Depending on the society and the period, this could be either a set price for all brides virgins having a higher price or a negotiated price based on the perceived worth of the girl beautiful or especially industrious women being more highly valued. In the biblical Torah, the former a set price seems to be assumed cf.
Ex —17; Deut —29 , though this certainly does not rule out negotiation. In Classical Greece, it appears to have been a matter of negotiation, as indicated in the Odyssey. The practice continues today in various forms in many usually Eastern countries. A better interpretation of the bride price is that it is a means for the bridegroom to prove his worthiness as a suitor, that he is capable of adequately providing for his bride.
This is especially the case in those societies that practice a set bride price—often a nominal, quite attainable price.
Given that most Western women are expected to be capable of providing for themselves, this explanation also accounts for why the practice would be unnecessary in the West. A few problems have crept up with the institution of the bride price in some cultures over the years. On the one hand, some, usually poorer, parents have exploited the bride price as a means to attain wealth, asking for astronomical sums. Ironically, for all the criticism the practice of the bride price receives from many modern people who regard it as a misogynistic practice, the now nearly ubiquitous Western practice of buying a woman an expensive diamond engagement ring serves as the modern equivalent to the bride price—only the money goes to De Beers instead of to the parents.
Which practice is better, again? The dowry, on the other hand, is the wealth a woman brings to her husband as a part of the marriage. The practice of the dowry continued in Western culture significantly longer than the bride price, continuing until around the dawn of the Industrial Age. In more modern times, at least in the USA, the wedding registry has taken the functional place of the dowry, with the friends and family of both bride and groom providing gifts to help better establish the new home.
As with nearly any legal or traditional practice I can think of, dispensation of the dowry has also led to some abuses, such as bride burning and dowry death. So, let no reader of this blog make this mistake again: the dowry and the bride price are entirely different things, though each has an eye toward improving the success of the fledgling marriage.
Agreed that there is much confusion about this. I think people have this impression that the dowry is sexist, so they naively equate it with buying a bride, when the real problem is more pernicious, where some poor families in the world get rid of their daughters because they cannot afford the dowry. Thanks for this intriguing article. Certainly an interesting read from my perspective here in India working with mainly girls from lower castes.
Hi there, i find you a great writer and am very intrigued and fascinated by your ideas and thoughts. Please let me know if you would be free to do so. No anthropologist or social historian would dispute that there is a major difference.
However, I am sorry to say that this post falls far short in elucidating these practices. I suppose it would be reasonable for me to introduce it parenthetically, however, so I might as well add that into the post.
So long as I managed to accurately represent that this is by no means the case, I achieved my aim. And I could benefit by learning a bit outside my area in the process. Your comments are fair. What can I say?
Spending years writing a dissertation and book on marriage gifts has perhaps made me overeager to correct misconceptions about bridewealth. As Goody has so convincingly argued, bridewealth and dowry are related to the overall structure of a society, its inheritance patterns, levels of social stratification, and modes of reproduction. Bell and Song assume bridewealth must relate to a desire to accumulate, but various anthropologists have shown that many African societies were not at least in the past structured around this value.
Nor do even capitalist societies make marital decisions based just on this desire. Considering their economistic approach, how can female work be a topic of secondary concern? Also, dowry much more clearly relates to negotiations of status, but this just brings one right back to the question of why give bridewealth versus dowry?
Anyway, I am rambling, and really need to go back to grading student exams. No problem—I know full well how it works when one has spent a long time on a given project. I only brought the economistic perspective represented by Bell and Song and others into play because it seems to be along the lines of public thinking about such things and needs to be opposed.
My own points in the post were oversimplified and trying to show how such a thing would function in a modern, western society more than doing a true historical reconstruction which takes a lot more time and effort, as you would know.
Now back to some grading of my own…. A final note: while dated, The Meaning of Marriage Payments, ed. Man, u have really clarified me all u have said abt d different btw bride price and dowry is what it means in my tradition. What about marriage expenses. Who has to bear it? In India marriage expenses are a lot. Costs something like 5 to 10lakhs. Marriage expenses are due to clothing, jewellery , marriage celebration, guest comforts etc etc..
Both the girls side and the boys side wants to show off the wedding. Who has to bear this expenses? The boy? The girl? If the girl takes a loan and comes to her husband for these expenses to showoff and to make her parents happy.
Is this the right way? I think that this offered a fantastic explication of the differences between Bride price and Dowry. I am writing a paper on the practice of both dowry and bride price and began my research knowing nothing about either topic. I have been struggling with this idea that many people thing that industrialized states are free from such practices. However, when reading out of my text book it pointed out that in American culture traditionally for the father to pay for his daughter wedding… Is this a sub-group of dowry?
Id love to hear your thoughts! I suppose one might consider payment for a wedding a sort of substitute for a dowry much like an engagement ring is a sort of bridewealth paid to de Beers , especially given the absurd amount of money often spent on weddings. Good job, please keep it up. If i can get a link with you, i will hold it in high esteem. I have some relative materials to share and if possible on your website.
Did women who were the subject of the dowry have any say in how the dowry was used? The provisions made?
The secure storage of said funds? Yes, the women often had full say over the use of the dowry. The marriage contracts at Elephantine and from some of the Judaean caves not from Qumran but in nearby caves indicate that women could actually wield a relatively high degree of property power in those periods at least.
