Wizard society: Cultural fossilisation?

[ancarett]

No: HPFGUIDX 35160

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:
> 
> OK, all you historians out there... what was considered an 
appropriate age for marriage in late 17th century middle class 
Britain (assuming that Wizards were middle class)?  BTW, please 
forgive any dubious comments and outright mistakes in this post... 
I'm very weak on history, as I've mentioned before!

Average age of marriage in England in the seventeenth to early 
eighteenth century was early twenties for women/mid to late twenties 
for men of the artisanal class -- mostly due to the difficulty of 
raising capital and achieving opportunity to set up a separate 
household. Strong tradition of parental involvement in choosing 
partners and making marital agreements. At the same time, customary 
church law made it easy to elope (in Scotland, marriages were still 
legally recognized by the unchallenge statement in present tense by 
one of the couple in the presence of the other). For more reading on 
this subject, consult Lawrence Stone's Family, Sex and Marriage in 
England, 1500-1800 or David Cressy's Birth, Marriage and Death: 
Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England.

> 
> I've certainly read that the concept of "adolescence" is an 
invention of the 20th century, which has been reinforced by 
compulsory education until the mid to late teens and legal 
definitions of adulthood in the mid teens to early twenties.  Once 
upon a time, I'm pretty sure "adulthood", sexual maturity and the 
beginning of one's working life were more or less synonymous (even my 
grandmother, born in 1917, left school to start work at 13).  
Interestingly, Hogwarts seems to have an older, vocational kind of 
system mixed with a 20th century "education for all" philosophy.  

This is an interesting idea: I'd say that Hogwarts much more 
resembles the boarding schools favoured by nineteenth century British 
middle classes and elites than the vocational/home-based educational 
experiences common in pre-industrial artisanal households (i.e. where 
young men were apprenticed as goldsmiths, tanners, etc.). One other 
possible educational model would be the schools sponsored by the 
Quakers and other religious minorities during the eighteenth century, 
often cited as the breeding ground of many great early industrial 
technologists. Hogwarts might take this model in quite a different 
direction, though!

Ancarett -- http://ancarett.com