Meditations: Marriage for Love or for Money?

Throughout the Secret History of the Mongols, and further throughout my readings on the Mongol Empire, I encountered a theme that’s common in pretty much all history and a lot of literature: marriage as a political tool. Genghis Khaan would take a wife in order to secure his relationship with (i.e. superiority over) that tribe. When you can have as many wives as you want, this strategy works pretty well. Morris Rossabi put it clearly when he stated that “the Mongols often used marital alliances as a means of binding non-Mongols to them.” The Ilkhan Abakha, for example, established a good relationship with the Byzantines because his wife was a Byzantine princess. Even Edward I of England considered marrying a Mongol in order to secure an alliance with them.

Of course this is not a Mongol innovation; East or West, children of prominent families have often been entered into marriages for political or monetary reasons. In fact, marriage was seen very much as a financial alliance for probably most of history. This is old news to pretty much everyone reading this, so I don’t feel the need to go into too much detail about it.

Reading about it this time, for some reason, I didn’t feel like many people do about the whole thing. The general cultural consensus is that we are much more advanced than those people, that our freer society allows us to marry for love, and that this is a much improved system. In our movies and books, girls (and boys) often escape arranged marriages (Pocahontas, Ever After, The Princess Bride, etc.) and end up in happy relationships with the ones they truly love. Awww.

But using marriage as a method of alliance was actually a very good idea. It does not apply so much anymore, because our political/financial systems just don’t work the way they used to, but I think it’s a mistake to view political marriages as just a cruel arrangement for the parties involved. Sure, a princess might get shipped off to a foreign land and wed to a man she couldn’t stand, but that marriage could potentially save thousands of lives. Wars have been prevented by beneficial marriages, and nations have been founded and developed because of a single partnership. In that sort of a context, a single girl’s romantic unhappiness just looks pretty insignificant. And of course, we need to remember that a marriage then did not mean what marriage now means. Mongol khans may not have spent much time with their wives at all, and even for European royalty, one simply was not expected to try to have some lovely romance with one’s spouse. A life in general then was different from a life now, and it usually was not intended to involve rose petals and affectionate glances. (That’s not to say that people in the past did not long for romantic love, just that it took a very different form and was thought to occur in a very different social context, usually outside of marriage.)

Our modern ideal view of marriage is that it should create a happy family; the old view of elite marriage was that it should create peaceful nations. And that seems to me to be a legitimate cause. So my point is, maybe we shouldn’t boo so much when a king insists his daughter marry the slow-witted neighboring prince. And maybe we shouldn’t cheer so much when she elopes with her true love and leaves the countries in the tension that could have been avoided with a  bit of personal sacrifice on her part.

This brings me back to the namesake of this blog, Our Lady of the Mongols. She seems like a heroine in a modern context, someone who stood up for herself and refused to be a victim of the system. Of course, hers is an extreme example, and being shuffled from one khan to the next isn’t conducive to any sort of happiness, and probably not going to produce much of an alliance, either. I do think it’s admirable that she chose her personal religious devotion over agreeing to be sent off to yet another khan on her father’s say-so. But that doesn’t make her father the villain; he was being a politician, and he probably thought he was choosing his constituents’ security over his daughter’s comfort.

Of course, times have changed, and Malia isn’t going to be betrothed to Prince Harry in this lifetime to preserve that “special relationship.” (Though if they fell in love on their own, the Sun would have a field day!) In our world, we are expected to marry for love, and if two young people are being used as bartering chips in corporate deals, we tend to get a little indignant. So why is this? As I mentioned before, the system itself is no longer one that benefits from marital alliance, so that changes things. But even when examining situations in historical contexts, we often think that people should not be unwillingly wed for the greater good. It seems to me to have to do with our culture’s broader philosophy of individualism. The individual now comes above the greater good, often above family or politics. Is this why we now view political/financial marriages as so barbaric? Because we place a higher value on individual happiness? Do we thus place a lower value on community security/success? Is it really a zero-sum game? Does our modern world value individual happiness because, in the newer system, it is thought to contribute to community security/success?

