Remarriage

The fate of the widowed is directly tied to the prevalence of remarriage. Yet studies of remarriage still remain underdeveloped (J. Smith 1984: 435), despite the notable contribution made by the publication in 1981 of Marriage and remarriage in populations of the past (Dupâquier et al. 1981). A few basic patterns are clear, however: (1) widowers almost everywhere are more likely to remarry than widows; and (2) the younger the individual at widowhood, the more likely he or she is to remarry. This pattern extends beyond Europe to North America (e.g., Keyssar 1974). Typical are the results from early eighteenth-century France, where Jacques Dupâquier found 80 percent of men widowed in their 20s remarrying compared to 67 percent of the women, sinking by age 40 to 49 to 52 percent of men and 20 percent of women (in Hufton 1984: 357).

We expect political economic factors to influence rates of remarriage in different places and different periods. For example, Jacek Kochanowicz (1983: 162) explained that in the Polish feudal economy of the eighteenth century, "if a farm was without some elements of its manpower, it ceased to be fully productive. Therefore, the lord required widowers and widows, and especially the latter, either to remarry or to leave the plot."

That there may be an important family economic component in determining rates of remarriage may be inferred from regional differences in remarriage rates in Italy itself. Massimo Livi Bacci's (1981: 357) study of remarriage in the 1880s found much higher rates prevailing in the south than in the center, at least for those who were widowed before age 50. This is provocative, for it goes against the received wisdom concerning southern Italian culture. According to this view, on losing her husband the widow dons black clothes, wearing these as a sign of devotion to her husband's memory for the rest of her life. Yet 49 percent of southern Italian women widowed before age 50 remarried, compared to only 28 percent of the women in central Italy. We concur with Livi Bacci's tentative explanation for this sharp difference: in central Italy, the sharecropping economy, with its large, multiple family household, provided security for the widow, who was not left alone with her children. In contrast, the nuclear family household that prevailed in much of southern Italy placed greater pressure on widows (and widowers) to remarry.^[10]

Italy's pattern of remarriages in the nineteenth century, taken as a whole, was similar to that found in other western European countries, including England and France (Livi Bacci 1981: 348). One important trend found in

nineteenth-century, Italy was a continued decline in the tendency to remarry, as measured by the proportion of marriages involving one or more previously married individuals. Athos Bellettini (1981: 260), for example, reports that the proportion of marriages in Italy involving at least one previously married individual sank from 19.4 percent in 1864-1870 to 13.8 percent in 1891-1900. In both periods, almost twice as many men remarried as did women.^[11]

In Casalecchio over the period 1865-1921, we count 361 men whose wives died and 539 women whose husbands died. Of course, the older the couple, the more likely one of them was to die. However, 16 percent of the widowers and 20 percent of the widows were under age 40 when their spouse died, with a total of 33 percent of the widowers and 39 percent of the widows under age 50. It was thus not uncommon for a person to lose his or her spouse while still caring for dependent children.

Remarriage was not common in Casalecchio, and in keeping with the Italy-wide pattern, it became even less common over the years.^[12] In the earlier period (1865-1882), 12 percent of all marriages involved at least one widow or widower, while by the latter period (1897-1921), this had sunk to 5 percent. Widowers were more likely to remarry, than widows; in fact, re-marrying widowers outnumbered remarrying widows by 3:1 in the nineteenth century and by 2:1 in the twentieth century.

Italian men also waited less time before remarrying than did Italian women. In the mid-1880s, for example, almost one-fifth of all Italian widowers who married did so within six months of the death of their wives, and another one-fifth did so within the next six months. By contrast, widows were considerably more restrained, with widow remarriage within six months of a husband's death extremely rare (0.5 percent). Such rapid widower remarriage, however, was not as common in the Bologna area, including Casalecchio, presumably due to the household economic system described above.

Of the 110 men who remarried in Casalecchio from 1865 to 1921, almost half (46 percent) were still in their 20s or 30s. Yet only 16 percent of the men who lost a wife in Casalecchio did so while they were under age 40. This provides strong, though only indirect, evidence of the relationship between age and propensity to remarry. Put differently, only 58 men in this age category became widowers in this period, while 51 widowers in this age category remarried. By contrast, while 303 men over age 40 lost their wives in these years, just 61 men over age 40 remarried.

Although widows were much more likely to remarry if they were in their 20s or 30s (indeed, 52 percent of all widows remarrying were in this age range), even young widows had only limited remarriage possibilities. Indeed, while 539 women became widows in Casalecchio in these years, there were only 70 widows who remarried.

For the great majority of women who lost their husbands, widowhood would be their lot for the rest of their lives. Even those who lost a husband at an early age, although much more likely to remarry than older widows, seldom remarried. This reflects a cultural bias against widow remarriage, together with a social system that provided, through kin co-residence, a means for widows and widowers to survive without remarrying. By contrast, there did seem to be the general expectation that men who were widowed early should remarry, and such remarriages were not hard to arrange.^[13]

It is likely that the propensity for remarriage among older widowers was linked to their economic and household positions, but the relationship here is complex. The well-off sharecropper, for example, might be a good bet for attracting a spouse, despite his age and widowed status. But, living in a multiple family household, he was under much less pressure to remarry, even if he had young children, for he was surrounded by female kin. Indeed, the other women of the household might not look favorably on the prospect of a new female authority figure among them. However, the poor proletarian widower might have a difficult time surviving without a wife, especially if he had small children; yet he was much less desirable as a spouse.