the Church.

Around the 11th century, christian jurisdiction began recognizing the consent of the individuals

over their parent's right to arrange the union without the consent of those to marry (Resnick 353).
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No longer were these individuals required to obey, but it also made these arrangements uncertain

as to whether the bride or groom would accept the arrangement. Again, the wealthy members of

society, attempting to gain power and kinship, lose more control of the means to do so through

marriage.

It was not until the 16th century, where reformations throughout Europe began to shake

the rule and validity that the Roman Catholic Church impressed upon its adherents. Some

branches of Christianity began allowing divorce, such as protestant denominations, but the

Church was quick to enact policy that banned all forms of divorce in the Council of Trent of

1563 (134 Coontz).

Consensual marriage and the inability to divorce began shifting the aim of marriage as a

direct means of economic gain towards the love and relationship between husband and wife to

be. As western culture progressed towards the 18th century, considerations of character,

alongside wealth, were becoming more and more valued. Potential mates were now looking for

similar values, social status, and emotional nature (Coontz 146).

As we transition from Europe to the Puritans in the budding American colonies, we see

elements of love and considerations of character being shed, reverting back to the state prior to

the Churchs response to the reformation movements. Romantic love was still expected to

blossom throughout the marriage, but it was never the base or the reason to get married. Puritans

were very practical and we see that they revert back to marriage being a means of economic gain

as well as a way to form alliances. Fathers would enter into economic negotiations with the other

party, prior to the engagement even being formalized (Coontz 138).

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Puritans also had a division in the expected roles that the men and women adhered to. In

a way, they represented the Roman paterfamilias in that the father had consent over his

daughters marriage. When marrying, the bride-to-be had a dowry to her future husband that

consisted of clothing, money, and household goodsitems necessary to maintain a home. The

groom-to-be would be the one to provide the land, home, as well as toolsitems to provide for

the family. Similar to the Romans, when the bride wed the groom, the legal identity of a wife is

subsumed into the legal identity of the husband (Statsky 2), which became known as coverture,

or the unity of person, or the doctrine of oneness. This became the expected norm that lasted for

over 300 hundred years in American society.

What was interesting about colonial America was the shift away from church regulated

marriages towards state regulated marriages. For example, Massachusetts started requiring

marriage licenses in 1639, but the practice became common in the United States by the mid

19th-century (Funaro 9). Marriage licenses issued from the state rather than recognized from the

Church was a break from a thousand-year tradition, as the people began reclaiming authority

from religious institutions.

The transition into the 20th to mid-20th century is where marriage, as well as many other

social customs, start to dissolve. Aside from arranged marriages, which fell to the pervading

notion of marrying for love rather than familial duty, other core aspects remained the same until

the 1950s: gender roles remained centered around the man as the economic engine, and the

woman as the homemaker of the family. These roles survived even after the economy

transitioned from an agricultural economy, to a market based economy, and through an industrial

economy. It wasnt until the 1960s and 1970s that gender roles were tossed aside for more
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egalitarian approaches. Both men and women were expressing their discontent with their

assigned gender roles from previous generations, and nurtured in their childrenunbeknownst to

them at the time, behaviors that led to drastic revolts to prior expectations (Coontz 251).

In modern day society, we have an explosion of values that were once held in traditional

models. New forms of marriage have arisen both with benefits and consequences, but all that

shake the foundation of traditional marriage. Cohabitation retains the value of living with

someone, spending your life with someone you care about. But, the expectation to stay together

is not enforced by any societal, legal means so the relationship may easily dissolve. Same-sex

marriages aim to acquire the majority of a traditional model of marriage, excluding the premise

that it be between a man and woman, and be able to produce offspring (although methods are

capable of making this possible, just not between the two partners). Also, there is the high

divorce rates that occur, where marriages are more like revolving doors into companionship

rather than bonded connections. As Stephanie Coontz puts it, A perfect storm has reshaped the

landscape of married life, and few things about marriage will ever be the same (280).

Concluding Remarks

All the aforementioned events regarding marriage throughout Western history is a mere

skim off the top of all the factors and occurrences to consider. The more and more I proceeded

forward through the timeline, I began to gather personal insights to the changing nature of

humanity through this now submissive and dormant institution. From our primal

rootsexpressed in our biological links to our neighboring animal kingdom in which we

belongthe structure of polygyny appears to be the rooted powerhouse in male-dominant social

arrangements. The most powerful male is able to mate with the most desired females, replicating
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and passing on his power (either physical or social) to his offspring. He becomes more powerful,

as well as the community as well by the increase in population of biological representatives of

the dominant male. But this is power based on brute strength and some intellectual ingenuity.

Combine the results of polygyny with the human consideration of forming alliances with their

childrenwhich the more children a male can have, the more alliances may be formed. Power is

again increased. It seems society, in the form of religions, states, the masses, all aimed to

dismantle the powerful implication of this arrangement and spread it across the population, until

it became this anything-goes disregard to innate power dynamics of marriage. I would postulate

that humanity is rooted within polygyny to cultivate biologically strong and viable people, but it

is with the clever craft of laws and use of religion that has continually divided the aspects of

polygyny into a meaningless, powerless institution that burdens rather than empowers society by

disseminating natural means of competition. I see that modern society is revolting against the

repressive regimes of marital expectations, and as we are beginning to seeand what I think will

continue to flourish in the next 50 yearsis an informal return to polygyny through polyandrous

approaches to relationships. It may continue, that is, unless the intellectual powers can craftily

suppress the transitions that are already escaping their grasp.

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Works Cited

Funaro, Patty, J.D. Legislative Guide to Marriage Law. Legal Services Division of the Iowa
Legislative Services Agency, 1991. Print.

Cane, Peter, Joanne Conaghan, and David M. Walker. The New Oxford Companion to Law.
Oxford [England: Oxford University Press, 2009. Internet resource.

Clutton-Brock, Tim. Mammal Societies. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Print.

Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Penguin
Books, 2006. Print.

Katz, Stanley N. The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History. Vol. 4. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

Resnick, Irven M. "Marriage in Medieval Culture: Consent Theory and The Case of Joseph and
Mary." Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 69.2 (2000): 350-71. Web.

Statsky, William P. Family Law: The Essentials. Place of publication not identified: Delmar,
2016. Print.