CHAPTER XV.
WIDOWHOOD AND THE LEVIRATE.
I. Widowhood in Savage Countries.—Societies without widowhood—The widow considered as property by the Hottentots and at the Gaboon, etc.—Widowhood in Kouranko, at Kaarta, and in Madagascar—The wives of Queen Ranavalo—Widowhood among the Redskins—Sacrifices and mutilations of widows.
II. Widowhood in Barbarous Countries.—Widowhood in Bhootan—Polyandric widowhood—Widowhood in China—Traffic in the widow—Glorification of widowhood—Suicides of widows—Widowhood in India—Duties of widows—Suttees—Widowhood in Islamite countries—Position given to the widow in the Koran—Position given to the widow in the Bible—Widowhood in Kabylia—The sleeping fœtus—Widowhood in ancient Rome—Opinion of the Christian Church on second marriages—Widowhood in barbarous Europe and in the Middle Ages.
III. The Levirate.—The levirate in Melanesia, among the Redskins, the Ostiaks, the Kirghis, the Afghans, in the Code of Manu, among the Hebrews.
IV. Summary.
I. Widowhood in Savage Countries.
We have very little knowledge as to the condition of widows in the lowest human societies. It is one of those questions of social organisation hardly noticed by the travellers to whom we look especially for information.
To begin with, we may affirm that widowhood, regarded as a special condition recognised by customs and laws, does not exist in very anarchic societies. Voltaire has somewhere said that the origin of divorce was doubtless posterior by some days to that of marriage. With much stronger reason may we infer that the existence of some kind of marriage is necessary before there can be any widowhood. Widowhood, therefore, does not exist in societies where promiscuity or temporary marriage prevails. No widowhood is possible, for example, in the tribe of the Australian Kamilaroi, where all the women of a class are common to all the men of the same class. It became otherwise from the time that, either by capture, purchase, or any other means, woman became the particular property of one man. Thenceforth it was necessary to regulate in some way the condition of the widow or widows. Generally the solution of the problem has been very simple: the widow, who has been habitually captured or bought by the deceased, does not cease after his death to be regarded as a thing or property; she is part of the inheritance, by the same title as chattels or domestic animals. Sometimes, however, special obligations or troubles are imposed on her; Kolben tells us that in passing to a fresh husband, the Hottentot widow must cut off a joint of the little finger; but to cut off a finger-joint was a common custom with the Hottentots on the death of a relative, and the women did it, or were forced to do it, more often than the men. There is nothing in this particular to the condition of the widow.[811] At the Gaboon a man’s wives belonged to his heir, and if the deceased was of importance in the tribe, they must resign themselves to a period of mourning and of widowhood, which lasts a year or two. The end of this mourning is marked by a great festival or orgy, which Du Chaillu has thus described—“The wives of the deceased (he had seven) were radiant ... they were going to quit their widow’s clothes and join the festival like brides. The heir had the right to marry them all, but to show his generosity, he had ceded two to a younger brother and one to a cousin.” They drank bumper after bumper (palm wine), and then began to dance. “The wives danced. But what dances! The most modest step was indecent.”[812]
In equatorial Africa, the son inherits the widows of his father: it is thus in Yarriba.[813] Sometimes they are sold simply, if they have had no children by the deceased husband.[814] In Kouranko, widows have a milder fate. They are numerous; for, as young girls, they have generally been sold by their parents to old husbands; but according to Laing, the custom of the country renders them free, and makes them their own mistresses as soon as they are widows, and they profit by this immediately to choose themselves a young husband, and lavish cares and attentions on him; it is then their turn.[815] Nevertheless, the custom of classing widows with the heritage seems very general in negro Africa. It exists with the Bambarras of Kaarta, where, at the death of a prince, his successor puts the wives of the deceased monarch up to auction. Even if old and horrible, they sell easily and dear, for men like the honour of succeeding to a king.[816] We shall find the same usage again in Madagascar, at least in the noble families of the Hovas. On ascending the throne, Radama simply kept all his father’s wives. So obligatory is this on the reigning sovereign, that at the death of the same Radama, his widow Ranavalo was bound to keep, by the title of wives, all her husband’s widows. Then, in a great council held after her elevation to the throne, it was decided that the Queen Ranavalo could not marry again, but would be free to take lovers at her will, and that all the children born of these fugitive unions should be considered as the legitimate posterity of Radama.[817] By this ingenious measure all was conciliated—respect to custom, the liberty of the queen, and the regular succession to the throne.
