Middle Age England is a time when, regarding the church, many of the practices then, today, provide a basis for today’s practices, and beliefs. As surprising as it is, many of the church rules and beliefs still hold true today, down to the consecration and solidification of what it means to be married.
Like Catholics today, for marriages to be considered “valid” they had to be done in the church and administered by a priest. Anything else that falls short of this would nullify the marriage. There are other rules such as marrying within your great, great, great, great, great grandparents children would count the marriage as incest and therefore be breaking one of the marital rules. This was one of the rules which I found very ironic in the sense that you would think that back in the day, incest was normalized or even encouraged to keep the blood “pure” so to say yet, it is not. The rules have changed and relaxed in the extent of which your direct family extends to, allowing you to legally marry a very distant cousin. Pre-marital sex is a sin of the both the past and the future. The only acceptable reason for engaging in sex before marriage was by the consent of both parties and the presence of a promise or engagement ring on the woman, marking her as claimed.
War was the way men would reclaim their masculinity. As it had been tainted by the looks of it, I think forecasting war in such a manner was as easy incentive for recruitment. Nevertheless, this mindset justified the actions of many soldiers, for example the ‘rape of Belgium’ as it was known to become. These actions justified men claiming back their masculinity by once again portraying women as a vessel meant for carrying children and a pleasure service device for men.
The most interesting fact, in my opinion was the use of the dog, in comparison to a woman. Dog’s are viewed as “man’s best friend” and have proven to be one of man’s best companion, even going as far as to love a human being more than itself. This level of innate fidelity served as an epitome of what a woman is to her man. She is loyal, obedient, and subservient to a level of completely being under a man’s rule, never questioning his hand or opposing it for that matter.