As recently as a year ago when I wrote about the movie The Quiet Man dowries puzzled me. If a husband (and husband's family) is getting this free labor, shouldn't they be paying money to her family? Bride-price is exactly that, and is the custom in many cultures.
Isn't dowry just a woman getting her inheritance before her parents die then, as she moves off to be part of another family?
1 comment:
In Jane Austen's novels, the motivation for a dowry was to compensate for the expectation that the main estate would be inherited by the eldest male. Other sons and all daughters would get much less. The mother's dowry would be divided between her daughters as their dowries. The younger sons were expected to go into the military or the clergy.
From the point of view of the parent of a girl, her dowry is going to fund the granddaughters.
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