refuse to bind themselves to a man who may turn out
to be good
for nothing, a burden instead of a help and
protection. So long
as the unions are free they are likely to be
permanent. If made
legal, the risk is that they will become
intolerable, and cease
by one of the parties leaving the other. "The
necessity for
mutual kindness and forbearance establishes a
condition that is
the best guarantee of permanency" (p. 214). It is said, however,
that under the influence of religious and social
pressure the
people are becoming more anxious to adopt
"respectable" ideas of
sexual relationships, though it seems evident, in
view of
Livingstone's statement, that such respectability is
likely to
involve a decrease of real morality. Livingstone
points out,
however, one serious defect in the present
conditions which makes
it easy for immoral men to escape paternal
responsibilities, and
this is the absence of legal provision for the
registration of
the father's name on birth certificates (p. 256). In
every
country where the majority of births are
illegitimate it is an
obvious social necessity that the names of both
parents should be
duly registered on all birth certificates. It has
been an
unpardonable failure on the part of the Jamaican
Government to
neglect the simple measure needed to give "each
child born in the
country a legal father" (p. 258).
We thus see that we have to-day reached a position in
which--partly owing
to economic causes and partly to causes which are more deeply rooted in
the tendencies involved by civilization--women are more often detached
than of old from legal sexual relationship with men and both sexes are
less inclined than in earlier stages of civilization to sacrifice their
own independence even when they form such relationships.
"I never heard of
a woman over sixteen years of age who, prior to the
breakdown of
aboriginal customs after the coming of the whites, had not a husband,"
wrote Curr of the Australian Blacks.[271] Even as
regards some parts of
Europe, it is still possible to-day to make almost the same statement. But
in all the richer, more energetic, and progressive
countries very
different conditions prevail. Marriage is late and a
certain proportion of
men, and a still larger proportion of women (who exceed the men in the
general population) never marry at all.[272]
Before we consider the fateful significance of this fact of the growing
proportion of adult unmarried women whose sexual
relationships are
unrecognized by the state and largely unrecognized
altogether, it may be
well to glance summarily at the two historical streams of tendency, both
still in action among us, which affect the status of
women, the one
favoring the social equality of the sexes, the other
favoring the social
subjection of women. It is not difficult to trace these two streams both
in conduct and opinion, in practical morality and in
theoretical morality.
At one time it was widely held that in early states of society, before the
establishment of the patriarchal stage which places
women under the
protection of men, a matriarchal stage prevailed in
which women possessed
supreme power.[273] Bachofen, half a century ago, was
the great champion
of this view. He found a typical example of a
matriarchal state among the
ancient Lycians of Asia Minor with whom, Herodotus
stated, the child takes
the name of the mother, and follows her status, not that of the
father.[274] Such peoples, Bachofen believed, were
gynæcocratic; power was
in the hands of women. It can no longer be said that
this opinion, in the
form held by Bachofen, meets with any considerable
support. As to the
widespread prevalence of descent through the mother,
there is no doubt
whatever that it has prevailed very widely. But such
descent through the
mother, it has become recognized, by no means
necessarily involves the
power of the mother, and mother-descent may even be
combined with a
patriarchal system.[275] There has even been a tendency to run to the
opposite extreme from Bachofen and to deny that mother-descent conferred
any special claim for consideration on women. That,
however, seems
scarcely in accordance with the evidence and even in the absence of
evidence could scarcely be regarded as probable. It
would seem that we may
fairly take as a type of the matriarchal family that
based on the _ambil
anak_ marriage of Sumatra, in which the husband lives in the wife's
family, paying nothing and occupying a subordinate
position. The example
of the Lycians is here in point, for although, as
reported by Herodotus,
there is nothing to show that there was anything of the nature of a
gynæcocracy in Lycia, we know that women in all these
regions of Asia
Minor enjoyed high consideration and influence, traces of which may be
detected in the early literature and history of
Christianity. A decisive
and better known example of the favorable influence of mother-descent on
the status of woman is afforded by the _beena_ marriage of early Arabia.
