What constitutes a marriage in the eyes of a community? A wedding? Love? Consummation? Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) explore the relationship between emotion, ritual and power at a collaboratory at the University of Adelaide from February 10-12.
"The Penny Wedding" by Alexander Carse, 1819. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Dr Katie Barclay, one of the organizers of the upcoming change collaboratory, researches “bedding rituals” to understand how eighteenth century ideas of love, intimacy, and marriage are enforced by communities witnessing private acts.
Although the nuances of the ritual vary from place to place, a bedding ritual usually incorporates a newly-wed couple being put to bed on their wedding night by their friends, family and wider community. In sixteenth-century Germany, newly-weds were put to bed to the sound of pipers and drums, as well as ‘obscene’ noises. After the wedding party withdrew from the bedroom, the family continued to celebrate, drowning out the expected noise. In most of Europe, unless you were the heir to the throne, no one watched the consummation itself. Instead, the bedding ritual symbolised the consummation and the community’s investment in that consummation.
According to Dr Barclay: “Given that the bed is an object with connotations of sex and sexual intimacy in this culture, we can begin to understand the emotional signification of the bedding ritual, in marking not only the sexual consummation of marriage and the community’s endorsement of the marriage, but the ways that they placed certain forms of sexual intimacy at the heart of marriage.”
By bearing witnessing to a private sexual relationship though “bedding the couple” friends and family were able to weigh in, provide public support, and enforce community expectations about intimacy. Barclay explains that bedding rituals “reinforce the sense that this is an emotional relationship that is centred on a couple, but incorporates the group. In turn, this helps explain the presence of the numerous nosy neighbours during this period that monitor sexual unions”.
But “beddings” were more than ritual—in Scotland they held up in court as a legal indicator of marriage. Barclay writes:
“In 1778, David Mackie and Margaret Ferguson were put to bed in lieu of a wedding ceremony. Margaret described being asked to go to the house in Maybole where David was with a group of male friends. When she arrived, they asked her whether she wished to go to bed with David and told her the local minister, Mr Wright, had advised them this was the best course of action. She, having no friends to advise her, agreed to the proposition, and took off her gown and climbed into bed with David. The couple were then left alone for ten minutes, when the men returned, bringing with them several other people from the local community.
In presence of these people, Blair [a friend of the groom] came up to the Bedside and said ‘Who is this here? Young folks I think.’ Then addressing himself to the parties he said ‘You David McKie, take this woman to be your married wife.’ To which McKie replied, ‘I do before God and these Witnesses,’ and then put the same question to the Defender, to which she, from the confusion arising from her situation before strangers, answered ‘Yes’. Whereupon Blair addressing himself to the Company, said, ‘Friends, you hear and see this’, and then the parties instantly came out of Bed before all the Company. Following the bedding, the company all toasted their health and gloves (a common favour) were distributed as wedding gifts. Blair wrote marriage lines for the couple, which they signed.”
The “bedded” bride later contested the validity of the marriage in court, claiming she didn’t realise it was legally valid, and that nothing indecent occurred. The court, however, found the couple to be married, and the reluctant wife, we can assume, returned to the marriage bed.
For more information contact:
Dr Katie Barclay
katie.barclay@adelaide.edu.au