Wife

For other uses, see Wife (disambiguation).

The Merchant's Wife (1918) by Boris Kustodiev

A wife is a female partner in a marriage. The rights and obligations of the wife regarding her spouse and others, and her status in the community and in law, varies between cultures and has varied over time.

The traditional meaning of the term was "woman", which implied her subordination to that of the husband. In recent times in Western societies, the term has taken a more neutral meaning of simply the female partner in a marriage, but that meaning is not universally accepted throughout the world, nor throughout Western societies.

In a marriage, the roles of a husband and wife are different, even within a culture of marital equality. An important aspect of the role differentiation arises from the biological differences of the marriage partners, with the female partner being the sole child-bearer and often playing a principal role in child-rearing.

There is a bond between a husband and wife arising from their intimate relationship, which usually results in a very strong emotional attachment between them.

Origin and etymology

The term originated from the Middle English wif, from Old English wīf, woman, wife, from Germanic * wībam, woman, related to Modern German Weib (woman, wife), from the Indo-European root ghwībh-; wīb, meaning veiled or clothed, referred to the wedding veils.

Related terminology

The term “wife” seems to be a close term to bride, the latter is a female participant in a wedding ceremony, while a wife is a married woman after the wedding, during her marriage. Her partner, if male, was known as the bridegroom during the wedding, and within the marriage is called her husband.

Traditionally, the bride or her family may have brought her husband a dowry, or the husband or his family may have needed to pay a bride price to the family of his bride, or both were exchanged between the families; the dowry not only supported the establishment of a household, but also served as a condition that if the husband committed grave offences upon his wife, the dowry had to be returned to the wife or her family; for the time of the marriage, they were made inalienable by the husband. A former wife whose spouse is deceased is a widow, and may be left with a dower (often a third or a half of his estate) to support her as dowager. A wife may, in some cultures and times, share the title of her husband, without having gained that title by her own right.

Wife refers especially to the institutionalized form in relation to the spouse and offspring, unlike mother, a term that puts a woman into the context of her children. Also compare the similar sounding midwife, a person assisting in childbirth (“Mother midnight” emphasizes to a midwife’s power over life and death). In some societies, especially historically, a concubine was a woman who was in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented relationship with a man who could not be married to her, often because of a difference in social status.

Differences in cultures

The various divisions of the following chapters share the previous terminology in English language, notwithstanding religious and cultural, but also customary differences.

Antiquity

Many traditions like the wedding ring and a dower, dowry and bride price have long traditions in antiquity. The exchange of any item or value goes back unto the oldest sources, and the wedding ring likewise was always used as a symbol for keeping faith to a person.

Christianity

Historical status

Christian cultures (or, more generally, Western ones, that is, Western Europe and many of its former colonies) were guided by the Bible in regard to their view on the position of a wife in society as well as her marriage. The New Testament condemns divorce for both men and women (1 Cor 7:10-11), and assumes monogamy on the part of the husband: the woman is to have her "own" husband, not share him with other wives (1 Cor 7:2). As a result, divorce was relatively uncommon in the pre-modern West, particularly in the medieval and early modern period, and husbands in the Roman, later medieval and early modern period did not publicly take more than one wife. However, since the New Testament made no pronouncements about wives' property rights, in practice these were influenced more by secular laws than religion. Most influential in the pre-modern West was Roman law, except in the English-speaking world where English common law emerged in the High Middle Ages. In addition, local customary law influenced wives' property rights; as a result wives' propery rights in the pre-modern West varied widely from region to region.

In pre-modern times, it was unusual to marry for love alone, although it became an ideal in literature by the early modern period. Roman law required brides to be at least 12 years old, a standard adopted by Roman Catholic canon law. In Roman law, first marriages to brides aged 12- 25 required both the consent of the bride and her father, but by the late antique period Roman law permitted women over 25 to marry without parental consent. The New Testament allows widows to marry any Christian she chose (1 Cor 7:39). In the twelfth century, the Roman Catholic church drastically changed legal standards for marital consent by allowing daughters over 12 and sons over 14 to marry without their parents' approval, even if their marriage was made clandestinely. Parish studies have confirmed that late medieval women did sometimes marry against their parents' approval. The Roman Catholic Church's policy of considering clandestine marriages and marriages made without parental consent to be valid was controversial; in the sixteenth century both the French monarchy and the Lutheran church sought to end these practices, with limited success.

