[lit-ideas] Re: Europe (Re: Re: Dutch support killer of van Gogh)
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:10:21 -0800
Judy wrote:
My problem with this is that where arranged marriages are the norm,
the bride and groom will be inclined (I'd have said) to feel they must
accept the
arrangements. (The few people I've known who rejected them broke
with their parents.)
Also a system of arranged marriages is a system of constrained choice.
Arranged marriages (sometimes called 'pragmatic marriages') seem to work
in the cultures where they exist. John's distinction is the right one,
although I grant that families may bring pressure to bear on the chosen
spouses to accept the families' choice. However, in the case of an
arranged marriage, as opposed to a forced marriage, the chosen spouses
are free to decline.
That people who rejected their families'/parents' choices broke with
their families is evidence of not much. There is a long tradition in
Western literature (as well as in real life) of parents' approving or
disapproving of the marriage choices their children make, and an equally
long tradition in art and experience of children going against their
parents' wishes and marrying a Rockefeller, anyway, with all the
censure, disapproval, and hard feelings that fictionally and actually
follow.
In any society in which considerations of class (and race) matter,
choice will always be 'constrained,' i.e., the range of possible choices
will be limited: if anyone thinks that I would ever have had the option
of marrying some offspring of the Vanderbilts, e.g., they're thinking
of the book, not the actual world.
http://womensissues.about.com/cs/arrangedmarriage/
has some useful links.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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