China's marriage customs have a long history, and when each couple gets married, there is a rather complicated process to go through, and bride price and dowry are one of the customs that have been handed down in ancient times.
In ancient times, when a woman got married, she would bring a large amount of dowry to her husband's house.
So, who exactly did the ownership of the ancient woman's dowry belong to?Can the husband's family control the woman's dowry at will?
In fact, as early as the pre-Qin upper class of the aristocracy, the custom of dowry had already become popular.
When a woman marries, in addition to carrying a certain amount of property, she must also marry a considerable number of concubines.
Most of these concubines are concubines, and when they come to their husbands' homes, they will become the concubines of the housewife's husband, and the status of concubines is higher than that of other concubines.
But some people will be puzzled by this phenomenon, when the daughter marries, she has to bring a concubine, which may lead to a discordant life between the husband and wife, but they have no other way, because this phenomenon is actually forced by the reality at that time.
Because when a noble daughter marries, she represents not only herself, but also the family behind her.
If the bride is small, it will not only make the bride lose face, but also make her family lose face in front of other families, so this custom has gradually been passed down.
Moreover, in the famous classic work "Book of Songs", the word "dowry" is repeatedly mentioned, and "dowry" has been respected by the people to this day.
However, the ownership of the dowry varies from period to period.
For example, in the Sui and Tang dynasties and other more open dynasties, the government was still relatively protective of women's dowries, and the "Tang Law" had detailed provisions on the ownership of women's dowries.
The dowry brought by a woman's marriage is not included in the scope of the joint property of the husband's family, and the husband's family cannot divide the woman's dowry when dividing the property.
Tang Law allows women to have great autonomy over dowry, and the status of women in the Sui and Tang dynasties is still relatively high.
But by the time of the Song and Ming dynasties, the social atmosphere began to change dramatically.
With the rise of Cheng Zhu Lixue in the Song and Ming dynasties, and with the support of the rulers at that time, it gradually became the mainstream ideology of society.
Cheng Zhu Lixue put forward extremely harsh requirements for women, which also led to the great weakening of women's ownership of their own dowry.
After getting married, many husbands will resort to various means in order to obtain a woman's dowry.
Even if they are exposed, the man who made the mistake will not be punished much.
For example, during the Song Dynasty, after a jinshi successfully passed the imperial examination, he quickly married a wealthy merchant daughter into the family.
The Song Dynasty was heavy on literature and light on military force at that time, and it was not uncommon to be able to marry the daughter of a rich family, but the combination of the two still belonged to the leap of class.
Therefore, when the daughter of this wealthy businessman got married, the family gave a large amount of dowry to the daughter in order to show the importance of this marriage.
This rich daughter thought that after she got married, she would be able to live a life of husband and children.
But she waited until she got married to find out that her husband had already married someone else as a wife and had several children.
This made the daughter feel that she had been greatly humiliated, and after she found out the truth, she wrote to her mother's family overnight, wanting to leave with the dowry and end this stupid marriage, but the daughter's behavior was discovered by the guarded Jinshi.
During the Song Dynasty, the reputation of the literati was very important, and Jinshi knew that once this matter was a**, he would not only lose the fortune tree of his daughter, but also his reputation would be greatly damaged.
So he stopped all the letters sent by his daughter, and also strictly controlled his wife.
Seeing that she had no way to ask for help, the daughter became depressed and finally died of illness, but there was no impermeable wall under the sky, and the inside story of this incident was soon revealed.
Although the social atmosphere at that time was relatively feudal, people were still very resistant to this kind of thing.
And his friends and relatives have also cut off contact with him, and his career is completely hopeless, under the huge pressure of **, this jinshi left a note and committed suicide.
Ironically, he did not reflect on his own seizure of his wife's dowry, but instead attributed his actions to other crimes.
After the Qing Dynasty, although women at that time relaxed their control over dowries, their dowry ownership was limited to nominal ownership.
Moreover, under the influence of the public's "patriarchal" ideology, after women get married, the frequency of their interactions with their parents' families will be greatly reduced, because if they have frequent contacts with their parents, it will cause huge controversy.
Therefore, after marriage, women are regarded as members of their in-laws' family, and after they marry into their in-laws' family, they must plan for their in-laws' family no matter what they do.
After many women get married, their in-laws will quickly focus on the woman's dowry, and try their best to take the woman's dowry out of the woman's pocket and turn it into public property.
Although some women with a harder family background and more favored in their parents' families can choose to refuse with a strong mother's family.
But in that social context at that time, the vast majority of women could only choose to compromise, and even ** children were no exception.
For example, the youngest daughter of Zeng Guofan in the Qing Dynasty married the Nie family, a wealthy family in Hunan, although this marriage seems to be very compatible, but there are big problems inside.
Because although the Nie family looks full of flowers, it has long been rotten inside.
Especially after the death of the head of the Nie family, that is, the father-in-law of the Zeng family, the situation of the Nie family is even more worrisome, and they can't even take out the money to maintain at least decent money.
In order to improve the family's predicament, Zeng's mother-in-law took out all the dowry to subsidize the family.
Even the Zeng family took out all the dowry he brought, but the money could not make up for the family's gap at all, and the Zeng family had no choice but to go back to his parents' house to borrow money.
Since women in ancient times could not make decisions about their dowries, how much dowry did they bring to their husbands' families when they got married?
In addition to the issue of the ownership of women's dowries, the amount of women's dowries has also attracted the attention of everyone.
Since the trend of dowry spread to the people, the custom of marrying daughters has spread in society.
Whether it is a poor or a wealthy family, they choose to empty their family funds to marry their daughters on the issue of dowry.
And after the implementation of the imperial examination system, more wealthy merchant families set their sights on those jinshi who were from civilian backgrounds, and although these jinshi gained fame in the imperial examination, their living conditions were relatively poor.
Through the combination of the two, not only can the situation of Jinshi be greatly improved, but also the confidence of wealthy businessmen can be greatly enhanced.
Therefore, in order to obtain the recognition of the Jinshi, wealthy merchants often offered high dowries as conditions.
There are even some people who specialize in "showing the dowry" on the day of marriage, if the number of dowries of the married girl is relatively small, it will make the two families lose face in front of relatives and friends, so the society at that time arose a trend of comparing dowries.
However, the prosperity of this kind of atmosphere will inevitably affect men's share of inheritance of family property, and will affect men's interests to a certain extent.
In order to achieve balance, the share of the dowry for women was gradually set down and even written into the law.
All in all, whether in ancient or modern times, the state has protected a woman's dowry to a certain extent, but no matter what, a woman's confidence in her mother-in-law's family still depends on her mother's family.
Only the higher the status and wealth of the mother's family, the more confident the woman will be in her mother-in-law's family, which is what we should know most about no matter when.
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