Arranged Companions by Weijing Lu;

Author:Weijing Lu;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press

Remedying Marital Problems

Given the importance of preserving family harmony for the sake of prosperity, elders would do all they could to bring marital discord under control. For a seriously troubled marriage that involved a concubine, one solution was to arrange for the wife to live separately while leaving the husband and his concubine in the main house, a practice that had already existed in the Ming.70 The wife’s domicile would be supported by the immediate family of the husband if not the husband himself. In Zhang Lüxiang’s daughter’s case, both sides had considered the idea and she agreed to “move out to live in a separate room,” but it did not work out.71

Although the marital family had the most to lose when problems escalated, the husband’s relatives were often unable, disinterested, or ineffective in addressing conflicts. Some didn’t have the ability to intervene, and jealous or selfish relatives would not want to. And relatives could be biased, as seen in Zhang’s daughter’s case. Those who believed that fraternal relationships took precedence over husband-wife relationships might not do everything they could to help. A relationship crisis exposed a deep fissure between a married woman’s identity and her emotional status with her marital family. The patrilineal principle tied a married woman firmly to her husband and his lineage. Upon marriage, she became a full member of her marital family, a ritual equal to her husband, and an ancestor of the family upon death. Nevertheless, that identity did not necessarily guarantee respectable treatment, especially for young wives.

If a marital crisis revealed a weak link between a married woman and her marital family, it also demonstrated a married daughter’s unbroken ties with her natal home.72 The natal family could be a reliable safe haven for an unhappily married daughter so long as it had the means to support her. Distraught young wives enduring many kinds of hardships and crises—sickness, widowhood, poverty, or abuse—could return to their parents for some time. To give another example, Fang Bao’s married sister returned because of poverty and looked after their ailing mother. Fang would give grain to her husband and concubine monthly to help their livelihood.73 Natal families not only took in married daughters in distress, some even accepted an abusive son-in-law into their homes or made arrangements for him, as we have seen in some of the cases mentioned earlier. The customary practice of a married daughter relying on her natal family for support in times of need sheds an important light on the workings of the patrilineal system, which would have had a hard time sustaining itself without help from affinal kin.

According to the Qing law, divorce could be granted if “husband and wife are disharmonious and both agree to be separated,” and divorce must be enforced if either husband or wife committed a crime involving beating or killing the relatives of the other party. The law also incorporated the ritual prescriptions for divorcing a wife and for protecting her from being divorced, the so-called qichu and san buqu.

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