. . . concubines are not simply
sexual outlets, and in monogamous societies that permit concubines, the
resulting sons are often recognized as heirs when the legitimate wife fails to
produce any, as in traditional China and ancient Israel (Goody, The
Development, 76).
Concubinage offers the possibility
of a relationship that is less than marriage and yet is socially recognized as
legitimate and, presumably, exclusive, at least on the woman’s part. In some societies,
ties of concubinage were at made with women who would not be socially suitable
wives, such as lower-caste women in Hindu society and vice versa. As
concubines, such women allow rulers to establish connections and perhaps even
alliances to groups with which formal marriages are prohibited or at least
socially or religiously ill advised (Dickemann, “Female Infanticide,” 336). But
prohibited status does not necessarily distinguish concubines from wives, and
the nobles of some societies drew upon the same social group for both (Van den
Berghe, Human Family Systems, 168). So while concubinage offers the possibility
of legitimate sexual access to additional women in monogamous societies, why
would polygynous societies permit absence of some social, ethnic, or religious
status that prohibited the formal marriages of some women? (Ross Hassig, Polygamy
and the Rise and Demise of the Aztec Empire [Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2016], 41-42)
