It indexes the names of the bride and the groom, their counties of residence, and the date on which the bond was filed. The database includes 11,533 bonds and 23,066 names. In practice, only a minority of marriages were licensed by the colony in this fashion. These bonds obligated the groom and his fellow bondsman (often a relative of the bride) monetarily, should the terms of the bond not be fulfilled. By signing the bond, the partners were swearing they had no preexisting marital contract or other impediment to hinder the marriage. During this period prospective marital partners were required to file a bond with the governor. Still, while men may have been freer to engage in extramarital relationships, women who attempted the same have nearly always been ostracized and denigrated.This database indexes early marriage bonds held at the New Jersey State Archives. In those societies, the relationship between a man and his mistress may have been illicit, but it was expected and tolerated-after all, men had to satisfy their uncontrollable sexual urges somehow. Husbands and wives “were not expected to quiver at each other’s touch, to adore one another or to fulfill each other’s emotional needs,” she writes. Historically, families around the world have arranged marriages primarily for political or economic reasons. That’s because the idea of a romantic marriage is a relatively modern one. Since Hagar’s era, however, a handful of women have learned to parlay their scandalous relationships into positions of power-and some have changed history in doing so.Ībbott begins her collection of biographies with an important caveat: Mistressdom hasn’t always been as stigmatized as it is today. Several millenniums later, the mistress remains a tenuous position, as historian Elizabeth Abbott explores in her new book, Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman, out this week. The mistress’s pride was no match for the wife’s wrath.
Her lesson: Any power she had ever acquired was ephemeral, contingent on factors beyond her ability to please her lover or bear him a healthy son. In an instant, Hagar was banished a second time.
“Cast out this slave woman with her son!” she demanded of Abraham.
(An angel of God eventually persuaded a chastened Hagar to return to the couple.) Several years later, after God restored Sarah’s fertility and she gave birth to Isaac, Sarah began, once again, to fiercely resent her husband’s concubine. When Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael-who would become Abraham’s heir-the formerly submissive servant turned haughty and began to treat Abraham’s lawful wife with “contempt.” Sarah punished Hagar for her attitude and sent the slave packing. *Īccording to the Bible, Hagar was an Egyptian slave sent to the bed of her master, Abraham, by his barren wife, Sarah. Before Monica Lewinsky, Camilla Parker Bowles, or Marilyn Monroe, there was Hagar-the world’s first known mistress.
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