We shall find again in very different countries this savage custom of considering widows as a simple property, transmissible by inheritance. Sometimes the heir succeeds simply to the deceased husband; sometimes he accepts and exacts an indemnity, in case the widow re-marries. Such was already the custom with the Smoos of Central America. There the widows belonged by right to the relatives of the deceased husband; and in order to contract afresh, they had to pay to these relatives what was called “widow money.”[818] Inversely, with the Kliketats, if a woman happened to die very soon after her marriage, the husband who had bought her could claim her price back from the parents;[819] he had been deceived in the quality of the merchandise.
This was not all; as long as the mourning lasted, the widow was always considered, in certain districts, as having duties to fulfil towards her dead husband, or rather towards his shade. Thus, with the Sambos of Central America, she had to furnish a sufficient quantity of food during a year to the tomb of the deceased;[820] and it was the same in Mexico.[821]
In many of the Redskin tribes second marriages are not tolerated by custom till after a very long delay, exacted for reasons that have nothing savage in them; it is simply that the children of the first marriage may be grown out of their early infancy, and the custom is obligatory for the man as well as for the woman. The Selish widow only marries after two years;[822] but the delay is sometimes from two to three years for the widower as well as for the widow.[823] With the Nez-Percés of Columbia, the widower can marry again at the end of one year.[824] With the Omahas the delay was much longer, from four to seven years for the man and the woman. This rule was very strict, and in case of its infraction, the parents of the dead husband had the right to strike and wound, but without killing, the widow who might be too hasty in marrying again. In a parallel case, they confined themselves to taking a pony from the man;[825] this was because a man could defend himself. On the contrary, if the widower waited much beyond the legal time before marrying again, the parents or relatives of the dead wife thought themselves obliged to intervene. “This man,” said they, “has no one to sew his mocassins; let us seek a wife for him.” When they did so, the widower was bound to accept their offer.[826]
This question of widows has evidently been very embarrassing for primitive societies. They have either been kept or sold, according as it might be agreeable or advantageous. But another very simple way of getting rid of the encumbrance has been to sacrifice them on the tomb of the dead husband. Nothing is less rare than such immolations in savage countries, and these atrocious acts are often inspired by affectionate sentiments, by care for the fate which awaits the deceased husband after death. How can they let him travel alone on that dangerous journey beyond the tomb? This is the reason of the widely spread custom of human sacrifices, which chiefly consist of women and slaves. I quote a few facts of this kind, simply as specimens.
In certain tribes of New Zealand the widows were strangled on the tomb of the deceased husband.[827] In equatorial Africa, at Yourriba, when the king dies, four of his wives and a number of slaves are forced to poison themselves. The poison is poured into a parrot’s egg for them, and if it does not produce any effect the patients must supplement it by hanging themselves. At Jenna, on the Niger, at the death of a chief, one or two of his widows must commit suicide the same day, in order to furnish him with pleasant company in the country beyond the tomb, of which he is going to take possession.[828] At Katunga, the chief wife of the deceased king is obliged to poison herself on the tomb of her husband, in company with the eldest son and the principal personages of the kingdom. All these victims must be buried with the dead master.[829]
The massacres by which the death of the king of Dahomey is solemnised are well known, and in them also the wives play an important part as victims. We know that the primitive Germans had analogous customs; for savages of all countries, to whatever race they belong, resemble each other and repeat themselves.