Under such a system the wife is not only preserved from the subjection
involved by purchase, which always casts upon her some shadow of the
inferiority belonging to property, but she herself is
the owner of the
tent and the household property, and enjoys the dignity always involved by
the possession of property and the ability to free
herself from her
husband.[276]
It is also impossible to avoid connecting the primitive tendency to
mother-descent, and the emphasis it involved on maternal rather than
paternal generative energy, with the tendency to place the goddess rather
than the god in the forefront of primitive pantheons, a tendency which
cannot possibly fail to reflect honor on the sex to
which the supreme
deity belongs, and which may be connected with the large part which
primitive women often play in the functions of religion.
Thus, according
to traditions common to all the central tribes of
Australia, the woman
formerly took a much greater share in the performance of sacred ceremonies
which are now regarded as coming almost exclusively
within the masculine
province, and in at least one tribe which seems to
retain ancient
practices the women still actually take part in these
ceremonies.[277] It
seems to have been much the same in Europe. We observe, too, both in the
Celtic pantheon and among Mediterranean peoples, that
while all the
ancient divinities have receded into the dim background yet the goddesses
loom larger than the gods.[278] In Ireland, where
ancient custom and
tradition have always been very tenaciously preserved, women retained a
very high position, and much freedom both before and
after marriage.
"Every woman," it was said, "is to go the way she willeth freely," and
after marriage she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of
divorce than was afforded either by the Christian Church or the English
common law.[279] There is less difficulty in recognizing that
mother-descent was peculiarly favorable to the high
status of women when
we realize that even under very unfavorable conditions women have been
able to exert great pressure on the men and to resist
successfully the
attempts to tyrannize over them.[280]
If we consider the status of woman in the great empires of antiquity we
find on the whole that in their early stage, the stage of growth, as well
as in their final stage, the stage of fruition, women
tend to occupy a
favorable position, while in their middle stage, usually the stage of
predominating military organization on a patriarchal
basis, women occupy a
less favorable position. This cyclic movement seems to be almost a natural
law of the development of great social groups. It was
apparently well
marked in the very stable and orderly growth of
Babylonia. In the earliest
times a Babylonian woman had complete independence and equal rights with
her brothers and her husband; later (as shown by the
code of Hamurabi) a
woman's rights, though not her duties, were more
circumscribed; in the
still later Neo-Babylonian periods, she again acquired equal rights with
her husband.[281]
In Egypt the position of women stood highest at the end, but it seems to
have been high throughout the whole of the long course of Egyptian
history, and continuously improving, while the fact that little regard was
paid to prenuptial chastity and that marriage contracts placed no stress
on virginity indicate the absence of the conception of women as property.
More than three thousand five hundred years ago men and women were
recognized as equal in Egypt. The high position of the Egyptian woman is
significantly indicated by the fact that her child was never illegitimate;
illegitimacy was not recognized even in the case of a
slave woman's
child.[282] "It is the glory of Egyptian morality," says Amélineau, "to
have been the first to express the Dignity of
Woman."[283] The idea of
marital authority was altogether unknown in Egypt. There can be no doubt
that the high status of woman in two civilizations so
stable, so vital, so
long-lived, and so influential on human culture as
Babylonia and Egypt, is
a fact of much significance.
Among the Jews there seems to have been no
intermediate stage of
subordination of women, but instead a gradual
progress throughout
from complete subjection of the woman as wife to
ever greater
freedom. At first the husband could repudiate his
wife at will
without cause. (This was not an extension of
patriarchal
authority, but a purely marital authority.) The
restrictions on
this authority gradually increased, and begin to be
observable
already in the Book of Deuteronomy. The Mishnah went
further and
forbade divorce whenever the wife's condition
inspired pity (as
in insanity, captivity, etc.). By A.D. 1025, divorce
was no
longer possible except for legitimate reasons or by
the wife's
consent. At the same time, the wife also began to
acquire the
right of divorce in the form of compelling the
husband to
repudiate her on penalty of punishment in case of
refusal. On
divorce the wife became an independent woman in her
own right,
and was permitted to carry off the dowry which her
husband gave
her on marriage. Thus, notwithstanding Jewish
respect for the
letter of the law, the flexible jurisprudence of the
Rabbis, in
harmony with the growth of culture, accorded an
ever-growing
measure of sexual justice and equality to women
(D.W. Amram, _The
Jewish Law of Divorce_).
