It is my understanding that 'damaged goods' means a woman/girl has already had sex.
It's my understanding that the terms for waiting way late to marry are 'on the shelf' and 'old maid' though these terms are probably from the Regency period in Europe. 'Damaged goods' maybe from a later period.
Yeah, but the marker in the Kama Sutra put it as "Any time after puberty." I like my colorful language in posts. It's not as if I'm going to be writing the novel in sanskrit....
There was an argument that puberty dropped radically, but I also saw a counter claim that the data is skewed in two ways which makes it harder to assess:
1. That the data tends to talk about puberty hitting at 16-17, in Medieval times, however that data seems to be taken from lower class/poor. Which begs the question: What about the rich? (Which is what the paper was pointing to).
2. The paper also pointed out that though human physiology is the same, there wasn't much accounting for countries outside of Europe and the United States (as in after 1776). That's a pretty narrow range... and I'm dealing with dates from 42 AD to 200AD... with a fairly well rich upper class in India who are marked by mostly a vegetarian diet. (They are Hindus... at least and from my research Hindus were a little more strict in those days.)
Given the data, one could assume to a certain degree one could slide with, say 12-14 being menses, given a healthy diet. I doubt I can get away with 16, since diet is the largest factor.
Still, I find it creepy to want to marry someone before they are able to have attraction to you, which is what the Kama Sutra suggests (the non-sexual part that people ignore), but then I'm kinda steeped in the modern culture. The justification for that is that in the Kama Sutra, the logic is that once a woman has menses (and I know this is wrong in modern logic), she's no longer a virgin, or a very big risk of not being one. Despite that, the Kama Sutra doesn't seem to advocate rape because it also goes into detail about "waiting" and "certain looks". Basically marrying a pretty girl early, seducing her with child games, and then waiting for her to "give that look". *sighs* In modern times, isn't that what one calls a sexual predator? So I'm looking at a 11-12 year old at best--though later versions of this school of thought go on to have sex manuals about girls at 8-10 years old. (That's not until much later--I believe it's the Ana Ranga?).
To be fair, the Palace of Illusions, a novel set before my timeline and in what is now India, pretty much glossed over this. Talked briefly about sexual education, but not really about menses much.
The main character's older sister is being held as a fabulous ideal... so I need to get it right--because if her sister got married to age and the MC didn't that would do well plot-wise to feed her insecurities, though it might feed the reader squick, at least there would be some accuracy. Still waiting on the last reference to triple check against some claims that the age of marriage was at a much younger age later in India's timeline.
Again, not dealing with Europe. =P If my geography hasn't gotten wacky.
I should note to be fair that some countries married children together early, but didn't expect consummation until much later... (Joseon Korea, China--forgot which dynasties, and maybe Japan?)