Re: Four Marriages for women!!!
This.
Taking a second wife, for whatever reason (I’ll maybe except insanity or coma), is a rejection and a humiliation.
I think OP’s hypothetical scenario is so you can put yourselves in the place of women who are forced to accept it and to counter views that state how happy women are to share their husbands.
As for their possessiveness, a look at the MIL threads will tell you how jealous they are over the influence of any other woman over their immediate family. Their jealously manifests itself as resentment and bickering and not outright violence. It’s not the less strong for that.
As to it’s being common in historical times - it sure was. Women accepted it because they had no choice, and not because they were happy about it. A cursory look through literature (where it presents a woman’s point of view) will show you that women maneuvered, manipulated, used violence against the other woman, and every other tool at their disposal to prevent this very thing from happening. Most folk songs tell either of men’s threat to bring in a souten to keep the wife in line, or sing of hatred between soutens.
Polygyny is a tool to control women and frankly unacceptable in this day and age.
P.S I did read of co-operative wives in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’..so here’s my conclusion - about the only time soutens unite in friendship is in shared fear or dislike of a abominable husband.