Among the Arabs the tendency of progress has also
been favorable
to women in many respects, especially as regards
inheritance.
Before Mahommed, in accordance with the system
prevailing at
Medina, women had little or no right of inheritance.
The
legislation of the Koran modified this rule, without
entirely
abolishing it, and placed women in a much better
position. This
is attributed largely to the fact that Mahommed
belonged not to
Medina, but to Mecca, where traces of matriarchal
custom still
survived (W. Marçais, _Des Parents et des Alliés
Successibles en
Droit Musulman_).
It may be pointed out--for it is not always
realized--that even
that stage of civilization--when it occurs--which
involves the
subordination and subjection of woman and her rights
really has
its origin in the need for the protection of women,
and is
sometimes even a sign of the acquirement of new
privileges by
women. They are, as it were, locked up, not in order
to deprive
them of their rights, but in order to guard those
rights. In the
later more stable phase of civilization, when women
are no longer
exposed to the same dangers, this motive is
forgotten and the
guardianship of woman and her rights seems, and
indeed has really
become, a hardship rather than an advantage.
Of the status of women at Rome in the earliest periods we know little or
nothing; the patriarchal system was already firmly
established when Roman
history begins to become clear and it involved unusually strict
subordination of the woman to her father first and then to her husband.
But nothing is more certain than that the status of
women in Rome rose
with the rise of civilization, exactly in the same way as in Babylonia and
in Egypt. In the case of Rome, however, the growing
refinement of
civilization, and the expansion of the Empire, were
associated with the
magnificent development of the system of Roman law,
which in its final
forms consecrated the position of women. In the last
days of the Republic
women already began to attain the same legal level as
men, and later the
great Antonine jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law,
reached the conception of the equality of the sexes as a principle of the
code of equity. The patriarchal subordination of women fell into complete
discredit, and this continued until, in the days of
Justinian, under the
influence of Christianity, the position of women began to suffer.[284] In
the best days the older forms of Roman marriage gave
place to a form
(apparently old but not hitherto considered reputable) which amounted in
law to a temporary deposit of the woman by her family.
She was independent
of her husband (more especially as she came to him with her own dowry) and
only nominally dependent on her family. Marriage was a private contract,
accompanied by a religious ceremony if desired, and
being a contract it
could be dissolved, for any reason, in the presence of competent
witnesses and with due legal forms, after the advice of the family council
had been taken. Consent was the essence of this marriage and no shame,
therefore, attached to its dissolution. Nor had it any evil effect either
on the happiness or the morals of Roman women.[285] Such a system is
obviously more in harmony with modern civilized feeling than any system
that has ever been set up in Christendom.
In Rome, also, it is clear that this system was not a
mere legal invention
but the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public
feeling in favor of the
equality of men and women, often even in the field of
sexual morality.
Plautus, who makes the old slave Syra ask why there is not the same law in
this respect for the husband as for the wife,[286] had preceded the legist
Ulpian who wrote: "It seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity
of his wife while he himself shows no example of
it."[287] Such demands
lie deeper than social legislation, but the fact that
these questions
presented themselves to typical Roman men indicates the general attitude
towards women. In the final stage of Roman society the bond of the
patriarchal system so far as women were concerned
dwindled to a mere
thread binding them to their fathers and leaving them
quite free face to
face with their husbands. "The Roman matron of the Empire," says Hobhouse,
"was more fully her own mistress than the married woman of any earlier
civilization, with the possible exception of a certain period of Egyptian
history, and, it must be added, than the wife of any
later civilization
down to our own generation."[288]
On the strength of the statements of two satirical
writers,
Juvenal and Tacitus, it has been supposed by many
that Roman
women of the late period were given up to license.
It is,
however, idle to seek in satirists any balanced
picture of a
great civilization. Hobhouse (loc. cit., p. 216)
concludes that
on the whole, Roman women worthily retained the
position of their
husbands' companions, counsellors and friends which
they had
held when an austere system placed them legally in
his power.
