Selecting The Merchandise
Times change, and so do attitudes. A platitude, but we forget. Until we are reminded.
Here’s a description of how Thomas More (who brought us the word “Utopia” and was considered oh-so-progressive because he educated his daughters as well as his son) helped Sir William Roper decide which of More’s daughters he’d like to marry:
Roper calls one morning and tells More that he wishes to marry one of More’s daughters–either one will do–upon which More takes Roper to his bedroom, where the daughters are asleep in a truckle bed wheeled out from beneath the parental bed. Leaning over, More deftly takes “the sheet by the corner and suddenly whippes it off” … revealing the girls to be fundamentally naked. Groggily protesting at the disturbance, they roll onto their stomachs, and after a moment’s admiring reflection Sir William announces that he has seen both sides now and with his stick lightly taps the bottom of sixteen-year-old Margaret.
Found at Hermione’s Heart.
Update: I was going to post the above as-is. But then I thought, let’s chase this deeper into the original material. What I found was the following from John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, c. 1690:
Memorandum that in [More’s] Utopia, his lawe is that young people are to see each other stark-naked before marriage. Sir William Roper came one morning pretty early to my Lord, with a proposall to marry one of his daughters. My Lord’s daughters were then both together in a bed in a truckle-bed in their father’s chamber asleep. He carries Sir William into the chamber, and takes the sheet by the corner and suddenly whippes it off. They lay on their backs, and the their smocks up as high as their arme pitts; this awakened them, and immediately they turned on their bellies. Quoth Sir William Roper, “I have seen both sides”, and so gave a patt on her buttock, he made choice of, saying,” Thou art mine.”
Here was all the trouble of the wooing.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=7704
Thank you for posting the original content. Such interesting times they lived in!
Hermione
It is interesting that Thomas More is a Catholic saint, but not because of his idiosyncratic views on wooing. But then, he was beatified for sticking to his principles, so I guess we can see a theme here.
All about context methinks, for the time given that daughters were pretty much considered property allowing a ‘purchaser’ to inspect the goods kind of makes business sense. Makes the likelihood of ‘woo-ers remorse’ less I supposes.
Of course, this news story out of London shows that, in some areas, things haven’t changed a lot . . .
http://www.winn...itain
I wouldn’t call Aubrey ‘original’, except perhaps in the sense he might have made it up. In relation to the time of More he’d be the equivalent of somebody now making racy and undocumented claims about the sex-life of, say, Dickens. Or Lincoln. As they say on Wikipedia, ‘citation?’
Alex, who called Aubrey “original”? I called him “deeper into the original material” because he was the source being quoted and (badly) paraphrased in the first passage I quoted. True as far as it goes, but it’s not like I made the elementary mistake of claiming that an older source is necessarily more “true”. I quote the sources I have and let other people make of them what they will.
If you want to go dig up Aubrey and chant “citation needed” at his corpse, feel free. I’m amused at the idea of a long-dead historian (of whatever quality) being haunted by skeptical/pedantic ghosts from an asshole-wikipedia future. But that chant doesn’t belong here — this is not Wikipedia.
At the time Thomas More lived, female children were of little value to their parents, because their labor was seen as inferior to male children, who often worked the farm, or assisted in blacksmithing etc., whereas the female cost more to support than she generated, and was considered more a liability than an asset.
Hence, fathers were often eager to rid themselves of daughters, and would pay a man to marry them, so that the father would no longer have to support them. This was called a dowry.
English customs were not as Puritanical as many American practices are today.
Bundling, (a practice which probably developed in Britain, or at least in Western Europe), was a common enough custom in which horny young single teen-aged boys were invited by parents to spend the night in an unmarried daughter’s bed, with often nothing more separating them than the bed-covers, or a board placed between them that the boy promised not to cross. Cold drafty homes in winter months, led to snuggling for warmth, which in turn led to other activities…
This ballad verse addresses the inevitable nuzzling, embracing and entwining:
Since in a bed a man and maid,
May bundle and be chaste,
It does no good to burn up wood,
It is but needless waste…
The parents would hope that romance blossomed, and the daughter would join the boy’s family. Sometimes the boy would be trapped into marriage by the girl’s pregnancy.
Therefore I find it to be not unbelievable, this story about Thomas More and William Roper…
In modern times, a father doesn’t need to show of his daughter’s naked forms to get suitors, the girls have often done that during high school themselves.