>>818755A larger point I am implying is that human pair-bonding naturally tends to monogamy, loyalty and legitimacy under free conditions, and so where marriage is freed from constraints, it will become more common, whilst a patriarchal culture denies the reality of marriage. In abolishing "marriage", you institute it as a natural fact. Marx makes this point in part by seeing how secular governments like the US often have a theocratic civil society. So, law is often opposed to custom.
>>818722But you would still see each other as spiritually married, right?
>>818717Right, so marriage is understood as a contract. It is also classically a property transfer of one party to another, by the permission of the father in "giving away" his child. We see this in Levitical Law, that if a husband dies, the widow should then become the wife of his brother. In India, the practice of wives killing themselves on funeral pyres was common after the death of their husband. No such arrangement as a self-possessed woman existed (except the mythic Lesbians), although in other cultures, such as the Greek, we see that Penelope had a duty to re-marry, but was also to be courted by potential suitors; a theme reminiscent of the later Dark Age, given from Arthurian romances. Romance increases as women are more independent - this is empirically verified by records of "Love Marriage" as opposed to patriarchal marriages. We see Schopenhauer scorn the rising idea of the Lady; a Victorian invention, found in the fiction of the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen. Female fantasies of romance increased in tandem with Feminist politics and liberty.
The violation of the marriage contract was often seen to be treated by death - Levitical Law states that adultery is a death sentence. We also see in the Greco-Roman case a death of dishonour. Honour killings still exist today in patriarchal cultures. We thus see that death is a clause of violation in the contract. Now, the concept of Catholic annulment officially mediates a marriage by declaring it as never having legitimacy. It is a retroactive edict, as a way to displace divorce. Divorce did not exist, while the separation of partners c
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