BTS IMAGINES

Child Marriage

[Mini ff: 30k words.]

[TW : Slight mentions of de@th, r@pe, stealing, mu#der. Do not proceed if you're uncomfortable. And, if you're sensitive to social evils of 1800s, do not proceed either.]

[Lastly, those who choose to proceed, enjoy :) you'll have a happy ending, I promise.]

How easy it is for parents to arrange the marriage of their daughter with a man whom she never saw, never met, doesn't even know his name or face. All that the family knows and tells the girl is, "The boy is from a good family. Their family is economically well off."

And if someone says that the boy is the only heir to all the properties of his father, it's like a cherry on top. I as the writer want to ask them, "Is your daughter marrying a man or money and property? Is your daughter going to spend the rest of her life with the man or with his 'good, economically well-off khaandan(family) '?, because that is the exact term we use here.

Set in the rural ages of 1820s, here's the story of a young foreigner and his economically well-off family who decided to marry him off to a girl from a village -

They have a popular saying, "Get the girl married when she's old enough to bear kids." And they also have a saying, "Get the boy married and let him have a family, a heir of his own and a house to rule on."

Joint families were the norm of familial culture those days. It wasn't weird if you see one old man having 10 kids and those 10 kids having 10 kids again! After all, "lineages" Mattered a lot to the people. "Blood" Relations mattered a lot.

Jeon Jungkook, the heir to the huge estate of Ira was also married off the same way. His father, the elder Jeon, also revered as "Master", by the peasants was in his early fifties. His young son was already 23 years old and Mr. Jeon started to have fine lines on his head, worrying about his son's future.

Love was not a thing in 1950s. So there was no chance for that for Jungkook. His father wanted Jungkook to settle down and take over his hectares of agricultural lands and rule like a true "landlord" would.

He wanted Jungkook to have a son who would look after the property after Jungkook. So, he wrote a letter to his old friend, from another village, having hectares of land under his control too.

He politely asked his friend to seal their friendship into a knot of marriage and gladly, Mr. Kang agreed. After all, Mr. Kang's daughter, Kang y/n was also 16 years old now.

She was at the ripe age of marriage according to them, she should be married off now. In a huge ceremony, the two unknown souls were tied together.

Whether you love or not, you're tied to him. Whether he beats you, loves you, harasses you or cares for you, you've to bear it all. After all, things like divorce never happened.

They also had a saying, "A woman stays behind her mother when she's born. She learns household chores from her mother. That's the only education she gets. Then, in a palanquin, she is married off, removing the burden of dowry from her parents."

"Afterwards, she stays in a veil, locked in four doors of the house, and she never leaves the house without her husband. The only time she leaves is in a palanquin again, that is, when she's dead."

"Her dowry is so rich.", one of the aunts commented while you sat in your wedding dress next to the group of ladies who are your in-laws.

"Of course it is!", Jungkook's mother, Mrs. Jeon said proudly, "After all, we got the girl from the richest family of South for our Jungkook. She's Jungkook's bride after all. How come her dowry would be less?", she huffed, showing off to the relatives.