Feudal legislation combined with clerical contempt and criminal
persecution in lowering woman’s position. There were numerous and
stringent enactments which “rendered it impossible for women to succeed
to any considerable amount of property, and which almost reduced them to
the alternative of marriage or a nunnery. The complete inferiority of
the sex was continually maintained by the law; and that generous public
opinion which in Rome had frequently revolted against the injustice done
to girls, in depriving them of the greater part of the inheritance of
their fathers, totally disappeared.” Beaumanoir says that “Every husband
may beat his wife if she refuses to obey his orders, or if she speaks
ill of him or tells an untruth, provided he does so with moderation.”
Early German law permitted the father, and subsequently the husband, to
sell, punish, or even kill the wife; and in England wife-beating has not
yet died out.
“If, in the times of St. Louis,” says Legouvé, “a young vassal of some
royal fief was sought in marriage, it was necessary for her father to
get his seigneur’s permission for her marriage; the seigneur asked the
king’s consent to his permission, and not till after all these
agreements (father, seigneur, king) was _she_ consulted regarding this
contract which affected her whole life.” How beautifully such a law must
have fostered the sentiment of Love which depends on Individual
Preference and Special Sympathy!
Such laws no doubt were simply echoes of clerical teachings. “The girl,”
says St. Ambrose of Rebecca, whom he holds up herein as an example, “is
not consulted about her espousals, for she awaits the judgment of her
parents; inasmuch as a girl’s modesty will not allow her to choose a
husband” (!). Irish “bulls” appear to have crept even into ecclesiastic
enactments, for we read in Smith’s _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_
that “An Irish council in the time of St. Patrick, about the year 450
lays it down that the will of the girl is to be inquired of the father,
and that the girl is to do what her father chooses, inasmuch as man is
the head of the woman.” “Even widows,” we read further, “under the age
of twenty-five were forbidden by a law of Valentinian and Gratian to
marry without their parents’ consent; and St. Ambrose desires young
widows to leave the choice of their second husbands to their parents.”
Compayré states in his _History of Pedagogy_ that in the seventeenth
century “woman was still regarded as the inferior of man, in the lower
classes as a drudge, in the higher as an ornament. In her case
intellectual culture was regarded as either useless or dangerous; and
the education that was given her was to fit her for a life of devotion
or a life of seclusion from society.”
Still more, of course, was this the case in the times of St. Jerome, who
in his letter to Læta on the education of her daughter Paula, tells her
that the girl must never eat in public, or eat meat. “Never let Paula
listen to musical instruments.” Even her affections must be
suppressed—all except the devotional sentiments. She must not be “in the
gatherings and in the company of her kindred; let her be found only in
retirement.” “Do not allow Paula to feel more affection for one of her
companions than for others.” And this ascetic moralist even recommends
uncleanliness as a virtue: “I entirely forbid a young girl to bathe;”
which may be matched with the following, also cited from Compayré: “The
first preceptors of Gargantua said that it sufficed to comb one’s hair
with the four fingers and the thumb; and that whoever combed, washed,
and cleansed himself otherwise was losing his time in this world.”
In such a rough atmosphere of masculine ignorance, fanaticism, and
cruelty the feminine virtues of sympathy, tenderness, grace, and
sweetness could not have flourished very luxuriantly. Consequently there
is doubtless more than a grain of truth in mediæval proverbs about
women, cynical and brutal as some of them are. Here are a few
specimens:—
“Women and horses must be beaten.”
“Women and money are the cause of all evil in the world.”
“Women only keep those secrets which they don’t know.”
“Trust no woman, and were she dead.”
“Between a woman’s yes and no there isn’t room for the point of a
needle.”
“If you are too happy, take a wife.”
When we read that “Montaigne is of that number, who, through false
gallantry, would keep woman in a state of ignorance, on the pretext that
instruction would mar her natural charms;” and that the same author
recommends poetry to women, because it is “a wanton, crafty art,
disguised, all for pleasure, all for show, just as they are”; we recall
with a smile John Stuart Mill’s sarcastic reference to the time, “Some
generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue, and men thought it
a clever thing to insult women for being what men made them.”