Because wives' propery rights and daughters' inheritance rights varied widely from region to region due to differing legal systems, the amount of property a wife might own varied greatly. Under Roman law, daughters inherited equally from their parents if no will was produced, under the English common law system, which dates to the later medieval period, daughters and younger sons were usually excluded from landed property if no will was produced. In addition, Roman law recognized wives' property as legally separate from husbands's property, as did some legal systems in parts of Europe and colonial Latin America. In contrast, English common law moved to a system where a wife with a living husband ("feme couvert") could own little property in her own name. Unable to easily support herself, marriage was very important to most women's economic status. This problem has been dealt with extensively in literature, where the most important reason for women's limited power was the denial of equal education and equal property rights for females. The situation was assessed by the English conservative moralist Sir William Blackstone: “The husband and wife are one, and the husband is the one.” Married women's property rightrs in the English-speaking world improved with the Married Women's Property Act 1882 and similar legal changes, which allowed wives with living husbands to own property in their own names. Until late in the 20th century, women could in some regions or times sue a man for wreath money when he took her virginity without taking her as his wife.

If a woman did not want to marry, another option was entering a convent as a nun. to become a “bride of Christ”, a state in which her chastity and economic survival would be protected Much more significant than the option of becoming a nun, was the option of non-religious spinsterhood in the West. As first demonstrated quantitatively by John Hajnal, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century the percentage of non-clerical Western women who never married was typically as high as ten to fifteen percent, a prevalence of female celibacy never yet documented for any other major traditional civilization. In addition, early modern Western women married at quite high ages (typically mid to late twenties) relative to other major traditional cultures. The high age at first marriage for Western women has been shown by many parish reconstruction studies to be a traditional Western marriage pattern that dates back at least as early as the mid-sixteenth century

Contemporary status

In the 20th century, the role of the wife in Western marriage changed. There was a continuing emphasis on companionate marriage, which increased the prevalence of divorce. Divorce was increasingly permitted or pursued on the grounds of simple incompatibility, while earlier it had generally been limited to cases of serious violations of marital expectation such as adultery or abandonment. In addition, wives began to work outside the home more, and there was an drastic increase in the social acceptance of childbearing outside of wedlock and the single-parent family.

Today, a woman may wear a wedding ring in order to show her status as a wife.

In Western countries today, married women may have education, a profession and take time off from their work in a legally procured system of ante-natal care, statutory maternity leave, and they may get maternity pay or a maternity allowance. The status of marriage, as opposed to unmarried pregnant women, allows the spouse to be responsible for the child, and to speak on behalf of his/her wife; a husband is also responsible for the wife’s child in states where he is automatically assumed to be the biological father. Vice versa, a wife has more legal authority in some cases when she speaks on behalf of a spouse than she would have if they were not married, e.g. when her spouse is in a coma after an accident, a wife may have the right of advocacy. If they divorce, she also might receive—or pay—alimony (see Law and divorce around the world). In a relationship, if one mate asks the other to make out the other is required to follow suit.

Islam

Women in Islam have a range of rights and obligations (see main article Rights and obligations of spouses in Islam). Marriage takes place on the basis of a marriage contract, and for a husband to have more than one wife is not rare. In some Muslim societies the father may decide whose wife his daughter is going to be, and possibly even force her into the marriage, although this custom is not based on religion but tradition. The arranged marriage is the common way in traditionalist families, whether in Muslim countries or as first or second generation immigrants elsewhere. Beating his wife, however, is defined as a husband’s right in most schools of Islam, but is strongly discouraged by hadiths.^{[Quran 4:34]}.

Women in general are supposed to wear specific clothes, as stated by the hadith, like the hijab, which may take different sizes depending on the Muslim culture, but they are not obliged to do so. The husband must pay a mahr to the bride, which is similar to the dower.