Dowry is given to the bride herself to engage in trade during her marriage or after divorce. Example is the virtuous woman who buys a field in the Book of Proverbs. The bride price is for the parents of the bride. Example is that the blood of Jesus christ was shed and given to Satan owner of humanity as the bride price of the church members.
The bride has to be pure in both cases of the dowry and the bride price ,so I think there may not have been a bride price or dowry for second marriages neither were there a white dress. In the case of the church members,they are purified as soon as they belive and then they get baptized in the expressed name of Jesus Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit. In this case the Holy Spirit is the dowry given to the bride herself or the church members to get involved in the trade of bringing more converts more equity.
The dowry is the evidence of the wealth of the groom as it was explained by the Apostle Paul that Jesus Christ FILLS the believers with the Holy Spirit as a down payment of the promise of the eternal life. Also Paul said that a Christian man ought not to keep a concubine because it befrauds another man the father of the bride who in this case does not receive the bride price or compensation for bringing up the girl. The dowry and bride price were practiced from Jerusalem to Japan among the Semites or children of Shem since Asia ,North America, South America ,and the islands nearby were given to Shem at the time of Peleg!
As we see the name of Shem over towns and cities throughout Asia like Ezmir,Shemiran ,or Samiram and all of them mean from the loin of Shem or from the thigh of Shem since people were polite in the old time. The father of the groom also paid for the ceremony and the feast attended by invited guests as we see in the wedding in the city of Cana attended by Jesus Christ and his family.
In Asia all cultures were bound to keep the brides to be or girls pure as it was pronounced by Noah: Blessed be God of Shem. As for the Gentiles,they are prone to fornication by nature as they were called foolish Gentiles in the Old Covenant since they also did not cover themselves properly and therefore the father of the bride does not gaurrantee the purity of the bride so they are given away. That is why in the West in the churches we hear that the priests say at the altar at the time of the ceremony of marriage :Who is going to give away this bride?
The father of the bride also pays for the ceremony and the feast. Some parents make the deal sugar coded by giving money to the groom also. It is also noticable in the Book of Acts where James,the brother of Jesus Christ says that the Gentiles should not be burdened by the combersome laws of the Old Covenant but only to keep four laws.
Three of them were dietary and the last one was to abstain from fornication! Parts of this material are revelations. Incidentally, the author, Tamora Pierce, did use both terms correctly. It was just my unfamiliarity with bride prices that confused me. Thanks for this article. As much a I enjoyed and relish clarification. And movies that focus on modern women and how parents deny her choice of husband just because another is willing to pile X amount into a wedding but show zero filial desire- with of course viewers opting for man x over the more sincere one who is working hard.
Regardless, this article was very informative and I enjoyed it. Thank you for this. Your blog clarified things for me.
I think cultures vary, but I personally liked the difference between dowry and brideprice mentioned earlier. Let people practice what suites them, every culture is right where ever it is practiced, but thanks Jas. It is most certainly not true that every culture is right wherever it is practiced. Female genital mutilation, honor rapes, and other similar practices are abhorrent despite being acceptable in certain cultures.
Cultures that accept such things should change. Write your comment here…Hi Jason. Before Ghana was colonised by the British in , bride price did not involve cash as cash had not yet been introduced into the Ghanaian economy.
But times have changed. Bride price payment has become a more individual practice. A groom mainly funds the expenses of his marriage, though some families still provide financial support to their sons during marriage. An even more drastic evolution is the involvement of cash and bargaining. The amount to be paid is rigorously negotiated by the families of the groom and the bride. The items on the demand list have also taken on a modern look.
Some families demand electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops and iPads as bride price. Although bride price custom has significant cultural and social functions, there are latent, unrecognised and unintended consequences of the practice. Our study set out to explore how bride price payment shapes cultural and gender identity and husband-to-wife abuse in Ghana.
We found that there were social and psychological implications of the practice of bride price. In Ghana paying the bride price is taken primarily as a cultural constant that has to be fulfilled. But, as our research shows, it has both social and psychological implications for the men who pay and for the women for whom it is paid.
Despite our findings, the practice of bride price is a sensitive cultural issue, and to suggest its proscription is likely to be slow — or to fail.
We conducted semi-structured focus group discussions and in-depth individual interviews with 32 participants, made up of 16 perpetrators men and 16 victims women from rural and urban Ghana. That is, we classified female participants with self-reported experiences of physical or sexual abuse, or both, from current or past marital partner as victims, and men who had inflicted physical or sexual abuse, or both, on a current or past marital partner as perpetrators.
Our study discovered that both male and female participants thought bride price practice was necessary for achieving desired masculinity and femininity in Ghana. Female participants saw it as an important part of womanhood, bestowing respect and dignity in marriage. Men, on the other hand, viewed it as a necessary condition for male identity in society.
Failure to fulfil it could greatly undermine their identity and dominance in marriage. It was evident in our study that bride price could lead women to appear worthless unless paid for, and to be treated however a man wants. For example, in response to whether or not bride price practice should be proscribed, one female participant from a rural area said:. How can we abolish our tradition?
I will not agree that a man should walk into my house and take my daughter without a bride price.
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