THE DARK AGE OF FEMINISM
THE millennium that lies between the year 500 and the year 1500 of
the Christian Era is known to all historians as the Middle Age, and
to very many as the Dark Age. Into the general correctness or
incorrectness of the latter title I need not inquire. In the story
of the evolution of woman that millennium must assuredly figure as
the Dark Age. All the prestige that woman had enjoyed in Egypt, all
the admissions she had wrung from the philosophers of Greece, all
the high ambitions she had realised in Rome, were sunk deep in
Lethe, and woman was again in a position of great subordination all
over the world. Among the nations that were slowly rising to
civilisation in the remote and unknown west, among the nations that
had already reached civilisation in the east and south of Asia, she
was subordinate; and in the centre of the world's stage, in
Europe, on which the main stream of cultural evolution had settled,
she occupied a lower position than ever. Her social position varied;
but her legal position was infamous, and her political position that
of a serf.
Without going so far as to say, with Mrs. Cady Stanton (_Woman's
Bible_), that "mankind touched the lowest depth of degradation," I
will be content for the moment to say that all that woman had won
in ancient Rome was entirely lost, and I will glance at the needful
qualifications later. The first point of interest is to determine
why the thread of woman's development was broken off for a thousand
years.
It will seem, at first glance, that I have assigned the cause in
saying that Roman civilisation gave way to barbarism. Goths and
Vandals trod underfoot the vast and wonderful polity that the Romans
had spread over Europe. Roman culture retired to the western empire,
to Asia, and, at the paralysing touch of Asia, fell into the rigid,
barren, stationary form that we recognise still in the Greek Church.
All Europe, west of Greece, was overrun by the barbarians who had
issued from the forests of Germany, as Rome grew feebler. Over
England, Gaul, Spain, Italy, and north Africa the light-haired,
blue-eyed giants poured, and wherever they passed the fabric of
Roman civilisation fell in ruins. Is not this explanation enough?
It is not, for these barbarians were of the class that treated woman
with deference, not of the class that would bring into civilisation
a fresh tradition of the ill treatment of their wives. It is useless
to suggest that Tacitus, the Roman historian who wrote an account of
their ways and ideals, exaggerated their deference to their women in
order to shame the Romans. His statement on the point agrees too
well with the earliest Teutonic and Scandinavian poetry, and with
what we know of Anglo-Saxon England; nor was Tacitus by any means a
feminist. There is no serious ground whatever for doubting his
statement that the "Germans" saw something sacred in woman, held
that the gods spoke more clearly through her, and took her counsel
on tribal issues. Yet when we find the various branches of the race
settling into fixed and organised polities on the ruins of Rome, we
find woman generally despised, excluded from political life, and
treated with the gravest injustice in legislation. The position of
woman in Europe--in England--less than a century ago dispenses us
from heaping up proofs.
It must be recognised at once that the extraordinary change in the
surroundings of these barbaric fathers of ours would lead of itself
to demoralisation. Buried for unknown centuries in the dense forests
that lay between the Baltic and the Danube, they had treasured and
submitted to the old traditions of their race, which favoured woman.
As time goes on they encounter orderly and deadly legions, superbly
armed, along the southern frontier of their region. In the early
centuries of the Christian era they learn more of this wonderful
race below the great river, with its impressive organisation, its
shining luxury, its fairy cities, its strange religion and ideals.
When the barrier falls they find themselves in a land whose mighty
achievements made their old traditions seem puny and childlike, as
their daubed huts or skin clothing. In that intoxication their
ideals would easily grow dim, and their feeling of power amid a
world of dwarfs would bode ill for woman. Thus, undoubtedly, we can
explain much of the disappearance of the old Teutonic chivalry and
virtue.
But it would be mere affectation to ignore the influence of their
change of religion, and I will briefly show how this affected the
position of woman. The greatest positive injustice that was done to
woman was in the sphere of law, and Sir Henry Maine has shown that
all the injustice done to woman in later European law was due to the
overruling of Roman and Teutonic law by the Canon Law of the Church.
The loss of social liberty and prestige can be clearly traced to the
same root. Under the influence of the Judaic spirit which was now
incorporated in Christianity, most of the early leaders of the
Church spoke of woman and marriage in terms that the duller wit and
coarser feeling of the following centuries only too literally
received.
I have already observed that modern science is disposed to seek the
origin of most of the Western civilisations in the ferment of tribes
that filled the south-western offshoot of Asia some thousands of
years before Christ, and that these tribes held very varying
attitudes in regard to their women. The Hebrews probably represent
one of these Semitic tribes in the north of the region between
Babylonia and Palestine. From the southern desert, or the
steppe-region leading to the desert, they invade Palestine,
assimilate its civilisation, and evolve into the monarchy with which
we are so familiar. It seems that the Hebrews came of one of those
Bedouin tribes that kept their women in close subjection, and the
later Judaic law preserved the tradition of the time when a boy
meant a new spear to the tribe, and a girl only a future breeder of
men. The wife was virtually the property of her husband, and could
not inherit. He could divorce her when he willed, and had a right to
her unconditional obedience. Few Hebrew women broke through this
rigid system of subordination and left their names in the growing
literature.
