Concubinage

“ In my opinion, it is for the interest of woman, of children, and of morals, that concubinage should be regulated by legislation. Every child should bear the name of the concubinary father, who should provide for his subsistence and for the expenses of his education; 104 "the forsaken concubine should also have a right to an indemnity, unless she has been the first to enter into another concubinage."—Id. ”

“ In some cases a couple might live in concubinage by consent of their parents, and in the event of a child being born, either a marriage was celebrated or the woman returned to the house of her parents with the infant, which was regarded as belonging to her family. ”

“ III. IT IS POLYGAMY WHICH HAS BEEN CONDEMNED, AND IS TO BE CONDEMNED, BY THE CHRISTIAN WORLD. That simultaneous concubinage, or concubinage conjoined with a wife, is polygamy, although not acknowledged to be such, because it is not so declared, and thus not so called by any law, must be evident to every person of common discernment; for a woman taken into keeping, and made partaker of the conjugial bed is like a wife. ”

“ The legitimate wife is to the handmaid as a lord is to his vassal. Concubinage being a legitimate institution, the son of a handmaid is no bastard, nor is he in any way the child of shame; and yet, as a general rule, the son of the bondwoman is not heir with the son of the free, for the son of the wife inherits before the son of a concubine, even where the latter be the elder; and it frequently happens that a noble, having children by his concubines but none by his wife, selects a younger brother of his own, or even adopts the son of some relative, to succeed him in the family honours. ”

“ Those who do not distinguish genera, use the two terms promiscuously, as if they had one meaning, and thence one signification: but as they are two genera, and the term keeping a mistress is suitable to the former, because a kept mistress is a courtezan, and the term concubinage to the latter, because a concubine is a substituted partner of the bed, therefore for the sake of distinction, ante-nuptial stipulation with a woman is signified by keeping a mistress, and post-nuptial by concubinage. ”

“ If, leaving aside the middle age and its clergy, we cast our eyes around us in the most civilised and polished European societies, we see that the concubinate has indeed disappeared, but that its inferior form, concubinage, is very [Pg 169] flourishing. ”

“ These concubines were generally purchased with money and were from the lower classes, where poverty always prevailed, making occasion for the selling of the girls. In a few cases, concubinage in a family might have arisen through the wife's desire to have women and children to serve her, as they would come under her control. ”

“ Since, however, wars and the greater danger attending male pursuits are always likely to create a preponderance of females in the community, concubinage will be tolerated for the sake of the surplus women; but, instead of its being a concubinage like that of to-day, which is hidden, secret, sterile, condemned, and therefore productive of much distress and tragedy, it will be open, tolerated, recognized, and fruitful, just as it has been in the best civilizations of the past. There are other and very deep reasons why some form of concubinage is essential. ”

“ The very fact that any plan was devised to afford a legal and decent mode of entering into the marriage contract, certainly implies that the moral sense of the community revolted at general concubinage. ”

“ The polygamy of New York, of Chicago, of London, of Paris, of Vienna and of other parts of the Christian world, like that of Solomon's three hundred, is a system of concubinage in which the woman possesses no legal rights, the mistress neither being recognized as wife, nor her children as legitimate ”

“ Wives had now ceased to live apart from their husbands, but concubinage was largely practised, and marital and extra-marital relations alike were severed on the slightest pretext. A woman, however, did not recover her full freedom when abandoned by her husband or protector. ”

“ That there are two kinds of concubinage, which differ exceedingly from each other, and that the one kind consists in taking a substituted partner to the bed, and living conjointly and at the same time with her and with a wife; and that the other kind is when, after a legitimate and just separation from a wife, a man engages a woman in her stead as a bed-fellow ”

“ In permitting polygamy and even concubinage to some, I reflected that as marriage would not be suitable or convenient or possible to a number of men, I would be making a needful, wise and saving provision for surplus women. ”

