The difference now is that the contract is not indissoluble
- not to mention, a damn sight more equitable, says a historian of gender and sexuality, yay for the Married Women's Property Act and divorce.
Why the modern approach to love is killing it.
Honestly. There have been fairly few times and places 'throughout the whole of history' when squishy gooey Disneyfied notions of roh-mance have ruled people's decisions when forming bonds of mattermoney (hat-tip to Tobias Smollett in Humphrey Clinker).
Okay, these days it's the couple themselves (or, I don't know, let's not be couplist about this, the polyamourous constellation) who are thinking about 'discussing goals, treating love as an investment and considering it “mutually beneficial”' rather than their parents, the local community, or the family lawyers.
There goes yet another journo who has never made the slightest investigation into the long history of personal ads, going back centuries, if not time immemorial, when advertisers were very much about proputty-proputty-proputty, or at least, having some kind of resources to bring to the match: "Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!"
An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy muther coom to 'and,
Wi' lots o' munny laaïd by, an' a nicetish bit o' land.
Maäybe she warn't a beauty-I niver giv it a thowt-
But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt?
And, honestly, should 18-24 year olds be settling down Til Death Them Do Part anyway? Way back at the turn of the C19th-C20th reformers were suggesting trial marriages before settling down and tying the knot. I wouldn't like to be constrained by the decisions of my young and foolish self (though maybe I didn't think of myself then as young and foolish). The term 'upgrade' is perhaps unfortunate, but 'my/our needs may change' is a reasonable position. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2834700.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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