In the course of time the Hebrew sacred books, with a few additions,
became the absolute authority of life and conduct in Europe, and the
Judaic ideal came into collision with the later Roman ideal. I have
shown elsewhere that all the Christian leaders in the Latin
Empire--Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St.
Ambrose--insisted sternly on the subjection of woman, denounced her
as the agent of humanity's downfall, and gave only too serious
ground for a revival of the old contempt for her. When these abler
leaders had passed away and the age of mediocrity set in, we find
bishops seriously doubting whether woman has a soul, refusing her
the sacrament on the same terms as men, and rejecting her testimony
in a court of justice. From the Gospels certainly no support can be
derived for this contemptuous attitude, but it was one of the points
of the Old Testament that had not been expressly repealed, and the
harsh and dominating language of St. Paul fully supported it. It
would be idle to question the extent of the influence that St. Paul
and the Old Testament and the great Fathers of the Church had on the
young nations that were now settling down in Europe. Professor Karl
Pearson has suggested that the northern tribes embraced Christianity
precisely because it taught the subjection of women. We must, at all
events, acknowledge that it displaced the old traditions with a
lamentable theory of woman's inferiority.
During the "age of iron" (fifth to tenth century), therefore, the
cause of woman was lost, and Europe entered upon the second phase of
the subordination of woman, from which it is only emerging to-day.
The life of the Middle Ages is so vast and varied a subject that
different writers will, according to their prepossessions, give the
most contradictory pictures of it. For most thoughtful women it will
be enough to reflect that the position won by the women of Rome was
obviously lost, or they would not again be laboriously assailing
the barriers raised about their lives fifteen centuries later; and
most of the recent women-writers--Mrs. Cady Stanton, Mrs. Gage,
Mdlle. Chauvin, etc.--are very emphatic on the point. But I will try
to sum up the changes in a few broad statements.
Socially, woman became once more absolutely subject to her husband.
In the new marriage ceremony she pledged herself to blind obedience
to his orders; and both Church and State gave him the power to flog
her when he thought fit, and for a long time gave him the power to
sell or dismiss her. In courts of justice she was put on a level
with the despised Jew or the ancient slave; though there were
courts--in Switzerland, for instance--that would generously accept
the testimony of two women as being equal to that of one man.
Prostitution and concubinage spread as they had never done before.
Clerical bodies and municipalities owned brothels in many places,
and not even Corinth or Athens at their worst had made so open a
parade of women of that class. The newly-wed wives of the serfs were
the property of the feudal lord for a few days. In the better class
the women could own no property, as a rule were closely confined to
the house, and were generally cut off completely from such culture
as there was. To political influence they had no pretension.
High-placed women won the irregular and dangerous power they have
done in all ages, but otherwise they were more effectually shut out
of public life than ever. Anglo-Saxon England offered a fine
exception in this respect. Women, whether abbesses or widows, could
rule their lands, and even succeed to hereditary administrative
offices. But the coming of the Normans reduced the English woman to
the general level of economic and political dependence.
All that can be set in relief against this dark picture is that
women might obtain power and culture as abbesses of the larger
convents, that at certain periods noble lay-women acquired learning,
and that until about the thirteenth century women entered largely
into the industries of the towns. But the number of women who stand
out in the chronicles before the Renaissance for either learning or
influence is extremely small, and serves only to deepen the general
gloom of their situation. A St. Bridget or St. Hildegard, a Matilda
or a Heloise, is but one figure advancing into the light out of
obscure millions of down-trodden women. And the great share of women
in the early medieval industries did not alter materially their
position of subordination. The independent woman had too many
dangers to face--the universal violence and license, the brutalities
of the ducking-stool and scold's bridle, the appalling fate of the
"witch"--to encourage rebellion against the received ideal.
Generally speaking, woman sank in the Middle Ages to a position
lower than she had ever before occupied in a civilised community.[10]
At some date in the remote future, when the story of woman's
disabilities is ended the world over, the historian will probably
regard that millennium as the darkest age for woman in the whole
long story. A curious hesitation seems to have come over the fates.
