Donald:
> Just work out the distances involved and how long they take to travel
> on foot. And who's going to travel with her?
That's why this is not "[a]ll things going normally".
To start with, let's figure out what the situation would be if the clans were still close together. It makes a good baseline, and I'd like to know. I hear a lot about how divorce shouldn't happen, but relatively little about what it's like when it does happen (except that it's really bad for the woman, who is seen as a failure). "Divorce is available to husband or wife. The woman always recovers her dowry and the man his brideprice, except in cases of marriage breach." (TR, p. 20) The children belong to the father's clan in the most common forms of marriage, although whether they're actually raised in the father's clan is a matter for the worthies of the concerned clans to sort out.
> I think this is one of the reasons the resettlement was such a big deal,
> it sundered family relationships.
There's also a theory that it's more likely to have led to divorces. Wives from the clans that left don't have the weight of their birth clan behind them, which makes them both less politically useful to their marriage clan and particularly vulnerable if things do go wrong.
Ashgora's birth clan actually split, with half the clan staying behind. I'm currently spinning a couple of possible ideas: that Ashgora was put aside so her husband could marry a well-connected woman from one of the bloodlines of her own clan that stayed in Heortland (with some unpleasant bloodline politics within the clan); that the divorce was considered better than having one of them kill the other one; or even that Ashgora's recently been widowed and it's the stead politics that've driven her out.
> In the more normal situation clanspeople marry into neighbouring clans
> so quite a bit of contact is likely unless the divorced wife has fallen
> out with the women of the clan she married into. Even then there are
> ways and means.
Do you have any suggestions about what that contact might be? I'm imagining "Right, you'll be off to stay with your mother's folk for sea season, then."
> >(How on earth did Heortlings become patrilineal?
>
> Orlanth made a great fuss about them being *his* children although
> I'm not convinced they all are.
But Ernalda _knows_ they're her children. And I still find it strange that she'd consider giving them up unless she had her own reasons for doing so.
> >And how did Ernaldans let it happen?)
>
> Ernalda is an example of a successful wife, part of that is she
> doesn't get divorced.
So she's still married to all her husband-protectors?
My impression was that she parted from them, but on her own terms.
My other impression was that the mythology showed signs of, er, cultural change.
> She gives her followers quite a bit of magic
> for manipulating husbands so a Heortling woman who does get divorced
> is seen as a failure by the other women of both her birth clan and
> the one she married into.
We had this discussion back in April, when you said "In a legal sense divorce is easy but socially it's going to be much more difficult. Both for the reasons you mention and also that both parties will be seen to have failed. Conversly if one partner treats the other unreasonably everyone in the clan will know about it."
[About Wind Lords:] "They may be married, but few women will put up with a Wind Lord's constant absences and affairs, and a man's attainment of this status is grounds for divorce." (ST, p. 14)
My impression is that if one party can cite cause for divorce, that party gets off considerably lighter in the consequent social fallout. If that's not the case, I'm definitely thinking of moving somewhere less repressive.
> Remember the laws on custody and divorce
> aren't absolute - there will be cases where women remain in the clan
> they married into or take the children with them when they return to
> their birth clans. Whatever the people involved agree to and I think
> it's the relationship between the woman and the other clan women
> that's more significant in the matter than the one with her ex-husband.
Ideally, everyone else can be rational and sort things out. In the real world, this encourages the stock Heortling figure of the mother-in-law who doesn't want to let go of her grandchildren.
I can see that getting a divorce -- and on favourable terms -- might be something that you plan well in advance. The sagas have some good examples.
> One of the things I've noticed about women is that generally they are
> a lot less forgiving of other women breaking unwritten social rules
> than they are of men. Or than men are of either men or women who break
> the rules.
Do you think this would be the same in Esrolia as it is in Heortland/Sartar?
Cheers,
Jennifer
-- Jennifer Geard
Powered by hypermail