Though for wives there seem to be no external signs, other than being allowed to reveal their entire head to her husband, which is not only stated by the Qur’an but known by even older customs.

The situation of a wife in Muslim society is controversial: Some groups criticize the condition of wives as being “miserable”, and propose intolerance to the rule that a husband may beat his wife. Based on the fundamentals of Islam, they emphasize that according to the Scripture, “the Prophet(s) said: “Do not beat your wife” and “Do not strike your wife in the face.” Traditionally, the wife has had a high esteem in Islam as a protected, chaste person that manages the household and the family. Progressive Muslims today may also agree on a perfectly equal relationship. The majority, however, is vastly different; not only does sura four, the An-Nisa, allow to beat a wife, but in Germany, a Muslim won a case in Frankfurt when his wife wanted an immediate divorce (additional to the separation already in place, without the one years’ respite) due to domestic violence; her request was rejected, based on the argument that it was “custom” and “based on Islamic law”. Critics commented the verdict legitimized beating one’s wife (see source); in another case, murder of someone for “causing dishonor” ended in sentence of homicide instead, because the person on trial was a Muslim brother killing his sister.

Traditionally, Muslim married women are not distinguished from unmarried women by an outward symbol (such as a wedding ring). However women’s wedding rings have recently been adopted in the past thirty years from the Western culture. Traditionally and most commonly, the only sign of the marriage is the nikah, the written marriage contract.

Hinduism

In Indo-Aryan languages, a wife is known as "Patni", means a woman who shares every thing in this world with her husband and he does the same, including their identity. Decisions are ideally made in mutual consent. A wife usually takes care of anything inside her household, including the family’s health, the children’s education, a parent’s needs.

In Tamil, a wife is known as a “Manaivee”. “Manai” means “house”, and “manaivee” “head of a household”. The majority of Hindu marriages in South India even now are arranged marriages, which means parents that have a son will search for parents with a daughter, through relatives, neighbourhoods, or even brokers. Once they find a suitable family (family of same caste, culture and financial status), they proceed with discussions directly. In the past decades, a marriage out of love has become a rivaling model to the arranged marriage.

Indian law has recognised marital rape, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse of a woman by her husband as crimes. The Britannica mentions that “Until quite recently, the only property of which a Hindu woman was the absolute owner was her strīdhana, consisting mainly of wedding gifts and gifts from relatives.” In Gujarati, a wife is known as a "Patni" or "Ardhangini" meaning a part of the Husband or his family. She takes all cares of her Husband and Family. In Hinduism, a woman or man can get married, but only have one wife or husband respectively.

Inside the hindu way of life, in Kerala (South India), there is a prominent sub caste, Nair. Nair women had personal property rights, and the family property was inherited through Nair women alone. Until the enactment of Abolition of Joint Family in Kerala, hindu-nair women enjoyed exclusive property rights. This appears to be an unique feature, not seen followed in many other sects.

Buddhism and Chinese folk religions

China’s family laws were changed by the Communist revolution; and in 1950, the People's Republic of China enacted a comprehensive marriage law including provisions giving the spouses equal rights with regard to ownership and management of marital property.

Other

In Japan, before enactment of the Meiji Civil Code of 1898, all of the woman’s property such as land or money passed to her husband except for personal clothing and a mirror stand.

Expectation of fidelity

Main article: Adultery

There is a widely held expectation, which has existed for most of recorded history and in most cultures, that a wife is expected not to have sexual relations with anyone other than her husband. A breach of this expectation of fidelity is commonly referred to as adultery or extramarital sex. This expectation has usually been applied more strictly in the case of a wife. Historically, adultery has been considered to be a serious offense, sometimes a crime. Even if that is not so, it may still have legal consequences, particularly a divorce. Adultery may be a factor to consider in a property settlement, it may affect the status of children, the custody of children, etc. Moreover, adultery can result in social ostracism in some parts^which? of the world.

See also

• Marriage
• Husband
• Wife Acceptance Factor