Ancient status size ranking husband & gt; wife & gt; concubine, who can explain in detail what it means

The so-called three wives and four concubines, concubines group, at first, but also not later on the obscene motives, but for the reproductive needs. For one thing, the ancient medical conditions are not good, the infant survival rate is not high, the folk so-called "four six wind" that is, the baby was born, a lot of frail people, can not pass the fourth and sixth day. So the folk to celebrate the birth of a child, often scheduled for the full moon, the full moon is not a big problem, friends and relatives can rest assured that congratulations; Second, the mother is also because of the delivery conditions are not good, can not deal with other problems brought about by the birth of the mother's physical safety and health protection is not high, many women died in childbirth. Third, even for men, life expectancy is not long. Agricultural society, men work to earn a living, and bear the responsibility of servitude, military service, etc., can not shirk the responsibility, the slightest mistake, it will hurt the life of a family of men, perhaps because of a small change, that is, resulting in the bloodline is severed. Therefore, the ancients attached great importance to fertility, but also very nervous, no posterity for the big, never "Dink family". Fertility cycle is the same in ancient and modern times, so in order to protect the quality of fertility and childbearing, healthy succession, the economic conditions of the family, a man with multiple wives, to increase the protection factor, so the rise of polygamy. So much so that the system of rites and music, written into the canon, from the emperor onwards, different status of the man with different amounts of women, forever customized. Although there are changes in each generation, but the general meaning remains the same. This is the original motivation for concubinage.

Wives were decided by the parents of the husband's family, while concubines were decided entirely by the husband's preferences, and the family usually did not interfere. Thus the husband has a decisive role in everything the concubine does in the family. We often say that a person is only responsible for the characters who control his destiny, for the wife, the husband is not the most important factor in determining the wife, the wife's status is not given by the husband, marrying and repudiation of the wife have a strict patriarchal system requirements, by the husband can not be arbitrary, so the wife for the husband can not invite favors, or even basically ignored. We often see movie and television works inside the husband for his wife hate teeth itchy but can not do anything about it is this reason, in the final analysis, the husband is not the decisive factor in the status of the wife. But the concubine is different, concubine of all can be said to be given by the husband, for the concubine, the husband is her in the family of everything, so the concubine is not to the husband is not to make a thousand techniques, a hundred pleasing, flattering, in short, for the concubine, so that the husband is happy than what is important. Because the husband is the most important factor in determining the concubine's life, status, and even the survival of the most important factor. This is by no means an exaggeration, the history of caning concubines, but caning the wife is very few. Besides, the husband's original purpose of concubinage is to make himself happy, so in the case of their own free choice, of course, they will choose to make their favorite women as concubines. Therefore, we often say that "the wife is not as good as the concubine" does not mean the status difference, but the degree of favor in the husband's heart. The preference for a concubine is almost a certainty, because the wife is not of one's own choosing, while the concubine must be of one's own choosing.

Look again at the relationship between concubine and wife. To emphasize once again, the matter of a favored concubine over her lord, if strictly in accordance with the patriarchal system and the law, this concubine could be caned. This is because a wife and a concubine are essentially a master-servant relationship. If a concubine oppresses her wife, she is committing an offense against her master, not just a matter of family conflict, but a matter of a slave offending his master, which was definitely a big deal in ancient ethics, and thus usually only existed in fictional movies and TV shows. Specifically, the wife is comparable to the husband; husband and wife is a relationship of spousal partners, and according to the tradition that the man is in charge of the outside and the woman is in charge of the inside, the husband is the head of the family in external affairs, and the wife is the decider of the internal affairs of the family. Therefore, the concubine of all the wife can intervene, because these are internal issues, is the patriarchal protection of the wife's scope of authority, zoomed in on the view, even the emperor to favor the consort (essentially concubines) must get the empress (essentially wife) permission, which can be imagined that the wife's voice in the internal affairs of the family has a lot of power. In fact, think about the reason is very simple, the role of the wife to some extent is to maintain the family and the family in-laws of the bond, the wife's status is often shaken will affect the family's external potential growth, while the concubine is just a plaything of the husband, for the family can be dispensable, the status of the two and how can be equal to it. Of course, it should be noted here, these are referred to in accordance with the standards of the patriarchal system, in fact, many men because of the relationship between the pillow wind disregard for etiquette and law, favor concubines, cold wife is also very normal. But the concubine to the wife but never this kind of overstepping behavior, not only that, for the specific between the two get along also have clear rules, such as concubines must be every day to the wife to ask for good health, wife sit down, the concubine can only stand, even if the wife to give a seat, can only be done half of the buttocks, and so on, will not be tired of it here.

Again, the relationship between the concubine's family and the husband's family. We know that the wife's family and the husband's family is a kind of in-law relationship, this kind of in ancient times is actually interdependent relationship, so the ancient slaughter of the three clans, is the father's clan, the mother's clan and the wife's clan. Therefore, to a certain extent, the wife's family and the husband's family were strategic allies who could be benefited from the loss of one and the glory of the other. The concubine family and the husband's family has no such relationship at all, as mentioned earlier, marrying a wife is a family behavior, so marrying a wife should be decided by the family, while concubinage is basically out of the husband's personal good or bad decision, which is a personal behavior, so the family will not be responsible for this, and will not be identified with the concubine's family has any connection, so the ancient guilt-by-association system never include the concubine family is the reason for the argument. Thus the husband's family would not recognize the concubine's family as a relative.

Finally, the relationship between the concubine and her husband's children. First of all, it is clear that there is basically no relationship between a concubine and her husband's children born to other women. The concubine has no obligation to take care of and raise these children, and these children have no responsibility to support their father, the concubine. The two are just strangers under the same roof. The most important thing is the relationship between the concubine and the children born to her, which, according to the requirements of the patriarchal system, is only a mother-and-child relationship by blood, not a patriarchal-recognized mother-and-child relationship, which is the relationship between all the children (whether born of the concubine or of the wife) and the husband's first wife. Any child, whether born of a concubine or not, had no patriarchal mother-child relationship with the concubine, which seems more or less unconscionable to us nowadays, but the system was such that even emperors had to follow it, and a less accurate example is the famous historical incident of the Jiajing dynasty's great ritual, in which one could not recognize the biological mother as the mother, and even the emperor couldn't change it, so we can see that the ancient patriarchal system was very strict.

From the above, we can see that concubines and wives are really far from each other, which is why many concubines always want to be corrected. This step, if successful, is really a step to heaven. But the real situation is that very few concubines can succeed on the throne, which is too relevant to our previous analysis of the different status of wife and concubine, different status, different roles. When we look at the mansion, when Bai Laoqi finally marries Xiangxiu, Yang Jiuhong complains that she has never asked to be corrected, not that she doesn't want to, but that the difficulties are too great. Later, this matter was also opposed by the whole clan, is because this is to marry a wife, related to the family, while concubinage does not matter. Of course, only the seventh master of this kind of not bound by the rules of etiquette can be so ridiculous, usually, marrying a "wife" and marrying an "aunt" is still fundamentally different.