“ Whilst, in the nations whom the Reformation of the sixteenth century tore from the bosom of the Church, the sacred laws of matrimony are trampled in the dust, whilst the statistics of these nations hold up to the world the sad spectacle of divorces as numerous as marriages, of separations of husband from wife, [Pg 275] and wife from husband, for the most trivial causes, thus granting to lust the widest margin of license, and legalizing concubinage and adultery ”

“ And arguing from popular feeling in our great cities we reach the conclusion that in ancient Israel where concubinage prevailed there was a wide and keen feeling as to the rights of concubines and the necessity of upholding them. Many women must have been in this relation, below those [351] who could count themselves legally married, and all the more that the concubine occupied a place inferior to that of the lawful wife would popular opinion take up her cause and demand the punishment of those who did her wrong. ”

“ It is easy in Congress and from the pulpit, North and South to talk about polygamy and Brigham Young and debauchery of various kinds; but there is also one great fact that four millions of people lived in open and notorious concubinage. ”

“ It presupposes the consent of the first wife, who always retains and maintains her position, there being no jealously, as far as my observation goes, and few domestic broils. Polyandry is considered swinish, and concubinage is unknown. Divorce is not in accord with tribal customs. ”

“ Widows are not allowed to re-marry, but may live in a state of concubinage. Women are said to suckle their children till they are two or three years old, and a mother has been seen putting a lighted cigarette to the lips of a year old baby immediately after suckling it. ”

“ In hell they'll roast you like a herring.' "Concubinage is very common among patterers, especially on their travels; they have their regular rounds, and call the peregrination 'going on circuit.' For the most part they are early risers; this gives them a facility for meeting poor girls who have had a night's shelter in the union workhouses. ”

“ If one of the faithful hath a concubine, if she be a bond-servant, let him leave off that way, and marry in a legal manner: if she be a free woman, let him marry her in a lawful manner; if he does not, let him be rejected. ”

“ When she dies the first wife takes her place as head of the family. A concubine may be the favourite of the husband. He may give her fine apartments to live in, many servants to wait on her, and every luxury he can afford; but there his power ends. The first wife is head of the household, is legally mother of all the children born to any or all of the concubines her husband possesses. The children all call her mother, and the inferior wives recognize her as their mistress. She and her daughters, and daughters-in-law, attend social functions, receive friends, extend hospitality ”

“ Still, it was by no means unusual in olden times for princes and nobles to have a number of concubines, who were either slaves or female captives, besides their own lawful wives, who were sprung of noble family. In fact, the idea of conjugal fidelity held good only for the female portion of the population, while the men were absolutely free to act as they pleased. Undoubtedly there were cases in which husband and wife were so well suited together that the men resisted all temptations to infidelity ”

“ If the wife did this, the Code did not allow the husband to take a concubine. If she would not, he could do so. The concubine was a wife, though not of the same rank; the first wife had no power over her. A concubine was a free woman, was often dowered for marriage and her children were legitimate. She could only be divorced on the same conditions as a wife. If a wife became a chronic invalid, the husband was bound to maintain her in the home they had made together, unless she preferred to take her dowry and go back to her father’s house ”

“ When the time comes for selecting wives for her sons, it is the first wife who does it, although she may be childless herself. It is to her the brides of these sons are brought, and to her all deference is due. In rare cases, where the concubine has had the good fortune to supply the heir to the throne or to a princely family, she is raised to the position of empress or princess. But this is seldom done, and is usually remembered against the woman. She is never received with the same feeling as if she had been first wife.
One day I was asked to go to a palace to see a concubine who was ill. ”

“ It is worth while to note the exact conditions of divorce in the reference to women as given in the clauses of Hammurabi's code—
"137. If a man has set his face to put away his concubine, who has granted him children, to that woman he shall return his marriage portion, and shall give her the usufruct of field, garden, and goods, and shall bring up her children. From the time that her children are grown up, from whatever is given to her children, they shall give her a share like that of one son, and she shall marry the husband of her choice." ”

