Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/202

 her parents, and a part of the sum agreed on is paid when the contract is signed. As in Mongolia, matrimonial arrangements are often settled, not only from the infancy of the future wife and husband, but even before their birth, on the hypothesis of a difference of sex. These agreements are made by the fathers and mothers, or, in default of them, by the grandparents or nearest relatives. Lastly, the women are excluded by law from inheritance,] and kept as much as possible in seclusion, so that they scarcely see any one besides their parents. By marrying, the young Chinese girl simply changes masters. "The bride," says a Chinese author, "ought only to be a shadow and an echo in the house." The married woman eats neither with her husband nor with her male children; she waits at table in silence, lights the pipes, must be content with the coarsest food, and has not even the right to touch what her son leaves.

China is a country of very ancient civilisation, where the laws and rites have regulated everything, and consequently there exists a whole legislation with regard to marriage.

To begin with, conjugal union is forbidden between persons having the same family name, and I shall have to return to this circumstance.

As in ancient Rome, the law prohibits marriage between slaves and free persons. It absolutely forbids marriage to the priests of Fo, and to those of the tao sect. It orders public functionaries not to contract marriage with actresses, comedians, or musicians.[10] It seems that in ancient times, in China as in Greco-Latin antiquity, the father had the excessive right to unmarry his daughter, for to remedy this abuse the Chinese law pronounces the punishment of a hundred strokes of bamboo on the father-in-law who should send away his son-in-law in order to re-marry his daughter to another.[11] The Chinese widow, no longer belonging to her original family, but to the family of her husband, can