AND that brings me back to that weird ass "marriage was a Job for rich noblewomen what if she tried to make it work instead!!" Post because again that's just. Completely ignoring the already abysmal rights for women in that time period. Women were not considered people. They got married and were the man's property, legally. He had the right to do whatever he wanted to her. Idk about ~European~ society but in lots of other places women couldnt even initiate divorce. Why would she be able to? Property doesn't really have legal rights. Divorce is still forbidden in the Catholic Church. She owed him sex because that was the Man's Need and Right and she was literally a vessel for his pleasure (this still exists today in the Church). She owed him children, preferably sons, because she was in a Heterosexual marriage contract in a patriarchal society. Any man that truly loved and respected his wife and valued her regardless of reproductive capability and the requirements of the marriage contract was an anomaly. Quite literally going against the norm. If a girl or woman was learning she'd be getting married and was devastated it was because of the objectification and loss of autonomy. Ik today it's portrayed as a desire to frolick in fields and a desire for romantic love to be the foundation of marriage rather than money but from what I've read over the years the legally permissible violence in heterosexual marriage was, unsurprisingly, a MASSIVE TURNOFF to getting married.