Among various peoples funeral sacrifices are replaced by mutilations more or less voluntary, and especially obligatory on widows. As examples, I may mention the amputation of the little finger by the Hottentots, the Melanesians, and the Charruas; and the gashes which Polynesian widows made on their faces and bodies. These bloody demonstrations were obligatory, and far from corresponding to a real grief. At Noukahiva Porter saw a widow, the funeral wounds still fresh on her neck, breast, and arms, prostitute herself to American sailors.[830]
This review of savage manners and customs in regard to widows has only been a long enumeration of cruelties and iniquities, and these, although much lessened in barbarous countries, do not, by any means, disappear.
II. Widowhood in Barbarous Countries.
The natives of Himalayan Bhootan are sometimes monogamous, sometimes polygamous, and sometimes polyandrous, and these variations naturally affect the conditions of widowhood. Among the monogamous and polygamous, the widows can only marry again after a delay of three years. This regulation, which we have already found among the Redskins, has doubtless been dictated by the same reasons; and taken with many other similarities existing in very dissimilar races and countries, it tends to prove that scientific sociology can be more than a mere name or imagination. In the Himalayan Bhootan, a widow who has no repugnance to polygamy has many chances of marrying again, if she has a younger sister still free, whom the new husband can marry at the same time.[831] In polyandrous families there can hardly be any real widowhood for the woman. Thus, at Ladak, if the eldest brother, the husband in chief, happens to die, his property, authority, and share of the wife pass to the next brother, whether the latter be or not one of the husbands.[832] This is a sort of levirate which naturally exists in polyandrous households, and obviates at once the question of widowhood, so embarrassing to the other forms of marriage. This question of widows has been solved very grossly, and sometimes very cruelly, in the Middle Empire or China proper. Although on certain sides the old Chinese civilisation puts ours to shame, it is very backward in relation to all that concerns widows. We have previously seen that during her whole life the subjection of the Chinese woman is extreme, that she owes obedience first to her parents, then to her husband, then to her son, and that she is married, or rather sold, without being consulted at all. But widowhood does not even set her free, for she represents a value which the relatives of the husband inherit, and which they hasten to profit by. It often happens, therefore, that the Chinese widow is made to marry again, or rather, is sold again, and this time, also, no one dreams of asking her consent. The child at the breast, if there is one, is included in the bargain. In order to moderate the haste of covetous parents, the law has been obliged to intervene, and prevent the sale of the widow before the expiration of the time of mourning. The Chinese widow, if she wishes to escape this traffic in her person, and is without fortune, has no resource except to become a bonzess. Those widows only whose rank or riches place them above the common, are able to pass the rest of their days without being united to a fresh husband;[833] this posthumous fidelity is much encouraged in China by public opinion, whenever interest does not forbid it. The betrothed maiden, who may become a widow before being a wife, is much esteemed if she buries herself for ever in an enforced sorrow; but naturally, a reciprocal demand is not made on the betrothed man who may lose his fiancée. If the rich widow who remains inconsolable is much praised, she who refuses to survive her husband receives greater honour. Tablets are erected in the temples in memory of young girls who have killed themselves on the tombs of their betrothed, and twice a year certain mandarins make oblations in their honour.[834] With much stronger reason is this done for real widows.
In 1857 the Pekin Gazette published a decree, according a tablet to the memory of the wife of a mandarin who had poisoned herself on hearing of the death of her husband in a battle against the rebels. These suicides of widows are performed in public, with great pomp and solemnity. In January 1861 two young widows thus committed suicide at Fou-Chow, in presence of several thousand spectators. Another did the same at the end of December 1860.[835] It would seem, therefore, that these suicides are frequent enough even at the present time. From observations made during the Anglo-French Expedition to China, it appears that they are generally widows without children or relations who thus sacrifice themselves; they do it openly and with much ceremony. A month beforehand, the widow goes in procession through the town, as has been thus described:—“Two executioners headed the procession; then came musicians; then men dressed in coarse linen tunics with hoods, carrying parasols, little pagodas, boxes of perfumes, and streamers. After them came a third executioner, followed by a second group bearing poles, surmounted by figures of fantastic animals. And lastly came a mandarin’s palanquin, surrounded by numerous servants of both sexes, dressed in mourning, which consisted of grey linen. In the palanquin was the heroine of the fête, a young woman dressed in red (the imperial colour), and crowned with a blue diadem. Her red satin robe was ornamented with lace and gold embroidery. This solemn procession had no other object than to announce the suicide to the public, and invite them to attend it on the following moon, day for day. The young widow was exact in appearing at the rendezvous, and tranquilly hung herself at the date fixed.”[836]
With differences of form and mode of execution, India devotes her widows to a similar fate.
