History Main / DowryDilemma

SisterTrope to UnableToSupportAWife, another financial hindrance that gets in the way of a couple's happiness.

A dowry (or ''dower''[[note]]This word can also refer to the money, goods, or estate given to support a postulant at a convent, but that's not to be confused with this trope[[/note]]) is [[OlderThanDirt an ancient practice, possibly predating the Code of Hammurabi]]. Basically, it's payment (in the form of livestock, goods, property, money, or any combination of the four) that the bride's family pays to the husband's family. This is usually done to ensure that the newlyweds have some "seed money" to start a household - i.e., they don't start their married life broke. It's also useful incentive for the hubby to [[DomesticAbuse not be abusive]], as the woman has certain rights to her dowry.

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!!Examples

[[folder:Live-Action TV ]]

-->"Did you think you'd get a prince?\\

'''Merrill:''' (''gasps'') You're courting him!

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[[folder:Film]]
* Inverted in ''Film/TheQuietMan'', where the argument over a dowry provides the conflict. The husband cares nothing about the dowry that his brother-in-law refuses to pay, but his wife is very upset about her husband not receiving her dowry and is mad at her husband for not demanding it (not for the sake of the money itself, but what it represents).

* Played interestingly in the Indian film ''Vivah''. The heroine Poonam is so lovely and good tempered her perfectly arranged fiance Prem's family gleefully pass over that she is an orphan without dowry, even explicitly saying "we don't care about the dowry, we just want the girl." Meanwhile her cousin Rajni ''does'' have a substantial dowry and is just as nice, but because she has darker skin than expected for a girl from her caste and social class her family finds that their money isn't enough to lure a good enough match for her.
* In ''2 States'' Ananya saves a wedding from being cancelled over the groom's excessive dowry demands, by shaming the groom over the obvious disparity of attractiveness between him and his very beautiful bride and pointing out that he couldn't find such a fine girl by himself so asking for more stuff on top of a pretty bride and the already substantial amount of goods and money he had received was an excess of greed.

* A large part of the plot in Tomie [=dePaola=]'s book ''Literature/HelgasDowry''. An attractive but poor troll maiden named Helga finds that she may not be able to marry her boyfriend Lars without a dowry to match that of her rival, Inge (which would in turn condemn her to wander the earth forever), so she sets out to earn one. Ultimately, she does but winds up ditching Lars, having realized he's more interested in her goods than her. [[spoiler: She doesn't wind up needing it, as the Troll King wants to marry her, and he already has much more than he needs.]]
* Sostratos' sister had this difficulty in ''Literature/OverTheWineDarkSea''.

* In the Daughter of the Empire trilogy of the ''Literature/TheRiftWarCycle'', Mara of the Acoma very nearly inverts this trope. She has quite a substantial dowry, but her estate's suffered such a huge military loss that the problem is finding an adequate protector who A) isn't an enemy and B) is willing to shoulder the burden of protecting the estate without gaining control. Mara decides to TakeAThirdOption.
* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' has a situation where a lady is looking for her recently-disappeared fiance. It turns out her stepfather was abusing her poor eyesight to play the part of the fiance so that he could both not pay the dowry and keep her income close at hand.

* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'': Mark has the difference between bride-price and dowry explained when he offers to pay Koudelka for continuing to date his daughter.
* ''Literature/BelisariusSeries'': Tahmina's dowry could have been an extortionate sum that bankrupted the Persian Empire, but instead was simply a horse and a horse-bow, in reference to a saying that a Persian should teach his son to "ride a horse, to shoot a bow and to despise all lies."
* In Creator/LSpragueDeCamp's ''An Elephant for Aristotle'', set in the age of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat, the Greek hero falls for a well-born Persian woman, while the woman's brother falls for the hero's own sister. This creates many problems, given that both cultures have a bias against foreign marriages, but one is that Greeks give dowries, while Persians give bride payments. Weirdly, it takes the hero's smart brother to point out the obvious solution.

* In ''Literature/TheBlackSwan'', (Lackey's version of ''Theatre/SwanLake''), Odile von Rothbart realizes that the former swan maidens won't be able to find husbands without a dowry. She solves the problem by dividing her father's ill-gotten wealth among them.

* ''Theatre/TheMiser''. Harpagon, the titular miser, is willing to marry his daughter off to a nobleman instead of the man she wants because he has accepted to marry her without a dowry, and his son to a rich widow.

* ''Literature/TheVorkosiganSaga'': Mark has the difference between pride-price and dowry explained when he offers to pay Koudelka for continuing to date his daughter.

* ''Series/{{Bridgerton}}'': The Featheringtons can't afford dowries for any of their daughters because Lord Featherington is TrappedByGamblingDebts.

* [[UsefulNotes/RichardTheSecond Richard II of England]] caused considerable controversy by disregarding this dilemma when he married Anne of Bohemia, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, without a dowry, even subsidizing her travel to England. One chronicler infamously described Anne as "a purchase rather than a gift, since the English king laid out no small sum for such a small scrap of flesh." Richard was seemingly more interested in the political and cultural prestige of an alliance with the Empire than with immediate financial benefits, and on a personal level, at least, it paid off, as he and Anne had a PerfectlyArrangedMarriage (she also appears to have won over her subjects, as she was a good influence on the often-hot-tempered Richard).

The gender-inverted, less-done version is the ''bridewealth,'' in which the husband's family pays the bride's. Dowry and bridewealth are common in societies that favor arranged marriages. If the inheritance laws or customs are designed to keep the family wealth intact (e.g., primogeniture), then the dowry is a substitute for the bride's claims. Among renaissance Italian families, women were often considered a net loss and men a net profit because women took a dowry with them whereas men brought a dowry in.

->'''Feyre:''' We can't afford a dowry. For either or you.\\

* In ''Film/{{Lajja}}'', Maithili is marrying her college sweetheart, and her soon-to-be in-laws are demanding an extremely lavish dowry...which her family cannot afford. If they can't come up with the money, the wedding will be off...and Maithili and her entire family will be disgraced. [[PinballProtagonist Vaidehi]] advises her to talk to her fiancé, but he won't stand up to his parents. They encounter a prostitute arguing with customers who are trying to cheat her out of money, and she says she's doing it because she doesn't want her sister to end up like her, shamed, rejected, and selling sex because her family can't pay a dowry. (Implying that [[FridgeHorror she may be Maithili's older sister]], though this is never confirmed in the movie.) Not only that, but some of the groomsmen try to rape Maithili and then start SlutShaming her. Maithili finally stands up to her would-be in-laws and calls out her fiancé for not standing up to them, and the wedding is off.