As the saying goes: "I'd rather marry a widow than a wife", what exactly is "having a wife"? (Top)
For the thousands of years of feudal dynasties that ruled the world with Confucianism, self-cultivation and family rule of the country and the world have become the ideal of every person with lofty ideals to serve the country and family. Under the idea of "filial piety", starting a family has been a very important thing for every family from ancient times to the present.
Especially in ancient times, when the poor were difficult to find wives and the rich had a large number of wives and concubines, the quality of a marriage directly determined whether the family could succeed in the future. Virtuous wives are able to raise their children well, help their husbands to succeed, and make the family happy and united.
Under the influence of thousands of years of mass concepts, people have gradually developed a unified view of marriage, which is what the older generation often says, "I would rather marry Kung Fu than marry a wife." Widows everyone knows what it means, so what does it mean to have a wife? Why did the ancients say this?
What does it mean to be a widow and a wife?
As the name suggests, the word widow is a woman whose husband died for various reasons, and even now that the concept of marriage is relatively open, we can often hear this word in our lives. However, unlike in ancient times, modern society does not look at this group with colored glasses, but in ancient society, the status of widows was extremely low.
In the era of male superiority and inferiority, if the daughter-in-law who passes through the door becomes a widow at a young age, she will immediately be crowned with the name of a kef by the rumors, and from then on she will embark on a painful second half of her life. Due to the emphasis on "chastity" in ancient social customs, even if a woman who is labeled with the kefu label has the permission and support of her husband's family, it is difficult to find a good family in the local area, and it is often difficult to remarry.
Therefore, "widows" often stay in their husbands' homes and assume the responsibility of filial piety. And because of the influence of the door, if they have more contact with other men, it is very easy to be misunderstood that the husband has just died and is looking for a new love, and it is easy to be framed by people with hearts as deliberately assassinating the husband. Therefore, the ancients often said that "widows are not many in front of the door", which is not unreasonable.
The word "wife" has slowly disappeared in modern life. The word first appeared in the Book of Answering Su Wu, which refers to the fact that although Su Wu was still alive, his wife married someone else because he was alive and dead. It was also from the Han Dynasty that the word "wife" began to spread slowly, indicating that those husbands were still alive, but they remarried to other women.
Compared with the two, widows lose their husbands because of objective accidents, and wives are more active. The two are seriously different in nature, so having wives is even less popular in ancient folk customs.
The reason for the appearance of the birth wife
In ancient mainland China, there were generally two types of wives, one was voluntarily divorced by the husband's family for various reasons, and the other was voluntarily left by the husband because of special circumstances.
For the former, according to historical records, there are seven main reasons for divorce, mainly for filial piety, infertility, fornication, jealousy, serious illness, gossip and theft. In other words, if the woman had not violated these seven grounds, the husband's family would naturally have accepted the wife.
However, in ancient society, women's right to speak was very low, so men with rich families and status often found a reason to divorce their wives and find new pleasures, and women could only accept and could not justify in vulnerable situations. Therefore, this reason is often formed in peacetime when few birth wives are framed. And these birth wives will either marry someone else, or they will change their ways and start a new life elsewhere.