It seems, indeed, that in India also the widow is, or has been, considered as the property of the relatives of her dead husband, for a verse of the Code of Manu orders that if she has been sterile, a relative shall endeavour to make her conceive. Very striking and primitive is the inequality of the obligations imposed by Indian law on the widower and on the widow.[837]
Here is the law for the husband: “Every Dwidja knowing the law, who sees his wife die before him, if she has obeyed these precepts, and is of the same class as himself, must burn her with consecrated fires and with utensils of sacrifice.”—“After having accomplished thus with consecrated fires the funeral ceremony of a wife who has died, let him contract a new marriage, and light a second time the nuptial fire.”[838] As for the widow, her duty is very different: “A virtuous woman, who desires to obtain the same abode of felicity as her husband, must do nothing which may displease him, either during life or after death.”—“Let her willingly emaciate her body by feeding on flowers, roots, and pure fruits; but, after losing her husband, let her not pronounce the name of any other man.”—“But the widow, who, through the desire of having children, is unfaithful to her husband, incurs contempt here below, and will be excluded from the celestial abode whither her husband has gone.”—“Nowhere in this Code is the right of taking a second husband assigned to a virtuous wife.”[839]
The obligation not to marry again, and especially that of living on flowers and fruits, are sufficiently vexatious, but they are nothing to the suttees, or burning alive of widows, which were quite recently common in Bengal. The Code of Manu does not speak of this abominable custom, though it was very ancient, for Diodorus mentions it, and relates how the two widows of Ceteus, an Indian general under Eumenes, disputed the honour of burning themselves with the corpse of their husband. The description which Diodorus gives corresponds in every detail with what took place at the suttees quite recently; so slow to change are these old theocratic societies. One of the wives, says Diodorus, could not be burnt because she was with child. The other advanced to the funeral pile crowned with myrtle, adorned as for a wedding, and preceded by her relatives, who sang hymns in her praise. Then after having distributed her jewels to her friends and domestics, she lay down on the funeral pile by the side of her husband’s body, and died without uttering a cry.[840]
At that time, according to Diodorus, the law only allowed the sacrifice of one wife. In the eighteenth century it was more exacting. In fact, the writers of the Lettres édifiantes have described in detail several sacrifices of this kind. The custom was no longer observed except by wives of grandees, and especially of rajahs; but all of these were burnt, save the women with child, whose suffering was only deferred.
In 1710, at the death of the Prince of Marava, aged eighty years, all his wives, to the number of forty-seven, were burnt with his corpse, which was richly adorned and placed in a large grave filled with wood. The victims, who were covered with precious stones, stepped at first very bravely on the funeral pile; but the moment the flames reached them, they uttered loud cries, and rushed on each other. The spectators succeeded in calming them by throwing a number of pieces of wood at them; afterwards their bones were gathered up and thrown into the sea, and a temple to their honour was erected over the grave.[841] At that date, and in that part of the country, even women with child were only temporarily spared till after their delivery.[842] Two other princes, vassals of Marava, having died at the same epoch, and leaving, the one seventeen, the other thirteen widows, all these unfortunate creatures were burnt together, except one, who, being with child, could not sacrifice herself until later. The suttees were not a legal obligation; relatives even tried to dissuade the widows from it; but the point of honour, and the fear of public opinion, or rather of public contempt, were stronger with them than love of life.[843] The mode of burning varied in different provinces. In Bengal the woman was bound firmly to the corpse, and the two bodies were covered with bamboos. In Orissa, the widow threw herself on the pile, which was in a pit or grave. In the Deccan, a country which was in great part Tamil, and where suttees were much more rare, the widow sat on the pile, and placed the head of her dead husband on her knees. She remained thus, motionless, until she was suffocated by the smoke, or overthrown by the fall of heavy logs of wood, previously attached with cords to posts placed at the four corners of the pile. It is said that in certain provinces the victim was intoxicated with opium beforehand. Sometimes also, proper precautions not having been taken, it happened that she rushed madly out of the flames, and was then brutally thrust back by the spectators.[844]
These frightful customs, which have hardly yet disappeared from India, are but survivals from the times of savagery: such brutalities were habitual in a number of primitive societies, as I have previously shown.
