Love vs Loyalty to Customs in Arranged Marriages - Essay Example

November 17, Love versus Loyalty to Customs in Arranged Marriages Arranged marriages may appear as the antithesis to happy love marriages, although the happiness of marriage does not always rely on love alone. In Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage, Stephanie Coontz studies the different reasons for and patterns of marriage across cultures and learned that lasting marriages happen when couples find happiness in their own ways, and not through any specific marriage formula (76). Two arranged marriages show opposite results in terms of happiness. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston narrates how a free black grandmother marries off her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Janie Crawford, to a landed old black man, Logan Killicks. Another arranged marriage occurs in The Book of Ruth, where Naomi arranges the marriage of her daughter-in-law, Ruth, to a wealthy landowner and relative, Boaz. Logan and Janie’s marriage did not flourish because Janie they are in complete conflict regarding their marriage expectations, whereas Ruth and Boaz’s marriage flourished because they both believe in a traditional form of marriage based on shared social norms and customs, and because Boaz loves Ruth physically and emotionally too. Logan marries with traditional expectations of controlling his wife, particularly in serving his economic needs. Coontz describes traditional marriages that are based on economic goals. Instead of marrying out of love, people married because they needed to secure their financial conditions in life, such as what happens when aristocratic families marry to preserve or improve their wealth (Coontz 69-70). One of the reasons that Logan marries Janie is because he wants someone to help him run his large farm. He asks her to chop woods and to not depend on him for these chores, but Janie retorts that if she would be chopping wood, he would not be getting dinner (Hurston 25). Despite Janie’s protests in handling masculine tasks, Logan leaves her to get a mule that she can manage and to cut up seed potatoes. He also insists that Janie should start helping him more in his farm and stop pretending that she was “born in a carriage” (Hurston 29). He marries to have a reliable, unpaid helper in his farm. Instead of hiring more people, Logan marries a servant. Besides economic interests, Logan marries for the traditional reason of controlling a woman who will fulfill his social and power needs. Coontz notes that people traditionally married to gain social advantages. Marriage has been “the most important marker of adulthood and respectability” (Coontz 70). Logan wanted to control a woman in his house as his companion. He tells Janie that he and her grandmother has “spoilt” her “rotten” by doing manual-labor tasks for her and he wants her to do more physical tasks in the house (Hurston 25). He wants her as an obedient companion. In addition, Logan complains that she is not helping in the farm as she should: “You don’t take a bit of interest in this place. ‘Tain’t no use in foolin’ round in dat kitchen all day long” (Hurston 30). He wants to control her household activities. Furthermore, Logan threatens her with violence. He rushes her to help him move the manure pile, but Janie does not obey him and asserts that she does not want to spend her life cleaning up his farm. Logan is so mad and threatens her: “…Heah, Ah just as good as take you out de white folk’s kitchen and set you down on yo’ royal diasticutis and you take and low-rate me! Ah’ll take holt uh dat ax and come in dere and kill yuh!” (Hurston 30). He does not like any woman talking down on him, especially his own wife. Logan marries to satisfy his need for power and companionship. Janie, however, does not want a traditional marriage, but a marriage based on love, including physical attraction. Janie believes that marriage entails mutual physical desire. She tells her Nanny: “Ah wants to want him sometimes. Ah don’t want him to do all de wantin’” (Hurston 22). She does not find Logan physically attractive at all. She hates how he looks and smells. When she visits Nanny one day, she complains of how she hates “his head so long one way and so flat on de sides,” how his “belly is too big too,” and how he does not have the habit of washing his feet that have “toe-nails [which] look lak mule foots” (Hurston 23). Janie cannot imagine staying in a marriage where she hates how her husband looks and smells. Marriage for her should be based on love that includes joint physical attraction. Aside from having physical desires, Janie desires a marriage that is filled with romance and sexual satisfaction. Coontz describes that some happy marriages happen when a couple “love each other deeply” and “express affection openly” (75). Janie wants exactly the same kind of love marriage because she expects marriage to be a bed of roses. She tells her Nanny that Logan has no romantic bone in his body: “He don’t even never mention nothin’ pretty” (Hurston 23). She wants to hear compliments of love. Furthermore, Janie wants sexual satisfaction. The image of sexual satisfaction comes from her image of union between bees and pear flowers. She sits under a pear tree when she sees bees collecting nectar from the pear’s blossoms. The act of pollination symbolizes perfect sexual union: She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing in delight. So this was a marriage!...Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid. (Hurston 10-11). Janie experiences a figurative sexual orgasm from her first image of sexual union. Since then, she has been looking for “sun-up and pollen and blooming trees” (Hurston 28), even when she is flirting with Joe Starks, a vain man who promises her better changes, if she elopes with him. Janie expects a love marriage that satisfies her emotionally and sexually, something that Logan did not want to give her. Because of conflicting expectations on marriage, their marriage falls apart. Ruth, unlike, Janie, does not believe in a love marriage, but is completely obedient to traditional customs. Ruth is the kind of woman who values social beliefs more than family. When her husband dies, she prefers to follow Naomi: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (NRSV1:16). Ruth does not have any problem following social customs, including that of arranged marriages. When Naomi arranges marriage between Ruth and Boaz, Ruth follows her advice dutifully. Naomi asks her to go to Boaz at the threshing floor, to lie near his foot, and to ask him to lay his cloak on her because he is her husband’s next-of-kin. Naomi’s advice is based on a social custom where Boaz can marry Ruth because her husband is a close relative of his (The Book of Ruth Ch. 3). Ruth follows Naomi completely, which indicates that she is committed to fulfilling traditional social roles and responsibilities. Boaz also complies with social norms and conduct. He wants to marry Ruth, but he also knows that there is another relative who is closer to her husband by blood. Instead of marrying Ruth immediately, he makes sure that this relative surrenders his claim over Ruth. Boaz looks for this relative and talks to him with ten elders because their topic is an important family matter. Boaz tells him that Naomi is selling some land and he can buy it since he is next of kin, but he must also marry Ruth and impregnate her. This relative turns down the offer, and because the elders agree and there are at least ten male witnesses, the deal is done (The Book of Ruth Ch. 4). Boaz shows that he is also a man who follows social customs properly. He and Ruth have the same expectations in marriage because they are aware of these social expectations and they are willing to follow it. Besides having the same marriage expectations, Boaz and Ruth’s marriage also worked because Boaz already loves Ruth physically and emotionally. The first time he sees her, he already feels that he loves her. The proof is when he is too kind to her to tell her that she can collect leftover barley ears permanently in his fields, he asks his workers to not harass her, and he even commands them to leave her some barley stalks. Boaz is evidently already physically attracted to her from the start. In addition, Boaz has heard of Ruth’s dedication to Naomi which makes him love her for who she is a person. He tells Ruth that God should bless her because she is a good woman for serving Naomi and God (The Book of Ruth Ch. 2). He is impressed of her values and behaviors. Boaz’s love for Ruth is what Coontz calls as a “bonus” in traditional marriages (75). Indeed, in their arranged marriage, it helped make it easier for Ruth to be happy in their marriage. Love in marriage is not enough to assure lasting and happy marriages because other factors matter too. Respect and loyalty to one another are also important, as well as sharing similar values and expectations. Coontz underscores that many happy marriages are where couples love and respect one another (75). These are marriages where couples have the same cultural values and goals in marriage too, as well as display loyalty to one another (76). Janie is wrong to assume that something as fleeting and fickle as romance is enough for a lasting marriage. She might love Logan but it will soon fade if Logan does not have the same marriage goals. Boaz and Ruth believed in the same God and followed His commandments. Their happy marriage is based on spiritual and emotional connections too. Happiness is marriage can be found in arranged marriages, such as what happened to Boaz and Ruth. Coontz would have explained that their marriage lasted because they had similar cultural and spiritual values and because love is already there. Most of all, they had the same expectations about their marriage, something that Janie and Logan lack. Logan and Janie even have an antagonistic marriage because they expected marriage in quite opposite terms. Logan expected a traditional arranged marriage based on male-centered social and economic advantages, while Janie wanted romance and sexual satisfaction. In the end, their animosity is so high that Janie leaves her husband behind for a more promising man. Marriages last not only because of love, but because couples have the same expectations from one another and because they share many similar cultural and spiritual values. Works Cited Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. Print. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1937. Print. The Book of Ruth. HarperCollins Study Bible. Print. Read More