Mariage blanc (from the French, literally "white marriage") is a marriage which is without consummation.[1] The persons may have married for a variety of reasons, for example, a marriage of convenience is usually entered into in order to aid or rescue one of the principals of the marriage from persecution or harm; or for economic, social or visa advantage. Another example is a lavender marriage, one undertaken to disguise the homosexuality of at least one partner.
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The expression may derive from the absence of hymenal blood on the couple's (white) wedding-night bed-sheets,[2] however the French word blanc also means blank in the sense of empty, e.g. cartouche à blanc = a blank cartridge, one lacking a bullet.
An example is of a Gentile marrying a Jew to protect that person during times of extreme anti-Semitism such as the lead-up to World War II in areas of Europe menaced by Nazism: "Baron Federico von Berzeviczy-Pallavicini . . . [d]uring the thirties . . . made a mariage blanc with the niece of Demel's Jewish owners, which allowed her to enter a convent under his name and survive the war."[3] (Demel's is a luxurious Viennese confectionery, still in business today.)
A mariage blanc may also result if one or both partners discover after their wedding that they are either incapable of, or unwilling to take part in, sexual intercourse, for example, due to asexuality, impotence or frigidity, chronic illness or disability. The marriages of Thomas Carlyle,[4] Author Frank Harris claims that Carlyle had confessed his impotence to him personally, and records an account by Mrs Carlye's doctor, who had examined and found her to be a virgin after 25 years of marriage. Harris's information is doubted by several scholars, the editor John Gallagher noted in a footnote. John Ruskin, and Max Beerbohm are alleged to have not consummated through impotence. The brief marriage of Tchaikovsky might be described as a "lavender marriage".