In the Koran, in the Bible, and among the Arabs, or rather the contemporaneous Islamites, we find nothing analogous to this; but the position given to the widow is none the less unenviable.
A verse of the Koran shows us that before the time of Mahomet, sons inherited all their father’s wives as a matter of course, in African fashion: “Thou shalt not marry the women who have been thy father’s wives; it is an abomination and a bad practice.”[845] We have seen that this most gross custom, against which Mahomet inveighs, still prevails in various countries, and especially amongst the negroes of tropical Africa. It must have been general at the time of Mahomet, even amongst the Arabs, since the prophet states that his law need not have any retrospective effect: “Let that remain,” proceeds the same verse, “which has already been done.”
There is one point, however, on which the Koran is in advance of the greater number of barbarous societies, and even of the Bible. It recognises, in fact, the right of a widow to inherit from her husband; this right gives her a fourth, if there is no child, and an eighth only in the contrary case.[846] But notwithstanding this the widow was often abandoned, or, what is worse, confounded with the heritage. The Bible was less kind to the widow. It specifies indeed that the fortune of the husband is security for the personal effects and the dowry of the wife, but it does not place her among her husband’s heirs. The Jewish widow was a charge on her children, or, if she had none, on her own family.[847] The abandoned widow had no other resource than her share in the offerings and public charity.[848] The injunction is indeed given not to afflict her;[849] it would certainly have been better to grant her some rights.
In Judæa, the wife was bought by her husband; it is therefore probable that, in primitive times, she formed a part of his wealth, as is the case now among the Mussulman Afghans and among the Kabyles.
In Afghanistan, the widow, being a mortgaged property, cannot re-marry until the price of purchase paid for her by her deceased husband has been reimbursed to the parents of that husband.[850] In a great number of Kabyle tribes, the widow remains “hung” to her dead husband—that is to say, she is counted part of the heritage.[851] Generally she returns to her family, and her father or her relatives sell her a second time.[852] If, however, she has children, especially male children, she cannot be forced to marry again; but then the son redeems her, or she deducts from the property of her children the sum necessary to redeem herself from paternal power.[853] In the tribe of Aït Flik, heirs have, by pre-emption, the privilege of marrying the widow, and that without having to pay the thâmanth.[854] It is understood that while awaiting the day when she is to be disposed of again, the Kabyle widow is bound to the strictest chastity. If she becomes with child, she is punished by stoning.[855]
Like the Bible, and nearly all other legislations, the Koran only allows the marriage of a widow after a certain term of delay. In the Koran, this term is four months and ten days;[856] and if the woman is with child, the delay must extend till after her delivery. But there are some pregnancies that are either imaginary or fictitious, and which come to nothing, yet in Arab countries successions are suspended on account of them. If, at the moment of her husband’s death, a woman thinks herself with child, she places her girdle on the body of the deceased; note is taken of it, and the time awaited. If the waiting is vain, at the end of eleven months the widow is visited and examined by matrons; and if nevertheless the professed pregnancy has no result, the child who refuses to be born is called “asleep” for an indefinite time. Henceforth the widow is free, and if she ends by becoming a mother, her child, awaited so long, is reputed to be the son of the husband dead years before, and inherits from him.[857]
This singular prejudice is common to the Kabyles and to the Arabs. A number of Mussulman legists have vainly tried to overcome it. All that they have been able to do is to limit to four or five years, generally to four, the duration of this pretended “sleep” of the fœtus.[858]
The widow has not been more worthily treated at the origin of Greco-Roman civilisation than in the other barbarous civilisations. It would be strange if it were so. We have seen that at Athens the woman, even when married, was part of the paternal patrimony; that the dying husband could leave her by will to a friend, with his goods, and by the same title; that at Rome the wife was bought and subjected to the terrible right of the marital manus.
