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“His money is our money, my money is my money”

/ gynocentrism

The following items explore the history of material contributions to marriage from both husband and wife, and thier respective families. Traditional practices, such as bridewealth and dowry, represent offerings to a conjugal fund that helps to support the life of the married couple — this in contrast to the more recent trend of “romantic love marriages” where typically women bring no material contributions to the relationship table.

VIDEOS AND ARTICLES

– A Discussion on Marital History with Paul Elam & Shah
– What Does She Brings to the Table? ~ Discussion with Paul Elam & Shah
– Romantic Gynocentrism vs. The Dowry ~ Stream by This Is Shah
– What Is Dowry? : Women & Rules of Modern Dating ~ by “It’s Complicated”

Count Leo Tolstoy criticizes romantic love

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The following article transcribing the comments of Count Leo Tolstoy, published in the Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore) – Friday 21 December 1888.

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ROMANTIC LOVE

Count Tolstoi, whose works are deserving of attention for their insight into human nature, thus discourses on the evils of Romantic love.

“I wish,” said Count Tolstoi to a correspondent “to write a novel, a romance, exposing the conventional illusion of romantic love. I have already written it, but it must be turned upside down and rewritten. It is too much of a treatise as it stands, and there is not enough of action in it.

My object is to fill the reader with horror at the result of taking romantic love au sérieux. The end to which the whole story will lead up will be the murder of a wife by her husband. It will exhibit the depravation of married life by the substitution of romantic love, a fever born of carnal passion for Christian love, which is born of identity of sentiment, similarity of ideal, of friendship of the soul. Upon that love, Christian love, the love of brother and sister, if the carnal love can be grafted it is well, but the former, not the latter, is the first condition of happy married life.

Herein the peasants teach us a lesson. They regard what we regard as romantic love as a disease, temporary and painful, and dangerous. With them no marriage is made under its influence. Anything is better than that. The Herrstatten, who marry by the drawing of lots, are wiser than we. Our system is the worst possible, and the whole of our building ceremonial, and the honeymoon, the fasting, and the incitement to carnality are directly calculated to result in the depravation of matrimony.

Not in one case out of a hundred does romantic love result in a lifelong happy union. The young people whose lives lie in different orbits are drawn together by this evanescent passion. They marry. For a month they are happy—perhaps even for a year, or two years. Then they hate each other for the rest of their lives, spending their time in paying homage to the respectabilities by concealing the truth from their neighbours. It must be so.

If Anna Karenina had married Leven she must have abandoned him likewise. Romantic love is like opium or hashish. But it passes. It is not overpowering and delightful. But it passes. It is not human nature to wish to renew the experience. For this novelty is indispensable. So the wife betrays her husband, and the husband, is false to his wife, and the world becomes one wide brothel.

I wish to open the eyes of all to the real nature and the tragic consequences of this substitution of romantic for Christian love. I see it clearly; oh! so clearly; and when you which no one else seems to see a thing which no one else forms and you see a thing which no one else forms and you feel you must gather all your forces, and devote yourself to setting forth the truth as you see it. This depravation of marriage is all because Christianity has been a word and not a thing. It will however, be a reality again soon.”

[Source: Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore) – Friday 21 December 1888]

J.R.R. Tolkien criticizes chivalry and courtly love

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1. On the Artificiality and False Deification of Love and the Lady:

“There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. It idealizes ‘love’ — and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, ‘service’, courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity – of the old-fashioned ‘his divinity’ = the woman he loves – the object or reason of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril.” (Letter #43 – The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 2000)

2. On the Unrealistic and Permanent Notion of Romantic Love:

“It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly ‘theocentric’. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man’s eyes off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of ‘true love’, as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a ‘love’ that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).” (Letter #43 – The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 2000)

ANALYSIS:

In these passages, Tolkien critiques the chivalric tradition of courtly love on several grounds:

Artificial Origins: He describes courtly love as an “artificial courtly game” designed to enjoy love outside the context of marriage, which he sees as contrary to moral and spiritual ideals.

False Idolatry: Tolkien argues that the tradition elevates “Love” and “the Lady” to the status of “imaginary Deities,” displacing God as the true center of devotion. This deification of the beloved woman is “false and at best make-believe.”

Unrealistic Expectations: He criticizes the romantic notion that love is a “permanent thing” requiring no effort, which sets unrealistic expectations and contributes to marital breakdowns when challenges arise.

Distraction from Reality: Tolkien warns that idealizing women as “guiding stars” or divinities prevents men from seeing them as “fallen human-being[s]” and equal partners in life’s struggles, leading to a distorted view of relationships.

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Source:

These excerpts are drawn from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter (Houghton Mifflin, 2000, ISBN: 978-0618056996). Due to copyright, only the relevant excerpts are quoted from Letter 43 of the 2000 edition.

Romantic Love In America – by Henry Finck (1887)

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The following excerpt is from Henry T. Finck’s book Romantic Love & Personal Beauty: Development, Causal Relations, Historic & National Peculiarities (1887).  Finck tells how English colonialism would eventually be responsible for implanting romantic love throughout the world, a project that would be completed via “the Anglisation of the planet.” Notably, it was American culture that took this impulse and developed it to such an extreme that it resulted, says the author,  in women becoming spoiled, selfish, rude and ungrateful — what we would today refer to as gynocentric.