Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/203

 be re-married by the latter. Moreover, the contract of betrothal concluded between the parents having a legal value, the family of the betrothed man who dies before the conclusion of the marriage has the right to marry the bereaved fiancée, or false widow, who, by-the-bye, is much honoured when she has the courage to devote herself to a celibate life.

We have seen that Chinese women are excluded from inheritance; they have a right, however, in marrying, to a small dowry, either in money or furniture, but the value of it is optional. It must be at least a chest of drawers or a small trousseau, which the bridegroom is obliged to supply if the parents fail to do so. Moreover, he must also give the nuptial bed. Primitive and even cruel as are the conditions and rules of Chinese marriage, the Chinese women submit to them not only without murmuring, but with a sort of devotion, broken in as they are by a long ancestral education. And besides, for the Chinese in general, it is a strict duty to marry, from a triple point of view—social, political, and religious. Everybody marries in the Celestial Empire, and the number of male celibates over twenty-four years of age is quite insignificant. If a suitable opportunity of marriage does not present itself, the parents, who are sovereign arbiters in this matter, do not hesitate to go to an orphanage to seek a son or daughter-in-law.

In Japan, during the feudal age, the end of which we are now witnessing, marriage was nearly identical with Chinese marriage, and there would be nothing to say about it in particular, if during the last few years the fever of reformation, with which Japan is carried away, had not happily modified marriage, at least in practice, by giving the young girl a voice in the matter, and by awakening in some Japanese consciences doubts on the subject of the prostitution of young girls. At the present moment, everything in Japan is being Europeanised, and the adaptation of our Civil Code to the old Japanese customs is only a question of time.