Maidenhood
Maidenhood – the state before marriage, as well as the condition of a woman who has not entered into marital relations (Ozhegov & Shvedova, 2006, p. 366).
The beginning of the period of maidenhood varied over time and depended on the recognized age of entry into marriage. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a girl was considered suitable for marriage as early as the age of twelve, although marriage could be contracted even at the age of seven; such a marriage, however, still had to be confirmed at a later age, in different European countries at sixteen or eighteen. In the East, a ten-year-old girl was recognized as suitable for marriage, and by the age of twelve and a half she was already considered to have “sat too long” unmarried.
Nevertheless, there also existed a legal form defining marriageable age: it usually established the age of sixteen, eighteen, or twenty-one for entering into marriage, depending on the particular region of Europe. Thus, maidenhood began approximately at the age of ten to twelve and ended with the actual age of entry into marriage: in antiquity, on average, at thirteen to fourteen in the East and fifteen to sixteen in Europe; in the Middle Ages, at sixteen to eighteen in Europe; and from the sixteenth century onward, the European marriage age for women was twenty-four to twenty-eight, depending on social status (Muravyeva, 2002).
In the Russian Empire, by the beginning of the twentieth century, traditional early and almost universal marriage still predominated almost completely. People entered marriage immediately upon reaching the socially recognized age of adulthood, which in the second half of the nineteenth century was between thirteen and sixteen for girls and between seventeen and eighteen for young men.
In the southern Russian regions, a girl who had not married by the age of nineteen was considered “overaged,” and twenty-year-old brides began to be rejected: “there must be some defect if she has been sitting unmarried for four whole years.” In the central and Upper Volga provinces, from the age of twenty-three to twenty-five a girl was considered “too old,” and suitors “avoided” her, while a twenty-five-year-old unmarried woman was called a “zasidelka,” a “vekovusha,” or an “old maid.” In the Russian North and in Siberia, the norm for marriageable age was set within broader limits and at a somewhat higher average level; nevertheless, even there, marriages after the age of twenty-five were rare for young men and even more so for girls.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Empire had largely moved away from the extremely early marriages of previous centuries, when marriages between a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old bride and a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old groom had been the norm. As early as 1774, the Church established the marriageable age at thirteen for women and fifteen for men. Under the imperial decree of 1830, the minimum age for marriage was raised to sixteen for brides and eighteen for grooms.
However, peasants and the lower strata of the urban population often appealed to the ecclesiastical authorities for permission to marry off a daughter at an earlier age. The main motive given was the need to have a female worker or housekeeper in the home. In order to obtain permission for marriage, a girl underwent a medical examination for physical maturity. Very often she failed this examination when the experts were physicians, and, conversely, received a certificate of maturity when the decision was made by priests themselves (Zakharov, 2006).
Maidenhood played an important role in a woman’s development: during this period, a girl received the education and skills necessary for future family life, mastered household management, and often acquired elements of sexual socialization or sexual education. In the village, such education was provided by village gatherings, round dances, and other forms of communication among young people.
A girl’s sexual freedom depended on national and social characteristics. In general, in Europe, rural girls were freer in their premarital sexual behavior than urban girls, and women from the lower strata were freer than women from the upper strata. The requirement of virginity was addressed primarily to women from noble families; in the Middle Ages, the requirement of virginity also spread to townswomen.
In Europe, until the beginning of the women’s movement in the nineteenth century, a girl was restricted in her freedom of movement: a townswoman could go out into the street only when accompanied by a man, either a servant or a relative. Girls were also subject to strict gender segregation: communication with men was limited to family members. Alexis de Tocqueville noted that in the United States in the nineteenth century girls were the freest group among women, which was rather an exception to the rule.
Girls and unmarried young women were also often subject to civil restrictions: they could not appear or testify in court; this was done for them by a male relative or, in the absence of one, by a female relative, usually the mother, or, as a last resort, by a guardian. This was in addition to the absence of political and other rights.
Girls and unmarried women were recognized as equal members of society only by the 1930s, and in some countries by the 1950s, when civil and other restrictions on unmarried women were abolished. Women who had never been married were also included in this category, from which the concept of the “old maid” arose (Muravyeva, 2002).
From the perspective of gender and feminist theory, maidenhood is significant because it shows how women’s social value was historically tied to marital status, sexual respectability, reproductive expectations, and control over female mobility and sexuality. The category of maidenhood regulated the transition from girlhood to wifehood and often marked unmarried women as incomplete, dependent, or socially problematic. Feminist analysis therefore treats maidenhood not merely as a biological or age-related stage, but as a gendered social status shaped by marriage norms, family interests, class hierarchy, sexuality, and patriarchal control over women’s life trajectories.
References:
Muravyeva, M. G. (2002). Devichestvo [Maidenhood]. In A. Denisova (Ed.), Slovar gendernykh terminov [Dictionary of gender terms]. Moscow: Informatsiia XXI vek. Retrieved from http://www.owl.ru/gender/061.htm [in Russian].
Ozhegov, S. I., & Shvedova, N. Yu. (2006). Tolkovyi slovar russkogo yazyka [Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language]. Moscow: ITI Tekhnologii. [in Russian].
Zakharov, S. (2006). V kakom vozraste sochetalis brakom v starinu [At what age people married in the past]. Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved from http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2006/0261/tema01.php [in Russian].
Leave a Reply