Most authorities seem now to be of this opinion,
though at an
earlier period Friedländer expressed himself more
dubiously. Thus
Dill, in his judicious _Roman Society_ (p. 163),
states that the
Roman woman's position, both in law and in fact,
rose during the
Empire; without being less virtuous or respected,
she became far
more accomplished and attractive; with fewer
restraints she had
greater charm and influence, even in public affairs,
and was more
and more the equal of her husband. "In the last age of the
Western Empire there is no deterioration in the
position and
influence of women." Principal Donaldson, also, in his valuable
historical sketch, _Woman_, considers (p. 113) that
there was no
degradation of morals in the Roman Empire; "the
licentiousness of
Pagan Rome is nothing to the licentiousness of
Christian Africa,
Rome, and Gaul, if we can put any reliance on the
description of
Salvian." Salvian's description of Christendom is probably
exaggerated and one-sided, but exactly the same may
be said in an
even greater degree of the descriptions of ancient
Rome left by
clever Pagan satirists and ascetic Christian
preachers.
It thus becomes necessary to leap over considerably more than a thousand
years before we reach a stage of civilization in any
degree approaching in
height the final stage of Roman society. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, at first in France, then in England, we find once more the
moral and legal movement tending towards the
equalization of women with
men. We find also a long series of pioneers of that
movement foreshadowing
its developments: Mary Astor, "Sophia, a Lady of
Quality," Ségur, Mrs.
Wheeler, and very notably Mary Wollstonecraft in _A
Vindication of the
Rights of Woman_, and John Stuart Mill in _The
Subjection of Women_.[289]
The main European stream of influences in this matter
within historical
times has involved, we can scarcely doubt when we take into consideration
its complex phenomena as a whole, the maintenance of an inequality to the
disadvantage of women. The fine legacy of Roman law to Europe was indeed
favorable to women, but that legacy was dispersed and
for the most part
lost in the more predominating influence of tenacious
Teutonic custom
associated with the vigorously organized Christian
Church. Notwithstanding
that the facts do not all point in the same direction, and that there is
consequently some difference of opinion, it seems
evident that on the
whole both Teutonic custom and Christian religion were unfavorable to the
equality of women with men. Teutonic custom in this
matter was determined
by two decisive factors: (1) the existence of marriage by purchase which
although, as Crawley has pointed out, it by no means
necessarily involves
the degradation of women, certainly tends to place them in an inferior
position, and (2) pre-occupation with war which is
always accompanied by a
depreciation of peaceful and feminine occupations and an indifference to
love. Christianity was at its origin favorable to women because it
liberated and glorified the most essentially feminine
emotions, but when
it became an established and organized religion with
definitely ascetic
ideals, its whole emotional tone grew unfavorable to
women. It had from
the first excluded them from any priestly function. It now regarded them
as the special representatives of the despised element of sex in
life.[290] The eccentric Tertullian had once declared
that woman was
_janua Diaboli_; nearly seven hundred years later, even the gentle and
philosophic Anselm wrote: _Femina fax est Satanæ_.[291]
Thus among the Franks, with whom the practice of
monogamy
prevailed, a woman was never free; she could not buy
or sell or
inherit without the permission of those to whom she
belonged. She
passed into the possession of her husband by
acquisition, and
when he fixed the wedding day he gave her parents
coins of small
money as _arrha_, and the day after the wedding she
received from
him a present, the _morgengabe_. A widow belonged to
her parents
again (Bedollière, _Histoire de Moeurs des
Français_,
vol. i, p. 180). It is true that the Salic law
ordained a
pecuniary fine for touching a woman, even for
squeezing her
finger, but it is clear that the offence thus
committed was an
offence against property, and by no means against
the sanctity of
a woman's personality. The primitive German husband
could sell
his children, and sometimes his wife, even into
slavery. In the
eleventh century cases of wife-selling are still
heard of, though
no longer recognized by law.
The traditions of Christianity were more favorable
to sexual
equality than were Teutonic customs, but in becoming
amalgamated
with those customs they added their own special