Marriage in the 17th Century

The seventeenth century was a fascinating time period of English history, and has always got a lot of attention from historians around the world. In this time period men had all the power over their women and had all the laws on their side of a marriage. During the seventeenth century marriages were slowly escaping the time when a lot of marriages were arranged by parents and people where starting to be able to choose their partners for themselves. This paper is going to be providing an outline of the seventeenth-century English marriage. Thing such as basic marriage values, concluding marriages, duties of a married woman and even possibilities of divorce were a lot different back then than they are now.

In seventeenth-century England, being married played a far more important social role than it does nowadays. The position of women in seventeenth-century English marriage was dictated by her family relationships, with an importance on the inferiority of women. The law was strongly in favor of the fathers and husbands of women. It was a fact that married women had no financial rights that would make her independent of her husband and that everything that was hers was his. Men also had a right hit their wife’s in this time period without any consequences and sadly it was a common occurrence in marriage. A husband’s dominance or “rule” over his wife and children was pretty much seen as a king’s reign over the people in his country. A woman was regarded as a creature physically, intellectually, morally and even spiritually inferior to a man which gave man had a right to dominate her.1 So this lead to men being able to control their wife like nothing we have ever seen in modern times. Women were waiting on men hand and foot in a soci...

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While marriages in seventeenth century England had similarities with present day such as people marrying for love, it also was very different then it is in today’s world. Back then marriages where more than just for love, they where for social status and were meant to prove a statement to society. All women wanted to prove that they can give birth to a child and men want the power of being the head of a household. While marriages were still being arranged, some people where starting to live their own love life’s without the blessings of their families and would go with their hearts like what is done in the present day. Even though marriage was nowhere near as equal as it is today for the men and women involved one thing was certain, and that was the fact that people still wanted to be with one another and that has not changed over the past three thousand years.