Up to this point the main stream of human development had flowed
steadily towards Europe. The dying civilisations of Asia and Africa
had made way for Greece, and Greece had turned the stream into
Italy, to be spread from there in fertile flood over half the soil
of Europe. Then civilisation almost disappeared in Europe, and for a
time it looked as though the line of development would be taken up
by some other race. Either unknown or very dimly known to Europe
there were civilisations growing far out on the frontiers of its
world that could very well outstrip it, as it floundered in the
morass of the Middle Ages; and we may glance shortly at the position
of woman in those distant races before we come to the awakening of
Europe.
In the as yet unknown continent of America, into which some branch
of the Mongolians had pushed before the northern land-bridge broke,
two races had, by the Middle Ages, reached the upper stages of
barbarism, and were climbing to civilisation. Since it is certain
that Mexico and Peru developed quite independently of Europe, and
probably independently of each other, their resemblance to medieval
Europe is remarkable. They were feudal monarchies, with very
powerful bodies of clergy, so that the general conditions were not
favourable to woman. Education in Mexico was advanced, but under
purely religious control, and vast numbers of the girls passed into
the celibate state in the innumerable nunneries, to teach and
embroider and capture little nuns in their turn. The girl who
married (at from eleven to eighteen years of age) did not choose her
partner, and passed from obedience to her father under the equal
authority of her husband. She was not treated harshly, and polygamy
was very exceptional. But the law imposed unequal punishment on her
for unfaithfulness, and she was the greater sufferer by that ghastly
evil of the Mexican religion--human sacrifice. In Peru the position
of woman was generally better. For the great mass of the population
there was little freedom, and the woman had few relative
disabilities. She worked in the fields with the men, under a
_régime_ of what one might call highly centralised feudalism, and
seems to have been respected in the home. All political power was
kept in the hands of the Incas, who had immense harems, and who
married their sisters even more frequently than had been done in
Egypt.
From the little knowledge we have of the position of woman in these
native American civilisations, it seems that they were passing
through a normal phase of development. The primitive tribes that
lived beyond their frontiers, and exist to-day, inform us of an
earlier stage, in which the woman was oppressed. On the other hand,
there are in the Spanish writers not obscure traces that the moral
sense of Mexico and Peru was advancing (especially in regard to
human sacrifices), and no doubt the problem of woman's position
would in time have emerged. But the Spanish troops, with their
superior weapons, quickly made an end of these interesting western
polities, and reduced nearly the whole continent to the condition of
a poor imitation of Spanish culture. I need only add that in the
more advanced of the Spanish-American republics to-day--Argentina,
Uruguay, Mexico, etc.--women have begun to take a keen and prominent
interest in the culture and public affairs of their country.
When we cross over to the far east of the medieval map of the world,
we find three civilisations that we must rank with the Europe of the
Middle Ages. Of India little need be said. There is hardly a country
in the world where woman is so drastically subordinated, and it is
fairly clear that the process of subjection has in this case
increased with the advance of the race. The comparatively good
position that woman holds in so many of the lower Asiatic tribes
suggests that at the beginning of Indian history she had the same
respect and influence. Our earliest positive knowledge is in the
Vedic poems, which suggest to us an "Aryan" race fighting their
way down from the hills to the north-west, and gradually occupying
the more fertile plains. A simple pastoral folk, with patriarchal
features, they divided the labour equitably between the sexes, and
apparently treated their women with respect. Monogamy seems to have
been the rule, and such later practices as the burning of widows
were quite unknown. With the settlement of the race woman's
position steadily sank. Whether it was that the practice of war
brought in subject-wives and polygamy, or that the rise of the
Brahmanic priesthood and the caste system altered the old ideal, we
certainly perceive a degeneration towards the later contempt of
woman. The advent of Buddha gave little help to woman. Though most
of the resources of his order came from women, he, like all monastic
leaders, if not all ascetics, made no effort to improve her position
in what ascetic literature calls "the world." And when the Brahmanic
religion finally prevailed she sank lower than ever, and, amid all
the glorious art of ancient India, the practices of polygamy,
child-marriage, seclusion, and suttee spread over the land. In this
there is no real reversal of the law we formulated. The highest
culture of India was purely artistic, and such culture never helps
woman. The conscience and intelligence of the nation were stifled in
the endless wrappings and cerements of a formal and unprogressive
religion.
The development of the other great Asiatic civilisation, the
Chinese, was in many ways remarkable. As in India, the drastic
subordination of the women does not seem to be merely a heritage
from a barbaric past, since the lower Mongolian tribes generally
show little tendency to it. Not only the Indo-Chinese tribes I
mentioned in an earlier chapter, but the more northern Mongolians,
grant their women much liberty and respect. Huc found the women of
Tartary very vigorous and independent; and another early traveller,
La Pérouse, found one of the most primitive of Mongolian tribes, in
the bay of Castries, with a remarkably good character and a very
generous and equable treatment of their women. Almost the only one
of the lower Mongolian peoples to treat their women harshly are the
Thibetans, and in their case the injustice is mainly confined to
Lhassa. In that city a woman cannot go out unless she smears her
face with a dark, gluey composition. There, however, the influence
of monks and priests clearly explains the anomaly.