“ In regard to the term wife, on which the Puritan lays so much stress, it has been evinced that it does, in this chapter, mean more than wife, in the ordinary signification of the term; because the prohibition of sexual intercourse between a son and his mother, a man and his father's wife, a man and his aunt, is permanent; applying not only to the lifetime of the husband, but to the time subsequent to his death, when his wife has become a widow. ”

“ For, by the old Roman law, this was the difference between a wife and a concubine: that the husband before marriage promised that he designed to promote the woman he was married to, to the honour of materfamilias, or mistress of the family.—Dr. Nicholls.
The first right accruing to the wife by marriage, is honour; and, therefore, the man says, “with my body I thee worship;” that is, “with my body I thee honour:” for so the word signifies in this place; and so Mr. Selden, and before him Martin Bucer, who lived at the time when our liturgy was compiled, have translated it. ”

“ The law of husband and wife, as modified by statute in the course of the nineteenth century, as I have often enough had occasion to point out, is a monument of legalised tyranny over the husband in the interests of the wife. ”

“ Of the Civil Laws, the following notices will suffice.—A man may have four wives at the same time, and according to common opinion as many concubine slaves as he pleases.—He may divorce a [17] wife twice, and each time take her back again; but if he divorce her a third time, or by a triple sentence, he cannot make her his wife again unless by her own consent and by a new contract, and after another man has consummated a marriage with her and divorced her.—The children by a wife and those by a concubine slave inherit equally, if the latter be acknowledged by the father. ”

“ And so King James, in the conference at Hampton Court, told Dr. Reynolds, who 806made this objection. For our Church is not only content that the wife should be endowed with a share of the husband’s goods, but that the husband should oblige himself to promote his spouse to the dignity of the uxorial honour, for she would not have the men joined to concubines by this religious solemnity; and, therefore, she ties the man to make profession, that he is willing to have the person he marries not only to be a partner in his bed, but that she should have all the dignity of a wife allowed her. ”

“ If you take me as your real and true wife I’ll serve you [99] with all my heart, but if you are determined to take me as a concubine I shall die now by this sword. For that reason I hold it. My life rests on one word from your Excellency. Speak it, please, before I decide.”
The Governor, though a man who observed no ceremony and never brooked a question, when he saw how beautiful and how determined this maiden was, fell a victim to her at once, and said, “If you so decide, then, of course, I’ll make you my real wife.” ”

“ I will ask you the following question, Can a man who before his baptism has kept a concubine, and after her death has received baptism and has taken a wife, become a clergyman or not? You will answer me that he can, because his first partner was a concubine and not a wife. What the apostle condemns then, it would seem, is not mere sexual intercourse but marriage contracts and conjugal rights. Many persons, we see, because of narrow circumstances refuse to take upon them the burthen of matrimony. ”

“ I feel that I do not want to marry you. 'What I should like to be would be your own beloved concubine. Yes! to have you I would willingly be a servant in your house, and wait upon your wife if I might, from time to time, sleep with you and have you as I had you this evening on the grass! I wish concubines were allowed now. ”

“ Ethics of pair marriage. Pair marriage has excluded every other form of sex relation. To modern people it is hard to understand how different forms of sex relation could exist side by side and all be right. The explanation is in the mores. A concubine may be a woman who has a defined and legally guaranteed relation to one man, if the mores have so determined. Her circumstances have not opened to her the first rank, that of a wife, but she has another which is recognized in the society as honorable. The same may be said of a slave woman, or of a morganatic wife. ”

“ Yet God says that by the marriage they are brother and sister, so that they cannot marry.
The God of Nature has said from the beginning that man and wife are one flesh, and He has repeated it in the Christian dispensation. There is such a union of bloods by marriage that cannot be separated. Sanguinity is established by consanguinity, or the "uniting together of two bloods," so that the woman imparts her sanguinity to the man, and the man his to the woman——they become one flesh. ”