In a traditional society that emphasizes "parental order", what is marriage like for women?

We all know that marriage is about men and women voluntarily, two love, and according to the seemingly "good match" "conditions" set up to live together two people, often because of the lack of feelings and the appearance of separation, and then derived from a sinful relationship, such a marriage! Even if the husband and wife hand in hand to the white head, but also difficult to have happiness to speak of, the proverbial "strong twisted melon is not sweet" is this truth. In today's society, men and women are allowed to fall in love freely, marriage autonomy, and when the fate is no longer, divorce is no longer difficult or embarrassing. However, in the traditional society that emphasizes "parents' orders, matchmakers' words", a happy marriage seems to rely on luck, especially for women who do not have the right to divorce, swallowing their anger is the basic state of being, and eventually lead to irreparable family tragedies.

The purpose of marriage in traditional society was to "unite the two families in order to serve the clan and the temple, and to succeed the next generation," and the feelings of the two parties involved, whether or not the "qin and se" is not in the scope of people's considerations. Therefore, the big family is more concerned about the right family, while the grassroots people in the marriage of the "conditions" is more practical and trivial, such as the woman's family is so poor that can not open the pot, had to be the daughter of the "marriage" out; or men and women's families in the same state of poverty, had to through the "exchange of marriage," the "marriage" is the only way to get to know each other. In this case, the woman's family was so poor that she had to sell her daughter in marriage; or both men's and women's families were in the same state of poverty, so they had to solve the marriage of their children through the "marriage exchange". It is natural that marriages formed as a result of this cannot be expected to have a high happiness index. In these marriages, which are made for various reasons, women are more likely to be the protagonists of the tragedy, with the woman's "parental order" playing a key role, and under the influence of the concept of "marrying off the daughter and spilling out the water," even if the parents know that the daughter is suffering in the in-laws' home, they may not be able to find a solution. The fact is that the most important thing is that you can't get your daughter out of the house, and you can't get her out of the house.

Recently, I read the book "History in the Archives - Politics and Society in the Qing Dynasty" by Prof. Liu Zhengyun, a Taiwan-based history scholar, and one of the articles, "Also History - The Stories of Four Women in the Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng and Qianlong Years," is about the misadventures of four women in the Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng and Qianlong years, one of whom was a woman who had to live with her mother-in-law. Four women's misfortunes, one is in order to make a living by her husband to sell others; the second is forced to make a living by her husband's acquiescence to sell adultery; the third is because of her husband's adamant refusal to daytime pleasures and sent to death; the last is the realization that there is no hope of reconciliation with her husband and angrily killed him. In fact, these are not "stories", because when the author wrote this article, they were all taken from the criminal case data in the archives of the Cabinet of Ministers in the collection of the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

In China's history books, usually recorded in the deeds of emperors and generals, as for the four women like the common people, belong to the "on the stage of the historical stage of the small people, if not by chance to commit or involved in a major criminal case, their life is like a fleeting cloud of smoke, with the wind, will not leave any record". They would not have left any record of their lives. And through these criminal files of the author "did not do any cutting or modification" of the statements of the parties, let a person read the story of the hero's life of great misfortune.

The world of women in traditional society is in fact very small, and almost all of their love, hate, sadness and happiness unfold on the stage of the family, however, even in this small world of the family, they are not autonomous at all. They have the desire for a better life and the pursuit of the traditional crush, not only do not have the opportunity to realize, and sometimes lead to irreparable tragedy, let a person deplored.