My Impressions from Thomas More’s Utopia

In Thomas More's Utopia one passage that I found most interesting was the engagement and marriage passage. In the passage it talks about how, Women are not married before eighteen, nor their men before two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of marriage is denied them, unless they can obtain a special warrant from the Prince (Thomas More Article). I found this interesting because, women but really young girls do not get married before the age of 18, when in reality now women do not get married until their late twenties early thirties. Times have changed so much since then and a lot of morals and what is acceptable/not acceptable has as well.Therefore, if these rules are broken a great amount of criticism gets placed upon the mother and father of the family in which they have failed their duty to marry off their daughter or have their son married by these certain ages. It differs from today because, it does not matter how old the son or daughter are to get married or if they get married at all. The parents do not get ashamed or have a heavy amount of criticism sent towards them.

Also, explained in the text if the daughter and or son is not married by that age there is a punishment but, The reason of punishing this so severely is, because they think that if they were not strictly restrained from all vagrant appetites, very few would engage in a state in which they venture the quiet of their whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are obliged to endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied (Thomas More Article). Another part of this passage I found interesting was, how they choose their wives, and how they use a certain technique that would seem to us now very odd and bizarre. It is odd and bizarre because, before the marriage some serious matron has to offer the bride nude, it does not matter whether the soon to be married bride is a virgin or a widow and this also happen vise versa.

I did find this off because, I did not expect the bride and groom have to look at each other first before getting married.This relates to the Renaissance period because, marriages in the Renaissance were not just about personal matters; they were also very critical to the system of associations that caused a family's wealth and that formed the material of devotions and affection. By arranging an appropriate match that involved mostly family and friends, and even went to acquaintances and political allies. For example, in the aristocratic families, marriages were about money and what they can exchange for their daughters.Brides, specially in Florence, Italy, were normally much younger than grooms that they were marrying. In this time period brides and grooms also married early, in the Renaissance period women married even younger than in Thomas More's Utopia. The women were married at fourteen years old and were often married to older men, men that were in thirties, this is because to make sure the bride is still a virgin.This also related to the Middle Ages because, just like the Renaissance they did arranged marriages as well. In the Medieval times, marriage was extremely different than it is today. The women did not have a choosing as to whom would marry them and pretty much most of the time the women did not even know the man before she got married to him. The parents chose the man who would be suitable for their daughter, this is why the woman did not have much of a say. However, the men sometimes were able to have a say in who their bride to be will be.

Therefore, marriage back in this time period did not revolve around love, it mostly revolved around political arrangements. The husbands and wives were strangers until they had finally met for the first time, and if love existed at all it would have came after the pair had been married not before. Even thought, if love did not exist when they eventually did get married, the pair usually develops a bond or friendship. As I mentioned before, the arrangement of the marriage was not done by the couple being wed but by their parents. Back in the middle ages, the girls were around their teens around thirteen through fourteen when they arranged to be married, and boys were typically in their primary twenties. The arrangement of the marriage revolved around how much money the family had, and the family of the girl who was to be wed off would give a present to the husband she was to be wed to. The present would be given to the groom at the time they would be married.

I found how all these time periods were pretty much alike very interesting, all the women who were pretty much young girls were married off early and it all had to do with money and standards of the family they were married into. It just shows how far marriage has come from today and back then, today we mostly marry for love and in the time periods mentioned they mostly married for money and high standards.The elements of government, philosophy, education, the arts, language and communication, location, religious beliefs, laws, goods and services that would be represented in my utopia are, starting off with government would have to be a Republic because, I would want my people to be able to vote for who they would want in power just like we do in the United States. The philosophy would be like Plato's, and how developed a proper dialogue for everyone to communicate. The education would be, just like education is now with a curriculum for every subject. The arts, language and communication would be all in English; everyone will speak one language to make it easier for everyone to understand each other. Location would be have my own world just dedicated to my utopia; religious beliefs would not exist in my utopia to cause less conflict but I would want a common culture within my utopia and have all my people transmit it to their children and grandchildren. I would want the traditions of the utopia passed down.

Therefore, laws would be made up to reasonably fit my utopia and have them be fair but not too fair, not like some points in Hammurabi's code. In Hammurabi's code, he goes a little over board with killing someone for trespassing into someone's home, in my utopia if that happened they would just be held in jail and fined for trespassing. Finally for goods as in food and services as in favors, will still be traded amongst the people in my utopia.I would name this utopia Vivremo in pace, which means, we will live in peace in Italian.This would be my utopia because; I just want a world where everyone lives in peace, no war and no fights over which religion is better. I feel like if there were a world where everyone just got along, it would be a lot better. I believe that Thomas More would have agreed with my utopia because, he wanted his utopia to just share a common culture as I want mine to as well.

But we would disagree when it comes to marriage because, I would want my utopia to be based around love and I would want people to fall in love naturally and not for marriage to be arranged. I do not like or believe in arranged marriages and I would not want that in my utopia, arranged married is not as common anymore and will not be available in my utopia.The individuals whowouldNOTenjoy it in my utopia are, primarily the cultures who still have arranged marriages, in my utopia like I said I want couples to fall in love and marry for love. I do not want them marrying for money or high standards of any kind. I believe that is not love, being forced to marry for money is not love. I believe in love 100%, and in my perfect world I would want couples to fall in love themselves not eventually because they are forced to be married to each other.

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