For a long time at Rome, as in China at the present day, the widows who did not marry were particularly honoured. The widower married again immediately after his wife’s death; widows, on the contrary, were in any case forbidden to marry before a delay of six months, afterwards extended to twelve months, and that under pain of infamy for the father who had made the marriage, for the husband who had taken the widow, and later for the re-married woman also, when infamy also applied to women. By degrees Roman customs and laws improved on this point as on others. The Leges Julia and Papia Poppæa encouraged second marriages, in opposition to the ancient prejudice; the Institutes ordained that when the widow was poor and without dowry, she could inherit from her husband one-fourth if there were three children, and a full masculine share if there were none.[859] But the triumph of Christianity was the signal for a retrograde movement. Constantine returned to the old ideas of primitive Rome, and went so far as to inflict on second marriages pecuniary penalties, which were to be paid to the children of the first marriage.[860] In acting thus, the neophyte emperor was acting up to the logic of the Church, in whose eyes marriage itself was an evil rendered necessary by the sin of Adam, and by whom second marriages were emphatically condemned.[861]
From the fusion of Christian doctrines with the gross customs of more or less barbarous European races, on the subject of women and marriage, there resulted for the widow a position of extreme subjection. Among the Germans, as among the Afghans and Kabyles, the widow became again the property of her own family, and in order to marry her, it was necessary to pay a special price, the reipus, which was double the mundium or price of the first purchase.[862] The Salic law decreed that at the age of fifteen the son should be the guardian of his widowed mother. The Lombard law decides also that the widow shall not marry again without the consent of her son (section xxxvii.); and this consent was necessary even for her to enter a convent. Thus Theodoric, adopting with barbarous fury the opinions of the Church on second marriages, promulgated a law interdicting widows from marrying again, and condemning to the flames any man who should be convicted of having had commerce with them.
These objections to second marriage, or at least the blame attached to them by public opinion, are common in many ancient societies. We have found them in India, in ancient Rome and Greece, etc. We can only attribute this way of thinking, senseless and unjust as it is, to a sort of delirium of proprietorship in the husband, who pretends still to rule over and possess his wife from beyond the tomb, but chiefly to the desire of avoiding disturbances in the transmission of hereditary wealth, when the women were able to have possessions of their own. The levirate, of which I am now going to speak, remedied the latter inconveniences.
The levirate is the name given to the obligation imposed by custom or law on the brother of the deceased husband to marry his sister-in-law when she became a widow. This custom of the levirate, which for a long time has been thought peculiar to the Hebrews, is very widely spread, and is found among races most widely differing from each other. There is surely good reason for it in savage or barbarous societies where for a woman abandonment would mean death.
I will enumerate some of the peoples who practise the levirate, beginning as usual with the inferior races.
We meet the levirate first in Melanesia, at New Caledonia, where the brother-in-law, whether he be already married or not, must marry his brother’s widow immediately.
We also find the levirate among the Redskins, particularly the Chippeways; and at Nicaragua, where the widow belongs either to the brother or nearest relative of her deceased husband.[863]
With the Ostiaks, the next brother of the husband is obliged to marry his widow or widows; for the Ostiaks, like the Redskins, often take for wives a whole set of sisters.[864] It is the same with the Kirghis, and in general with the nomad Mongols.[865] The Afghans also make it a duty of the brother-in-law to marry his sister-in-law, on her becoming a widow.[866]
The Code of Manu imposes the levirate even on the brother of a betrothed man who dies: “When the husband of a young girl happens to die after the betrothal, let the brother of the husband take her for wife.”[867] The object of this legal precept in India is to give a posterity to the deceased brother; for the following verse seems to limit the duration of the cohabitation with the widowed fiancée, and it seems indeed that all commerce is to cease after the first pregnancy.[868]
We will now consider the Hebrew levirate, which is only a particular case of a very general fact.
