Marriage: Duty vs. Love,
Morality vs. Humanism
“Mythology of a people is ‘the origin of the people’s philosophy, literature and religion’ and ‘the collective sub-consciousness of the whole people’” (Wang 1). Therefore, studying mythology will help us to understand how the perspectives of a people in a specific culture form and how their attitudes toward what they experience take shape. Furthermore, by comparing and contrasting different mythologies, we can explore how different peoples attempted to analyze the world and explain the phenomena around them and, thus, how different cultures developed the earliest branches of knowledge. This essay will briefly examine the concepts of marriage in Chinese and Greek mythology, how they are represented …show more content…
In Chinese mythology, “there is no god or goddess of love” (Wang 83). The closest we have to a deity of this type is Yue Lao or “the old man under the moon.” He is represented as an old man carrying a bag of red strings and the book of marriage which “[records] all the marriages in the human world” (Sun, “The Matchmaking God: Yue Lao”). According to these records, Yue Lao ties up people together by their feet as soon as they are born and the tied-up couple would become husband and wife – inevitably. Therefore, in Chinese mythology, Yue Lao’s red thread is the cause of marriage, regardless of whether there is love between people who are bound together or not. In Greek mythology, however, marriage is almost always based on love and Eros, son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, is the god of love. Except in Hesiod’s account, one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros is usually portrayed as a winged and blindfolded child, carrying with him a quiver of arrows and his golden bow. This “mischievous, naughty” god shoots a golden arrow into the heart of mortals and immortals alike and makes them fall in love (Hamilton 36). Thus, according to the Greeks, Eros’s arrows are what causes love, but love doesn’t necessarily lead to …show more content…
The Chinese have the tendency of “look[ing] at everything through the glasses of morality” and their view on marriage is no exception (Wang 130). Through Yue Lao and his red threads, the Chinese “enforce the duty of the spouses to each other” and “ensure the loyalty to marriage…of the female” (Wang 110) and these are regarded as “the most important elements of marriage” (Wang 84). To the Chinese, marriage was an act of duty and obligation to produce offspring and “ensure the continuity of human race” (Wang 95). The earliest and perhaps most representative example is the marriage of Yu and Tushannv. Because the social structure of China relied heavily on morality, it was necessary to protect this hierarchy in all forms – including myths. Werner, a famous sinologist, claims that “[disregard] of the truth, when useful, was universal,” when describing the sociology of the Chinese in relation to the creation of myths (Werner 52). It seems like every creation of the Chinese had to contribute to the society that they were trying to maintain. One can argue that perhaps the Chinese understood the role that love, or other unmentioned factors, played in marriage, but decided to neglect it because it didn’t serve their purpose. Under these circumstances, there is no room for
Morality vs. Humanism
“Mythology of a people is ‘the origin of the people’s philosophy, literature and religion’ and ‘the collective sub-consciousness of the whole people’” (Wang 1). Therefore, studying mythology will help us to understand how the perspectives of a people in a specific culture form and how their attitudes toward what they experience take shape. Furthermore, by comparing and contrasting different mythologies, we can explore how different peoples attempted to analyze the world and explain the phenomena around them and, thus, how different cultures developed the earliest branches of knowledge. This essay will briefly examine the concepts of marriage in Chinese and Greek mythology, how they are represented …show more content…
In Chinese mythology, “there is no god or goddess of love” (Wang 83). The closest we have to a deity of this type is Yue Lao or “the old man under the moon.” He is represented as an old man carrying a bag of red strings and the book of marriage which “[records] all the marriages in the human world” (Sun, “The Matchmaking God: Yue Lao”). According to these records, Yue Lao ties up people together by their feet as soon as they are born and the tied-up couple would become husband and wife – inevitably. Therefore, in Chinese mythology, Yue Lao’s red thread is the cause of marriage, regardless of whether there is love between people who are bound together or not. In Greek mythology, however, marriage is almost always based on love and Eros, son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, is the god of love. Except in Hesiod’s account, one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros is usually portrayed as a winged and blindfolded child, carrying with him a quiver of arrows and his golden bow. This “mischievous, naughty” god shoots a golden arrow into the heart of mortals and immortals alike and makes them fall in love (Hamilton 36). Thus, according to the Greeks, Eros’s arrows are what causes love, but love doesn’t necessarily lead to …show more content…
The Chinese have the tendency of “look[ing] at everything through the glasses of morality” and their view on marriage is no exception (Wang 130). Through Yue Lao and his red threads, the Chinese “enforce the duty of the spouses to each other” and “ensure the loyalty to marriage…of the female” (Wang 110) and these are regarded as “the most important elements of marriage” (Wang 84). To the Chinese, marriage was an act of duty and obligation to produce offspring and “ensure the continuity of human race” (Wang 95). The earliest and perhaps most representative example is the marriage of Yu and Tushannv. Because the social structure of China relied heavily on morality, it was necessary to protect this hierarchy in all forms – including myths. Werner, a famous sinologist, claims that “[disregard] of the truth, when useful, was universal,” when describing the sociology of the Chinese in relation to the creation of myths (Werner 52). It seems like every creation of the Chinese had to contribute to the society that they were trying to maintain. One can argue that perhaps the Chinese understood the role that love, or other unmentioned factors, played in marriage, but decided to neglect it because it didn’t serve their purpose. Under these circumstances, there is no room for