From this primitive level of comparative equality the Chinese, as
they developed their civilisation, passed to a social order in which
woman held a very subordinate place. The symbolic representation of
capture is so common in Mongolian marriages that one cannot help
suspecting that an early capturing of wives may have led to
subordination; though one must remember that the symbol occurs in
tribes in which woman has great liberty and influence. Whatever the
causes may have been, we find woman in a position of abject
dependence as soon as literature throws any direct light on Chinese
civilisation. It seems to me that the oldest Chinese poetry in the
_King_ point to a less unjust _régime_; but we get our first
complete knowledge of the social order in the Confucian literature,
and there woman is almost, if not quite, as subject as she is
to-day. The girl was only too apt to be sold or exposed in infancy
by the poor--a practice on which the moralists always frowned, but
which the authorities allow even to-day; though there are now
generally public hospitals to receive exposed children. The Chinese
girl usually marries at about her twentieth year, and, as virginity
is essential (except among the poor), she is carefully guarded under
the parental roof. At marriage she passes under the power of a
husband, whom she must obey in all things. She brings no dowry,
inherits no property, and has no right of divorce. The law even
discriminates most unjustly between the sexes in its scale of
punishments. She has a very slight education--only a few women
having, by some domestic accident, figured in the literary
chronicles--and not the least knowledge of public affairs. We may
well regret that the great moralists of China did not denounce these
inequalities. Six centuries before Christ agnostic moralists like
Kung-fu-tse obtained a predominant influence in cultivated China,
and the ideals of the nation are still moulded by their teaching.
But Kung-fu-tse only commanded woman to obey, and his influence, so
beneficial to character generally in China, has done nothing for
woman. The progressive spirit died in China, and there has never
been since the further advance in culture that was needed to awaken
a rebellion of the subject women.
To the east of China, during our Middle Ages, lived a younger and
smaller civilisation that has made itself known throughout the
modern world. Japan is only partly Mongolian in origin; there seems
to be a strain of blood from the southern islands in the nation's
frame. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the cause of
woman has run an entirely different course in Japan, and that the
later excessive subordination of women was due to Chinese influence.
It seems that the more primitive Asiatic feeling of respect for
woman was carried on into the early Japanese civilisation. She had
no more share in public life generally than elsewhere, but a
considerable number of the nobler or more cultivated women stand out
in the chronicles. The golden age of native Japanese civilisation
and letters corresponds with the worst age of Europe (about 800 to
1200 of the Christian era). The chief English writer on the subject,
Mr. Astor, tells us that during that period "a very large and
important part of the best literature Japan has produced was written
by women." There are also distinguished women-Mikados and feudal
princesses in the early story of Japan.
In the later Middle Ages Chinese culture began to play the
reactionary part (in regard to woman) in Japan that Greek culture
had done in Italy. The teaching of Kung-fu-tse and the great
humanitarian moralists was warmly welcomed by the educated Japanese,
and gradually became, as it still is, the sole religion of the
class. How finely it shaped the character of Japan on most
points--making its way down to nearly every class of the nation
through the Samurai--the whole world now knows; but, as I said, it
failed entirely to do justice to woman, and so led to the
comparatively few blemishes of Japanese life. Woman was to be
confined to the home, and that narrow and ill-advised ideal cast its
invariable shadow--a great growth of prostitution. Japan had its
_geishas_ as Greece had its _hetæræ_; and the situation was
worse in the sense that poor parents of good character made money
(from twenty to forty pounds) by sending their daughters to the
_joshiwara_ for a few years. On the other hand, of course, no shame
was attached to the profession, and the more gifted members
sometimes made distinguished marriages and were received at court.
With the recent opening of Japan to modern culture the Chinese ideal
is being discredited and the abuses it engendered are being
suppressed. Women are receiving ample and rational education; a man
is forbidden (since 1875) to sell his wife or daughter; the
_joshiwaras_ are being thrust out of sight; and the Western spirit
is slowly entering the minds of the women. Japan is plainly falling
under the action of the general law. With the growth of higher
culture the inequalities of the sexes are found to be artificial,
mischievous, and unjust, and the position of woman improves. The
main principles of the _bushido_ are not likely to be lost in the
growth of Japan, but they are now held in a living and progressive
sense. What Kung-fu-tse laid down as the duties of woman may or may
not have been right and expedient 2,500 years ago. To-day they have
an unmistakable aspect of masculine dictation and despotism.
However, it is the culture of the West that has opened the new era
in Japan and China and India, and we return to Europe to see how
woman fared in what proved, after all, to be the chief theatre of
the evolution of civilisation.