(Comment composed last night, before selenak weighed in on age gaps.)
...ugh, maybe he just wants to marry a 17-year-old, ick. UGH.
Keep in mind, marrying a 17-yo in this period, for nobility (much less royalty), would not have raised eyebrows. Lehndorff did it twice, as noted above; Katte's father married a 16- or 17-year old (all we know is she gave birth at 17) when he was about 32; Seydlitz was 39 when he married a 16- or 17-year old, Countess Bentinck (since she's on my mind lately) was married at 17 to a 28-year-old; Wilhelmine's daughter was 16 and her husband 20 (her husband started talking about marrying her when she was 12 and he was 16); Émilie was 18 and her husband was 30; Oriane's mother was no more than 15 (15 when she gave birth to her first child) and married to a 39-year-old...and that's not even counting royalty.
There was very little social (as opposed to psychological) reason for a noblewoman *not* to be married at 17, if she had good prospects:
* She wasn't going to university. * She wasn't going to get a job. * She needed financial support, and her parents weren't going to want to support her forever. (Remember FW saying girls should be drowned like kittens, and pessimistically predicting that his daughters wouldn't all find husbands.) * She was of childbearing age. * She was probably going to marry someone her parents picked out anyway, it's not like she needed to wait until she had met The One.
In contrast, women of the lower classes tended to marry at a significantly older age, since neither they nor their husbands could afford to get married until they had worked for a while and saved up. ("Women don't work" has always been a class-based notion; a way for the man to show off that he doesn't need his wife to work, and a way to keep women out of *good* jobs; not an actual constraint on women working.)
And given that noblewomen married young, and tended to die in childbirth, a 40-year-old man looking around for a wife was likely to find women his age were one or more of a) married, b) dead, c) past childbearing age. So an unmarried 16-21-yo was an eminently marriagable candidate. And an older man was more likely to have financial stability, so her parents weren't likely to turn him down, all else being equal (possibly a reason Ludolf got chosen over Lehndorff).
So while men have been icky throughout the ages, and probably many of them found it very convenient that their wives were young and impressionable, you didn't have to be specifically looking to take advantage of someone to look around the marriage market and realize the unmarried women were either at the start of their childbearing years, or widowed, likely with kids, possibly approaching menopause, and to pick the former.
Once your society oppresses women by restricting their alternatives to marriage, the age of marriage drops significantly. As I recall from my classics days, men in Athens were usually around 30 when they married, women about 14-17. This was also the norm in many other historical periods. A 27-year-old woman who wasn't married was an old maid; women by and large tried to avoid that!
The sketchy part in the 18th century would have been the 11-year-old, not the 17-year-old. (If a 17-year-old married a *much* older man, like a 60-year-old, that did raise eyebrows. But it happened; Lehndorff likes to comment on it when it does.)
In conclusion, there are huge *systemic* problems that led to 17-year-old women marrying much older men; if you see an *individual* significantly older man marrying a 17-year-old, he didn't necessarily specifically want a 17-year-old, but may have been responding to social conventions and the pressures of the marriage market. You can't tell.
If you're wondering about Peter and Fredersdorf: both married women in their early 20s, but with a significant age gap. Oriane was 21, Peter 31, when they married, probably subtract a year for the engagement; Caroline Marie Daum was 22, Fredersdorf 44, when they got engaged. Lehndorff never feels the need to comment on this age gap, because it's normal.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Lehndorff's one who got away
Date: 2025-01-12 01:31 pm (UTC)...ugh, maybe he just wants to marry a 17-year-old, ick. UGH.
Keep in mind, marrying a 17-yo in this period, for nobility (much less royalty), would not have raised eyebrows. Lehndorff did it twice, as noted above; Katte's father married a 16- or 17-year old (all we know is she gave birth at 17) when he was about 32; Seydlitz was 39 when he married a 16- or 17-year old, Countess Bentinck (since she's on my mind lately) was married at 17 to a 28-year-old; Wilhelmine's daughter was 16 and her husband 20 (her husband started talking about marrying her when she was 12 and he was 16); Émilie was 18 and her husband was 30; Oriane's mother was no more than 15 (15 when she gave birth to her first child) and married to a 39-year-old...and that's not even counting royalty.
There was very little social (as opposed to psychological) reason for a noblewoman *not* to be married at 17, if she had good prospects:
* She wasn't going to university.
* She wasn't going to get a job.
* She needed financial support, and her parents weren't going to want to support her forever. (Remember FW saying girls should be drowned like kittens, and pessimistically predicting that his daughters wouldn't all find husbands.)
* She was of childbearing age.
* She was probably going to marry someone her parents picked out anyway, it's not like she needed to wait until she had met The One.
In contrast, women of the lower classes tended to marry at a significantly older age, since neither they nor their husbands could afford to get married until they had worked for a while and saved up. ("Women don't work" has always been a class-based notion; a way for the man to show off that he doesn't need his wife to work, and a way to keep women out of *good* jobs; not an actual constraint on women working.)
And given that noblewomen married young, and tended to die in childbirth, a 40-year-old man looking around for a wife was likely to find women his age were one or more of a) married, b) dead, c) past childbearing age. So an unmarried 16-21-yo was an eminently marriagable candidate. And an older man was more likely to have financial stability, so her parents weren't likely to turn him down, all else being equal (possibly a reason Ludolf got chosen over Lehndorff).
So while men have been icky throughout the ages, and probably many of them found it very convenient that their wives were young and impressionable, you didn't have to be specifically looking to take advantage of someone to look around the marriage market and realize the unmarried women were either at the start of their childbearing years, or widowed, likely with kids, possibly approaching menopause, and to pick the former.
Once your society oppresses women by restricting their alternatives to marriage, the age of marriage drops significantly. As I recall from my classics days, men in Athens were usually around 30 when they married, women about 14-17. This was also the norm in many other historical periods. A 27-year-old woman who wasn't married was an old maid; women by and large tried to avoid that!
The sketchy part in the 18th century would have been the 11-year-old, not the 17-year-old. (If a 17-year-old married a *much* older man, like a 60-year-old, that did raise eyebrows. But it happened; Lehndorff likes to comment on it when it does.)
In conclusion, there are huge *systemic* problems that led to 17-year-old women marrying much older men; if you see an *individual* significantly older man marrying a 17-year-old, he didn't necessarily specifically want a 17-year-old, but may have been responding to social conventions and the pressures of the marriage market. You can't tell.
If you're wondering about Peter and Fredersdorf: both married women in their early 20s, but with a significant age gap. Oriane was 21, Peter 31, when they married, probably subtract a year for the engagement; Caroline Marie Daum was 22, Fredersdorf 44, when they got engaged. Lehndorff never feels the need to comment on this age gap, because it's normal.