#matrimony

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#marriage #matches #matrimony #mind #purpose

It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord. ↗

— Antonia Fraser

#common-law #empowerment #fathers #feminism #feudalism

Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#humor #life #love #marriage #matrimony

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony. ↗

— Anthony Trollope

#matrimony #respectable #road #wealth

The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly. ↗

— Peter De Vries

#any #bonds #like #matrimony #mature

So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance. ↗

— Isadora Duncan

#ends #experience #first #highly #i

The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time. ↗

— Alan Patrick Herbert

#matrimony #period

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#expectations #gender #honesty #independence #influence

LEONATO Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#empowerment #freedom #happiness #heaven #husbands

I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- they only. Know this at last. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#conscience #courtship #dignity #empowerment #feminism