PRIMOGENITURE
Christina Hernandez
Senior Seminar
Essay No. 1
Primogeniture Distorts the Idea of Marriage
According to Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary, marriage is, “the state of being united to a person in a consensual contractual relationship recognized by law.” This definition never mentions love even though most people who decide to marry one another determine that the reason they enter into marriage is because they love one another. Primogeniture however changes the idea that one should love the person you marry into a business transaction. Primogeniture is a custom of inheritance that permits a male heir to inherit the estate of a deceased person. When a father or husband dies his female heirs have no choice in what happens to his estate. This custom often left women of a family at the mercy of the choices of the men that died and these choices often excluded the woman and her needs. Land was inherited by another male and if that male chose not to assist the mother, wife or sisters, nothing in the law required him to do so. Often times when a husband or father died, women would have to spend their old age in poverty. If a woman was to have wealth, once she married, her wealth would then become the wealth of her husband and would no longer be her wealth. This custom can secure the wealth of a family through a male heir but leaves the culture of obligatory marriages and the idea of marriage itself a contradiction to the institution. As evidenced in life and in literature, primogeniture creates a system where people are not truly free to marry who they choose without experiencing the social backlash from going against the grain. As a result, those injured by this system are both men and women. Primogeniture hurt women because they were theoretically forced into marrying men that they did not necessarily love, their mothers were preoccupied with ensuring that their daughters married and were not the responsibility of the family and it hurt men because a
Senior Seminar
Essay No. 1
Primogeniture Distorts the Idea of Marriage
According to Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary, marriage is, “the state of being united to a person in a consensual contractual relationship recognized by law.” This definition never mentions love even though most people who decide to marry one another determine that the reason they enter into marriage is because they love one another. Primogeniture however changes the idea that one should love the person you marry into a business transaction. Primogeniture is a custom of inheritance that permits a male heir to inherit the estate of a deceased person. When a father or husband dies his female heirs have no choice in what happens to his estate. This custom often left women of a family at the mercy of the choices of the men that died and these choices often excluded the woman and her needs. Land was inherited by another male and if that male chose not to assist the mother, wife or sisters, nothing in the law required him to do so. Often times when a husband or father died, women would have to spend their old age in poverty. If a woman was to have wealth, once she married, her wealth would then become the wealth of her husband and would no longer be her wealth. This custom can secure the wealth of a family through a male heir but leaves the culture of obligatory marriages and the idea of marriage itself a contradiction to the institution. As evidenced in life and in literature, primogeniture creates a system where people are not truly free to marry who they choose without experiencing the social backlash from going against the grain. As a result, those injured by this system are both men and women. Primogeniture hurt women because they were theoretically forced into marrying men that they did not necessarily love, their mothers were preoccupied with ensuring that their daughters married and were not the responsibility of the family and it hurt men because a