SimonofTabor
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ElizabethAnne
Babs,
I believe in the Gorean tenents you cannot marry a slave. And the only place I've ever seen a reference to "wife or wives" is that one page from the Blood Brothers, perhaps if there are more Simon could let us know.
Liz
My apologies for taking so long to respond to this. I don't have the time to read everything on every board I'm a member of (including, sometimes, my own) so I was unaware of this post until it was mentioned to me. Apologies also that I simply don't have time to go through and read everything said in this topic before adding my own comments. As a result, it's very possible that I'll simply be repeating what has been said elsewhere. OK, on to my comments.
There are actually well over thirty mentions of 'wife' or 'wives' scattered throughout the Gor books. I'll mention some of them during this post.
Before I address the question of whether there is any need to free a slave to marry her, I need to address the question of whether there was marriage on Gor, as that was the question asked of me. Simple answer, no, not really in the form we know. There are some mentions of Gorean wives, however, as has been mentioned by others, but we need to keep those in context. I'll run through them.
The mention of the wives of Mahpiyasapa is certainly there, and the same woman mentioned in the quote Maahsatti posted is mentioned again in chapter 54, and is again referred to as one of Mahpiyasapa's wives. That has to be kept in context though. I stand to be corrected by those who know more about native American customs than I, but it would seem that much of what we read about the Red Savages of books 17 and 18 is based on the traditional customs of native Americans, and so the mention of 'wives' must be seen in that context. It doesn't refer to 'wives' as most of us think of them, but specifically to the native American equivalent.
Are there other mentions of 'wives' on Gor? Actually, yes. In Beasts of Gor, Poalu refers to Imnak as "only a miserable fellow with no wife," but again that has to be put in its cultural context, that of relationships amongst the Innuit peoples. There is one other reference to a wife on Gor, and that is in Outlaw, where Tarl meets 'a peasant and his wife'. Although this may seem more relevant than the others, I wouldn't place any significance in this. I would suggest that the 'wife' in question is actually a free companion, and that Tarl refers to her as his 'wife' not to indicate that marriage, as we know it, exists, but simply to indicate that she's the partner of the peasant.
On most of Gor it's clear that the two male/female relationships that exist are that of master and slave, and that of male and free companion. Marriage, as we know it, outside of specific cultural contexts, doesn't exist.
Now, on to the question of whether a master needs to free his slave to marry her. Personally I see no reason why that's the case. Since marriage didn't exist on most of Gor, the books certainly don't say that you cannot marry a slave. The Gor books do have plenty to say about male/female relationships on Earth but before I continue I should point out that, from the perspective of the books, Goreans only exist on Gor (apart from Gorean slavers living secretly on Earth, of course). Although many of us identify ourselves as Gorean, to those within the books we are not, we are men and women of Earth. The relevant references to relationships here on Earth are therefore referring not to how we should live as Goreans on Earth, but simply as people of Earth.
Many of us go into great detail seeking to emulate the philosophies and even practices (in some cases) of Goreans within the books, but it should be remembered that everything about Gor and it's inhabitants is a work of fiction, although based in part on reality. I'm not for an instant suggesting that the fictional elements cannot teach us much about how to live here on Earth, but surely if we are looking to the Gor books for insights into how we should live here on Earth we should pay particular interest to those passages that specifically talk not about fictional Gor, but about the very real Earth, and there are a number of those.
Having said that, from the book perspective, we are not Gorean, the books themselves clearly acknowledge that sometimes, here on Earth, men and women live in consensual master/slave relationships. Consider the following passage from Blood Brothers (pages 45-46 in the original editions):
This is analogous to the secret slaveries which sometimes exist on Earth, where a woman, returning home, kneels and waits to be collared. How startled would be the fellows in the office to discover that that trimly figured, luscious coworker of theirs, to them seemingly so cool, aloof and inaccessible, is at home another man's slave. Too, how startled would be the women in certain neighborhoods, or in certain organizations and groups, to discover that one of their most popular neighbors, or prominent members, is, in the privacy of her own dwelling, a slave. Alerted by a code word in a seemingly innocent phone call, she prepares herself for her master. She bathes herself and combs herself. She makes herself up. She applies perfume. When he arrives home she is awaiting him, naked, kneeling, on the slave mat, at the foot of his bed, her collar before her. "Greetings, Master," she says. She then lifts the collar in her teeth, that he may put it on her.
That is probably the clearest acknowlegement of Earthly master/slave relationships, but it is by no means the only reference, and some others are directly relevant to marriage and master/slave relationships. In the revised edition of Captive of Gor, John has added a long passage to what was page 278 (I don't have the correct pagination information to hand for the new editions), and part of that passage discusses the difference between how well a Gorean master knows his slave, and how well most men of Earth know their wives, a theme repeated several times throughout the books, with many of the Gor book references to wives being in that context. Part of that passage reads:
Indeed, I wondered if the husbands would dare to know their own wives so thoroughly, that thoroughly, as a slave girl is known. I wondered if the wives would be terrified, to be so known. Would they then feel "too slave"? I wondered how many husbands kept their wives as slaves within their marriage, how many wives stripped and knelt upon command, how many served unquestioningly, how many begged for pleasure chains, how many were subject, if found displeasing in any particular, to binding and the lash. I wondered how many couples related in this manner, man dominant, the master, woman submissive, slave. I wondered how many couples might be so precious to one another. Each so magnificently and joyously fulfilled, living the biotruths of human nature, of man and woman, of masculine and feminine, of dominance and submission, how could either even consider leaving the other? I thought of the emptiness, the vacuity, of so many marriages. Might they not be redeemed, perhaps by so little as an act of will, a command, and a handful of thongs?
That passage very clearly refers to master/slave relationships as practiced on Earth and within marriage. How, then, can we really argue that men cannot marry slaves?
Marriage, to me, is simply a commitment between a man and a woman, and it implies nothing about the nature of that relationship. Most of the passages in the Gor books that refer to marriages on Earth refer to the normal, vanilla relationships that exist, but I see nothing to indicate that has to be the case within marriage. Indeed, does the passage I quoted above not indicate an acceptance that sometimes an Earth marriage can break with the norm, and that within that relationship the man can be the master and the woman the slave?
In short, the Gor books sometimes make reference to marriages on Earth, but generally they simply comment on how Earth marriages usually are, not on how they have to be. It is up to each couple how they relate to each other within their marriage, and I see nothing in the Gor books to suggest that a husband and wife cannot also be a master and slave. On the contrary, I see support for that.
Simon
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RE: Is calling a slave a FC so you can marry just seman... - 
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