If we now turn to human beings, we have to ascend many strata of
civilization before we come across anything resembling the unselfish
gallantry of the rooster. The Australian savage, when he has speared a
kangaroo, makes his wife cook it, then selects the juiciest cuts for
himself and the other men, leaving the bones to the women and dogs.
Ascending to the much higher Polynesians and American Indians we still
find that the women have to content themselves with what the men
leave. A Hawaiian even considers it a disgrace to eat at the same
place as his wife, or with the same utensils.
What Kowney says (173) of the Nagas of India--"she does everything the
husband will not, and he considers it effeminate to do anything but
fight, hunt, and fish"--is true of the lower races in general. An
African Kaffir, says Wood (73), would consider it beneath his dignity
to as much as lift a basket of rice on the head of even his favorite
wife; he sits calmly on the ground and allows some woman to help his
busy wife. "One of my friends," he continues,
"when rather new to Kaffirland, happened to look into a
hut and there saw a stalwart Kaffir sitting and smoking
his pipe, while the women were hard at work in the sun,
building huts, carrying timber, and performing all
kinds of severe labor. Struck with a natural
indignation at such behavior, he told the smoker to get
up and work like a man. This idea was too much even for
the native politeness of the Kaffir, who burst into a
laugh at so absurd a notion. 'Women work,' said he,
'men sit in the house and smoke.'"
MacDonald relates (in _Africana_, I., 35) that "a woman always kneels
when she has occasion to talk to a man." Even queens must in some
cases go on their knees before their husbands. (Ratzel, I., 254.)
Caillé gives similar testimony regarding the Waissulo, and Mungo Park
(347) describes the return of one of his companions to the capital of
Dentila, after an absence of three years:
"As soon as he had seated himself upon a mat, by the
threshold of his door, a young woman (his intended
bride) brought a little water in a calabash, and
kneeling down before him, desired him to wash his
hands; when he had done this, the girl, with a tear of
joy sparkling in her eyes, drank the water; this being
considered as the greatest proof she could possibly
give him of her fidelity and attachment."
An Eskimo, when building a house, looks on lazily while his women
carry stones "almost heavy enough to break their backs." The ungallant
men not only compel the women to be their drudges, but slyly create a
sentiment that it is disgraceful for a man to assist them. Of the
Patagonian Indians Falkner asserts that the women are so rigidly
"obliged to perform their duty, that their husbands cannot help them
on any occasion, or in the greatest distress, without incurring the
highest ignominy," and this is the general feeling, of which other
illustrations will be given in later chapters. Foolish sentimentalists
have tried to excuse the Indians on the ground that they have no time
to attend to anything but fighting and hunting. But they always make
the squaws do the hard work, whether there be any war and hunting or
not. A white American girl, accustomed to the gallant attentions of
her lover, would not smile on the red Dacota suitor of whom Riggs
writes (205):
"When the family are abed and asleep, he often visits
her in her mother's tent, or he finds her out in the
grove in the day time gathering fuel. She has the load
of sticks made up, and when she kneels down to take it
on her back, possibly he takes her hand and helps her
up and then walks home by her side. Such was the custom
In the olden time."
Still, there is a germ of gallantry here. The Dacota at least helps to
load his human donkey, while the Kaffir refuses to do even that.
Colonel James Smith, who had been adopted by the Indians, relates (45)
how one day he helped the squaws to hoe corn. They approved of it, but
the old men afterward chid him for degrading himself by hoeing corn
like a squaw. He slyly adds that, as he was never very fond of work,
they had no occasion to scold him again. We read in Schoolcraft (V.,
268) that among the Creeks, during courtship, the young man used to
help the girl hoe the corn in her field, plant her beans and set poles
for them to run upon. But this was not intended as an act of gallant
assistance; it had a symbolic meaning. The running up of the beans on
the poles and the entwining of their vines was "thought emblematical
of their approaching union and bondage." Morgan states expressly in
his classical work on the Iroquois (332) that "no attempts by the
unmarried to please or gratify each other by acts of personal
attention were ever made." In other words the Indians knew not
gallantry in the sense of disinterested courtesy to the weaker
sex--the gallantry which is an essential ingredient of romantic love.
Germs of gallantry may perhaps be found in Borneo where, as St. John
relates (I., 161), a young Dyak may help the girl he wants to marry in
her farm work, carrying home her load of vegetables or wood, or make
her presents of rings, a petticoat, etc. But such a statement must be
interpreted with caution.
The very fact that they make the women do the field work and carry the
wood habitually, shows that the Dyaks are not gallant. Momentary
favors for the sake of securing favors in return, or of arranging an
ephemeral Bornean "marriage," are not acts of disinterested courtesy
to the weaker sex. The Dyaks themselves clearly understand that such
attentions are mere bids for favors. As a missionary cited by Ling
Roth (1., 13.1) remarks:
"If a woman handed to a man betel-nut and sirah to eat,
or if a man paid her the smallest attention, such as we
should term only common politeness, it would be
sufficient to excuse a jealous husband for striking a
man."
It is the same in India.
"The politeness, attention, and gallantry which the
Europeans practise toward the ladies, although often
proceeding from esteem and respect, are invariably ascribed
by the Hindoos to a different motive."
(Dubois, I., 271.) Here, as everywhere in former times, woman existed
not for her own sake but for man's convenience, comfort, and pleasure;
why, therefore, should he bother to do anything to please her? In the
_Kaniasoutram_ there is a chapter on the duties of a model wife, in
which she is instructed to do all the work not only at home but in
garden, field, and stable. She must go to bed after her husband and
get up before him. She must try to excel all other wives in faithfully
serving her lord and master. She must not even allow the maid-servant
to wash his feet, but must do it with her own hands. The _Laws of
Manu_ are full of such precepts, most of them amazingly ungallant. The
horrible maltreatment of women in India, which it would be an
unpardonable euphuism to call simply ungallant, will be dwelt on in a
later chapter.
It has been said a thousand times that the best measure of a nation's
civilization is its treatment of women. It would be more accurate to
say that kind, courteous treatment of women is the last and highest
product of civilization. The Greeks and Hindoos had reached a high
level of culture in many respects, yet, judged by their treatment of
women, the Greeks were barbarians and the Hindoos incarnate fiends.
Scholars are sometimes surprisingly reckless in their assumptions.
Thus Hommel (1., 417) declares that woman must have held an honored
position in Babylonia,[32] because in the ancient texts that have come
down to us the words mother and wife always precede the words father
and husband. Yet, as Dubois mentions incidentally, the Brahmin texts
also place the feminine word before the masculine, and the Brahmins
treat women more cruelly than the lowest savages treat them.