The Greek dowry gave women minimal economic protection while staying within male guardianship

Evidence

“We have hetarias for spiritual pleasures,” says Demosthenes, “concubines (pallakes) for sensual pleasure, and wives to give us sons.” The pallakis replaced the wife in the master’s bed if she was ill, indisposed, pregnant, or recovering from childbirth; so there was no great difference between a gynaeceum and a harem. In Athens, the wife is shut up in her quarters, held by law under severe constraint, and watched over by special magistrates. She spends her whole life as a minor; she is under the control of her guardian: either her father, or her husband, or her husband’s heir or, by default, the state, represented by public officials; here are her masters, and they use her like merchandise, the guardian’s control extending over both her person and her property; the guardian can transmit her rights as he wishes: the father gives his daughter up for adoption or in marriage; the husband can repudiate his wife and hand her over to another husband. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 188 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

One of the problems arising from societies based on agnation is the fate of inheritance in the absence of any male descendants. The Greeks had instituted the custom of epiklerate: the female heir had to marry her oldest relative in the paternal family (genos); thus the property her father bequeathed to her would be transmitted to children belonging to the same group, and the estate remained the property of the paternal genos; the epikleros was not a female heir but only a machine to procreate a male heir; this custom placed her entirely at man’s mercy as she was automatically handed over to the firstborn of her family’s men, who most often turned out to be an old man. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 189 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Once woman is dethroned by the advent of private property, her fate is linked to it for centuries: in large part, her history is intertwined with the history of inheritance. The fundamental importance of this institution becomes clear if we keep in mind that the owner alienated his existence in property; it was more important to him than life itself; it goes beyond the strict limits of a mortal lifetime, it lives on after the body is gone, an earthly and tangible incarnation of the immortal soul; but this continued survival can occur only if property remains in the owner’s hands: it can remain his after death only if it belongs to individuals who are extensions of himself and recognized, who are his own. Cultivating paternal lands and worshipping the father’s spirit are one and the same obligation for the heir: to ensure the survival of ancestors on earth and in the underworld. Man will not, therefore, agree to share his property or his children with woman. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 182 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Greek monogamy legally concealed a functional polygamy that treated wives as property — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 188; Contractual marriage in Egypt let women transmit wealth and create a plutocratic class — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 187; The epiklerate reduced female heirs to procreative tools preserving patrilineal property — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 189 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Greek monogamy legally concealed a functional polygamy that treated wives as property #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 188
• The epiklerate reduced female heirs to procreative tools preserving patrilineal property #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 189
• The institution of inheritance causally produced woman’s subordination to man’s property #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 182
• Contractual marriage in Egypt let women transmit wealth and create a plutocratic class #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 187