Of course, I don’t have any answers to these questions. (I never do!) But a scenario that lies on the cusp of the marriage as a tool/marriage for love transition showcases all of these themes, and then some. Some of you may have heard of Consuelo Vanderbilt. Consuelo was the only daughter of Alva Smith Vanderbilt and William Kissam Vanderbilt. (I list Alva first very deliberately.) Consuelo’s story is not a happy one; she made her debut in New York society as an elegant heiress, and she was secretly engaged to a man she loved. However, her mother wanted a marital alliance for her only daughter that would be advantageous to the Vanderbilt name, and she threatened/cajoled/manipulated her daughter into breaking off her engagement and instead marrying the Duke of Marlborough, a man Consuelo had met and disliked. The Duke didn’t like her any better than she liked him; Consuelo was marrying him to bring honor to the family name, and the Duke was marrying her for her multi-million dollar dowry. After a few years of unhappiness and the births of two sons, the couple divorced. Consuelo was no longer young, and though she married again, she never lived the Hollywood fantasy that she, as a girl with a secret fiancé and more money than she could possibly spend, could have hoped for. The Duke of Marlborough also married again, and that one ended more poorly than the first.

There was no happy ending for either Consuelo or the Duke; their arranged marriage was not one that ended in love like in the novels. It was just two people whose happiness was sacrificed in order to provide security for their families. But the thing is, it worked. The relatively new Vanderbilt family proved their worth and established themselves, and the Duke filled his family coffers. When I visited Blenheim Palace, the Marlborough family’s estate, one of the tour guides made a joke about me being American and said, “We like American money here. Without American money, we wouldn’t be here like this.” He explained that Blenheim is only privately owned because of the Vanderbilt money. The leftover interest of Consuelo’s dowry is still used to maintain the estate (now supplemented by entry fees), and the Duke of Marlborough lives in a private wing there. Unlike many estates, which could not afford their own upkeep and taxes, Blenheim Palace did not decay due to lack of funds, but flourished because of a single miserable marriage. On the one hand, Consuelo’s life is sad. And if a movie were made about her, we’d probably root for her to marry her secret fiancé. On the other hand, I like visiting Blenheim, and thousands of people now enjoy the estate that was built with a teenage girl’s tears. So what do we think here? Were those tears worth it?  If it were our own daughter, or our own estate, which would we choose, and which should we choose? Our posterity, or posterity in general?

Mongolian Connections: Wrestle for Your Ring!

I came to Mongolia to study folk literature, and though my research quickly took off down a different route (the “religious studies” route—go figure), still I uncovered some folk tales that are strikingly similar to our own. One myth that Mongolians seem very fond of repeating is about the traditional costumes wrestlers wear.

Wrestlers don’t wear a lot of clothing, just a pair of briefs, a pair of boots, and a bolero-like jacket called a “jodag” or “zodag.” It pretty much just has sleeves and a back, and then ties around the belly. The exact story of why the jodag has an open chest varies from teller to teller, but it always has to do with a successful female wrestler. The most popular tale says that the costumes used to be full jackets, and at one festival, a mysterious wrestler defeated all the other wrestlers, and after receiving his reward (or after the final victory), he ripped open his jacket to reveal that he was indeed she. From that point on, jackets had to have the chest exposed so that women would no longer be able to compete. Another version says that Khutulun, a niece of Kublai Khan, challenged any suitors to a wrestling match. If she won, he had to give her 100 horses, but if he won, he could marry her. Supposedly she beat enough suitors to win 10,000 horses, and no man was ever able to defeat her so she remained single forever. Though I’ve heard that legend end with, “and since that time, women have not been allowed to wrestle, which is why men wear open-chested jackets,” I fail to see how one (Princess Khutulun) leads to the other (open-chested jackets), and I think two separate Mongolian girl-wrestler stories were merged into that one.

The idea of a woman defeating all the men isn’t confined to Mongolia—the first that comes to mind is the Greek tale of Atalanta, a young girl who beat all her suitors in footraces until one won through trickery. One Celtic myth tells the story of Macha, a woman who was able to run faster than the king’s fastest horses, and who gave birth during a race. The Iliad relates that Penthesilea defeated several heroes in battle before being killed by Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior. I’m sure there are tons of other stories like this, and they are just on the back of my mind, but I can’t quite remember them.

So this got me thinking—why do these stories exist and persist? Why are they so popular? Most of them probably were written by men, or at least recorded and handed down by men... So why did men delight in stories featuring women’s superiority over some men? Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own, points out that the same men who were demanding quiet and meek daughters and wives in real life were exalting heroines like Antigone or Rosalind in their literary works. And this is true in the legends, too—men liked being in power, demanded to be in power, yet read and re-told stories in which women were often the victors. What factors are at work here? Is it that these men, though they, for practical necessity, had to keep women under their power, truly wanted or admired strong heroines and thus put them in their poetry? Or is it the other way around—that though they fantasized that women could have power, the fantasy was best (for them) left as a fantasy, and they didn’t appreciate the reality of powerful women? (Is that even the other way around, or is it the same exact thing?)

