A Personal View – April 2014

The concept of romance & marrying somebody that one loves is a fairly recent innovation in human affairs. If one believes that this is an outdated practice especially in Western Society, I will disabuse you of that fact.

Let us take the contemporary case of Shrien Dewani. Firstly a caveat: I have not been following the case nor am I aware of his sexual orientation but what I am aware of is that he was obligated to marry somebody that he did not want to. Despite being classified as a desirable or stunning woman by most normal males, this fact has no bearing on whether he would reciprocate her love or make a desirable marriage partner. Clearly he would not.

I have a case in point closer to home. A female friend fell in love with a guy who superficially met all the requirements of a “good catch” except that he would not commit to a more settled relationship. Eventually after a number of ultimatums, they married. It ultimately ended in tears, as 10 years & two children later, he elected to move in with his boyfriend.

In the West, therefore, there may not be any legislative pressures regarding whom one may marry, but as these two cases highlight, there is still significant societal pressure regarding what is considered acceptable.

In both cases, societal pressures overrode the genuine feelings of that person resulting in sham marriages.

Of course in the non-western world, these issues are often in the domain of legislation. A recent case in point is that of Uganda where draconian legislation has been passed, including life imprisonment, for consorting with members of the same sex.

As a recent BBC documentary highlighted, arranged marriages where children in India, Pakistan & Afghanistan marry at ages as low as seven are still prevalent. These clearly bored & bewildered children are subjected to the charade of a marriage ceremony. Aren’t the adults in attendance aware of the farce that is being enacted in front of them? Personally I found the program most distressing because how can people subject their children to this sham.

What was even more distressing was the forced marriage of 15 years old girls to 60 year old men as this disregards common sense & offends ones sense of decorum.

In the past in societies where forced marriages were not the norm, romance could be the criteria for marriage. While this might have been true of the lower classes, this was never true of the aristocracy where marriage was a method to bind nations together & create dynasties. The happiness of royal couples was sacrificed on the altar of the national good.

Human nature has a way of adjusting for such inane & asinine rules: the affair. As most royal marriages were not a love match, it became accepted practice that the King would be allowed to have a lover on the side.

The absurdity of this practice was that the royal staff even facilitated, aided & abetted this practice – the unofficial role of Royal Mistress. Beyond the physical relationship, the royal mistress had one other duty to maintain her position. This duty was, simply, to be unfailingly amusing. A mistress had to be witty, charming, and talkative but had to remember to listen to the king when he wished. She had to be constantly available to the king should he want food, conversation, or sex.

Relationships between a king’s queen and his mistress varied between amiable acceptance and jealous hatred. Some wives were contented and even relieved to be supplanted in the marriage bed.

English royal mistresses even served as lady-in-waiting to the queen; until modern times, this often led to a surprisingly fond relationship between the two. However, this relationship could often be strained when a mistress gave birth to a son that the king often loved more than his own legitimate offspring.

The absurdity of this practice is highlighted by the case of King George II.  Under pressure from the court officials, the King eventually took a mistress, Henrietta Howard. As he was very much in love with his wife, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the ultimate charade was enacted.

He made a point of visiting Henrietta for several hours each night, locking the door, but most agreed that they spent their time playing cards.

Given tradition & societal pressures, the pernicious practice of arranged marriages will undoubtedly be with society in some form for many decades to come.