"Theirs had been a curious intimacy while they traveled hither...between times, dreamy talk of old days and far places, much reminiscence about little events on Dido - Flandry wondered if man and woman could grow closer in a wedded lifetime. In one aspect, yes, obviously they could; but that one they both shied off from speaking of."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT Chapter Fifteen, p. 505.
Flandry's happiest time with Kossara is summarized here.
I do not believe that human beings are naturally monogamous. If I were Hugh McCormac, then I would not have a problem if Kathryn had had sex with Flandry on Dido or in the spaceship. However, the one person whose wishes are paramount in this case is Kathryn McCormac.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Re your comments about Kathryn and Kossara, there is one bit from the beginning of Chapter XVI of THE REBEL WORLDS which has long niggled at my mind. Hugh McCormac was surprised at seeing his wife sooner than expected and she replied: "The medics released me," she answered, "seein' as how I'd come to happy news." Her smile was tremulous."
I don't think anyone else but me has thought of this, but was the happy news the medics informing Kathryn she was pregnant? That would make sense of what otherwise seems a slightly odd wording to use in this part of the book.
And if Lady McCormac was pregnant, who was the father of the child? McCormac, most likely--except I've wondered if that was Aaron Snelund, when Kathryn was his prisoner and the victim of his abuse and rape. If so, I'm glad not a word was said by either McCormac or Kathryn of having the child killed.
Sean
Sean,
I thought that "happy news" sounded like a pregnancy and it is strange that nothing further was said about it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Then I was not the only one to wonder if the "happy news" was Kathryn being informed she was pregnant. And it was odd that nothing further was said about it. And was AARON SNELUND the father? That would have been truly ironic!
Sean
I don't think "naturally monogamous" is a useful concept (or "natural" in general). Mating patterns are always a compromise.
In the case of humans, the long dependency period of our offspring makes pair-bonding "natural", ie., an efficient way of producing the resources for sustaining the infants. Monogamy, or serial monogamy, is the commonest method of doing this.
Sexual jealousy is probably instinctually programmed, because it's a guard against "cuckoo in the nest" problems, in which your resources are spent on someone else's offspring. It's probably stronger in males than females, on average.
There are cultures in which paternity is so uncertain that a child's primary male support is usually from its mother's brothers; but there are severe disadvantages to his.
Likewise, polygamy is common -- there's a reason 10% of the population of Asia is descended from Genghis Khan -- but this also has severe disadvantages; in particular, it means women have to share a male's resources with other women and their offspring, it means a lot of young males with no prospect of establishing a family (which is socially destabilizing and promotes anomic violence), and it reduces female fertility.
Eg., Moulay Ismail, an early 19th-century Sultan of Morocco (a contemporary of Louis XIV) sired thousands of children... but his wives and concubines averaged 2 children each, because he had them removed to a (carefully guarded) 'rearing' establishment after their second child, where they never saw anyone but eunuchs and the other inmates and their (in the case of males, pre-pubescent) children for the rest of their lives. They were replaced with newer and younger inmates in his harem. I shudder to think what the socialization of the children was like.
On the whole, monogamy causes the least strain and distributes resources most efficiently, but it requires, like any other arrangement, continuous cultural reinforcement.
That's why monogamy (or to be more precise, an -ideal- of monogamy) is the most common, the default pattern.
It's also why human beings are less sexually dimorphic(*) than any other primate, and why we've grown less sexually dimorphic over the course of our evolutionary history as a species.
(*) sexual dimorphism is the degree of physical difference between the sexes, in things like size. Men and women are much closer in size and other attributes than male and female chimps or gorillas, and more so than earlier hominids.
Mr Stirling,
Thank you. I was going to ask what sexual dimorphism was but you explained it.
Paul.
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