We find the levirate mentioned twice in the Bible. At first in Genesis: “Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy brother.”[869] Again, in Deuteronomy: “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her. And it shall be, that the first-born whom she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel.”[870] The Hebrew levirate was therefore a sort of obligatory and fictitious adoption of a nephew by the deceased uncle. We shall soon see that in all primitive or barbarous societies this adoption is largely practised, and that it is absolutely equivalent to a real filiation.
The verses which follow inform us that, with the Hebrews, the levirate was rather a moral than a legal obligation; the brother-in-law could even refuse it; but in refusing, he incurred the public contempt, and had to submit to a degrading ceremony: “And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto me; then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand, and say, I like not to take her; then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that doth not build up his brother’s house. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.”[871]
In India the principal object of the levirate, applied to the widowed fiancée, was to furnish the deceased man with a fictitious son, who could perform for him the sacrifices to the manes, a duty of the highest importance in the religion of Brahma. For the Hebrews, a much more practical people than the Hindoos, the levirate had only an earthly object—that of keeping up the name or family of the deceased, and all that belonged to it. It may be compared with the obligation imposed at Athens on the nearest relative in the masculine line to marry the heiress, or to supplement at need the impotence of the husband.
The old practice of the levirate still exists in Abyssinia with this curious detail, that it is applied during the lifetime of the husband if he has been the victim of an accident, frequent in the Abyssinian wars, of emasculation. The mutilated husband, being thus struck with what might be called “virile death,” his brother succeeds him in his marital rights and duties.[872]
Some sociologists, too much given to theorise, have tried to prove that the levirate was a remnant of polyandry. Certainly the levirate is practised under a polyandric régime, but polyandry has never been more than an exceptional mode of marriage, and there is hardly any trace of it among the New Caledonians, the Redskins, the Mongols, the Afghans, the Hindoos, the Hebrews, the Abyssinians, etc., who, all of them, practise different varieties of levirate.
The much more natural reasons that I have given above appear to me quite sufficient and more probable.
From a consideration of all these facts, we find that the fate of the widow has varied according to the matrimonial form in use, and according to the degree of civilisation, but that it has not always been ameliorated in proportion to the general progress. Laws and customs have ever been kind to the widower. It has been very different for the woman, and her position has perhaps been better, from our point of view, in certain primitive societies, than it became later. Thus, in the confused state of primitive families, when men lived either in a freedom almost bordering on promiscuity, or in groups half polyandric or polygamic, and more especially in polyandrous countries, there was no actual widowhood, or state of being a widow, for woman. The disappearance of one of the men with whom she lived in intimate relations made no great change in her position. Under a polygamic régime it is quite otherwise; for then the wives are private property. Their master has nearly always bought them, and their subjection is very great. Therefore, at the death of their master, they are treated exactly like things; they follow the fate of the goods, and pass into the hands of the heir, who can keep or sell them. Sometimes, however, they are sacrificed in greater or less numbers on the tomb of the dead husband, whom they must continue to serve and love in the future life.
Under a monogamic régime societies are generally more civilised, and the dominating ideas are then the care of property, and sometimes the perpetuation of the name. The widow cannot inherit, for the property must not be divided. She is then a most embarrassing incumbrance. Sometimes she is persuaded to follow still into the next world the husband who has preceded her thither; this is the most radical solution. Sometimes her relations marry her again, and obtain a second price for her; sometimes she is provided for by the levirate.
Traces of these ancestral iniquities are still preserved in our modern codes, which, though nearly emancipating the widow, push the fanaticism of consanguinity so far as not to consider her as the relative of her husband as concerns property. From a social point of view, the whole of this survey of the treatment of widows is not flattering for humanity. In short, from a moral point of view, the easy resignation with which men and women bear widowhood, places mankind, as regards nobility of sentiment, far below certain species of animals, as, for example, the Illinois paraquet (Psittacus Illinois), for whom widowhood and death are synonymous, as well for the male as the female. Doubtless it might be alleged that even in so-called highly civilised societies people do not marry as a rule from any lofty sentiment; but that is surely a poor excuse.