Given that my friends either call themselves feminists or are, at the very least, intelligent and independent, I have been surprised, as I have reached my late twenties, by how many have turned out to be desperate to get married.
A few years ago they were raging over the pay gap and the glass ceiling — but recently their concerns have changed. Friends who once said that they didn’t believe in the institution of marriage can be found with their noses in the latest bridal magazines, worrying about which colour is more appropriate for their dress: white or off-white?
But, beyond the exhausting details of frock, hair and make-up, marriage raises important issues for average modern women. How should we feel about the tradition that men do the asking? What about the symbolism of the ring? Should a woman change her name? Is it appropriate to be ”given away”?
The tradition I have always thought most objectionable — but I imagined had ceased to exist — is that of fathers being asked for their daughters’ hand in marriage.
All wedding conventions are a throwback to a time when women were considered second-class citizens, but this particular one seems to emphasise that more than any other. After all, it involves a father agreeing to hand his daughter to another man, even before she has been consulted. Would anyone opt for this approach when it comes to other life-changing decisions? ”Sir, I wonder whether I could impregnate your daughter tonight,” perhaps?
I have been amazed to find that the tradition is still going strong.
In the past few years there have been a number of occasions when a friend has announced her engagement and, after the obvious — ”But I thought you didn’t believe in marriage?” — I have spluttered: ”Well, at least he didn’t ask your dad for his permission!”
In each case, I have expected my friends to laugh along, before being shocked by the mumbled admission that, yes, their boyfriend did ask their father and, worse, they were pleased he had.
Hilary Wainwright, a feminist writer and co-editor of Red Pepper magazine, is surprised that this tradition persists. She feels men who ask permission and women who welcome it are ”living in another century. It implies that women are a possession. I can’t work out why people would do it other than as a backlash against disappearing traditions. It seems to be out of sync with any idea of equality or marriage as a relationship between two equals.”
Some women do share her misgivings. Catherine Dean is marrying James in June. ”He did not ask my dad and I would have been horrified if he had. What business is it of anyone who I marry? Why does my fiancé have to ask permission from someone who has no control over my actions, given that women can now vote, work, sleep with whoever we want and spend our own money as we wish? I am not having my father ‘give me away’ either. I’ve been living independently for years and it would seem weird to regress back to the Dark Ages just because I’m getting married.”
Catherine’s dad, Jeff, feels the same. ”It is almost impossible to envisage James asking my permission. It would have been at odds with our relationship or the relationship I have with Cathy. It would have involved him misreading the runes so badly that I would have been left querying his ability to operate in society and, of course, I would have had to ask Cathy’s advice on the best way to respond.”
He refutes the argument that this is a harmless tradition: ”This is not about quaint customs; it is about women being seen as lesser mortals and simpering eye candy. It assumes that a father retains rights over a daughter when she is, in law, an adult — rights which it is assumed he does not have over a son. It also assumes a woman cannot enter into a contract on her own behalf.”
Michael Morrison proposed to his girlfriend after asking her father for permission: ”I asked him because it felt like the proper thing to do, but I was asking him only for permission to ask his daughter — not for him to decide for her. Whether she said yes or no was up to her.”
But, in many cases, it might not just be tradition that is the incentive to ask daddy. As one soon-to-be-married friend said: ”You’d have asked too if you wanted her dad to foot the bill.”
The changing nature of marriage also makes this practice seem out of touch. When someone wishes to enter into a civil partnership with someone of the same sex, will he or she still ask a parent’s permission? And in families where there are two dads or two mums, who will get asked? I know of one case where both the mother and father were asked, but of no cases where the mother alone was asked.
Wainwright’s mother, Joyce (85), whose husband proposed to her 60 years ago — announcing it to her father only after the event — wryly suggests another reason women might encourage this practice.
It may have been used to say no. She quotes a rhyme: ”Go to father she said, When he asked her to wed, Though she knew that he knew, That her father was dead. And she knew that he knew, What a life he had led, And she knew that he knew, What she meant when she said, Go to father.” — Â