But there are also cultural differences at work in these stories. Atalanta did eventually lose her race, and Penthesilea was killed by a man. (For Macha, the Celtic heroine, the story gets much more complicated.)  And not all stories of strong heroines are positive—Look at Lady MacBeth as a classic example, or many portrayals of Cleopatra. (Especially Roman portrayals of Cleopatra versus Octavia; though the reasons for hating one and loving the other might be political, which traits did they emphasize in each? Also, Horace's Ode 1.37 has a portrayal of Cleopatra that fits well into this post's theme of whether men admire or resent real powerful women.) Do the men who passed on these stories use them actually as catharsis, as a way to keep women down even in legends? That is, writing/reading the stories not as “Atalanta/ Penthesilea defeated many men,” but as “even the best woman Atalanta/ Penthesilea could eventually be brought down by a man.” In contrast, the Mongolian legend never has that moment of “But wait! She couldn’t beat all the men!” In fact, the legend of the jorba can be read as one that says that Mongol men still believe a female wrestler might be able to best them; thus they need to keep women out of the ring. This might reflect Mongol attitudes toward women generally; women had a lot of power, from Genghis Khaan’s wife in The Secret History of the Mongols to later queens who ruled when their alcoholic husbands or young sons could not. Marco Polo reported that women were trained as warriors, and though they no longer wrestle, girls are still allowed to compete in archery and horseback riding during Naadam. (There will be a later post, hopefully, about the Awesomeness of Mongolian women.) And there doesn’t seem to be any backlash against this, at least not that I’ve encountered.

What makes the difference here? Mongolia was traditionally a patriarchal society, just like most others, so why do its myths and history reflect more respect for women? Do its myths and history even reflect more respect for women, or am I reading them wrong? What is the relationship between attitudes toward women and women in myth? And finally—what do our myths say about women? (When I say “our myths,” take this however you like, from your religion to your culture to the movies you watch and show your children.) Disney’s Mulan might be an admirable girl, but she impressed her captain and defeated the Huns (who came, by the way, from Mongolia) through ingenuity, not through strength. (Though you'll need both to reach the arrow...) On the other hand, Disney’s Nala ceded to Simba’s authority as king, but she could still always pin him, and it was her advice sent him back to defeat Scar. (So now we know what I consider my mythology.)

You could apply these analyses to many women admired by our society, and look at which religious stories we choose to emphasize (Noah and David get a lot of press-Miriam, Deborah, and Jael? Not so much), which historical figures we exalt, even which celebrities we admire, and, just as importantly, what we admire them for. So how do we stack up? What sorts of girls are we looking back at, and thus, what sorts of girls are we bringing forth?

Mongolia is Relevant: Our Lady of the Mongols

I found out I’d be spending the summer in Mongolia just before I went to Istanbul. I was initially interested in two (very broad) aspects of Mongolian society—nomadic culture and traditional literature, and modern Mongolia’s development—and didn’t know much about the Mongol Empire. It was something that pushed on the fringes of what I studied, but rarely explicitly intersected with it, at least in what I read (mostly European/American texts). So it was a bit of a joy to encounter in Istanbul the character “Mary of the Mongols.” Mary was so nicknamed because she married a Mongol khan, after his father (her original betrothed) died. When that husband was assassinated by his brother, the brother also wanted to marry Mary, so she fled back to her father (an Emperor), who then planned to marry her off to a different Mongol khan (the fourth in this story). Instead, Mary joined a convent and gave enough money to rebuild the nunnery and attach a church. In honor of her, the church is referred to as the Church of St. Mary of the Mongols, and she is affectionately termed “Our Lady of the Mongols.” She also donated money to help build/decorate Christ Chora, (or I think she did—she was certainly featured in the mosaics there along with other benefactors).

So I heard about this woman and her churches and discovered, for the first time, Mongolia making an impact in a tangible and permanent way, only days after discovering that Mongolia would be making an impact on me in a tangible and permanent way. We (myself included) tend to reduce the image of Mongolia to some remote steppe and desert, whose empire was as brief as it was massive. But that’s just not true, as a little bit of Mongolian-history sleuthing will show you. For a while, Mongolia was there, not only pressing at the edges of the world, but slipping into and out of it and leaving their mark all over the continent. They may not have constructed many extant buildings, and Genghis Khaan may not have left much documentation, but as Our Lady of the Mongols demonstrates: Mongolia is relevant.