amongst us has become the most distinct example there is, and the most
widespread, of ritual (what is said in the marriage ceremony, in its
rational sense, is of little importance, and people rarely notice it.
What force attaches to "obey"?), of religious intervention in private
affairs, and of the importance attached to a ceremony. If two people
cohabit, the question of right and wrong depends on whether they have
passed through a certain ceremony together or not. That determines
whether they are "married" or not. The reason is, because if they have
passed through the ceremony together, no matter what was said or done,
they have expressed their will to come into the status of wedlock, as
the mores make it and as the state enforces it, at the time and place.
The woman wants to "feel that she is married." Very many women would not
feel so in a civil marriage; others want a "fully choral" ceremony;
others want the communion with the wedding ceremony. Perhaps the
daughter of a great nobleman might not feel married without a marriage
settlement. Thus the active effect of the mores may be observed in
contemporary custom, and it is seen how completely the notion of being
duly married is produced by the mores of the society, or of a class or
sect in it.
+385. Pair marriage; its technical definition.+ Polyandry passed over
into polygamy when sufficient property was at command.[1241] There was a
neutral middle point where one man had one wife. It follows that
monogamy is not a specific term. It might be monogamy if one man had one
wife but also concubines and slaves, or he might have but one wife in
fact, although free to have more if he chose. The term "pair marriage"
is needed as a technical term for the form of marriage which is as
exclusive and permanent for the man as for the woman, which one enters
on the same plane of free agreement as the other, and in which all the
rights and duties are mutual. In such a union there may be a complete
fusion of two lives and interests. In no other form of union is such a
fusion possible. This pair marriage is the ideal which guides the
marital usages of our time and civilization, gives them their spirit and
sense, and furnishes standards for all our discussions, although it is
far from being universally realized. The ideal is made an object of
"pathos"[1242] in our popular literature. Whence did it come? In truth,
we can hardly learn. It existed, by necessity of poverty and humble
social status, in the classes amongst whom Christianity took root. It
found expression in the canon law. It resisted, in the lower classes,
the attempt of the church to suppress it in order to aggrandize the
corporation. It resisted, in the same classes, the corruption of the
Renaissance. It has risen with those classes to wealth and civil power.
In modern times "moral" has been used technically for what conforms to
the code of pair marriage.
+386. Ethics of pair marriage.+ Pair marriage has excluded every other
form of sex relation. To modern people it is hard to understand how
different forms of sex relation could exist side by side and all be
right. The explanation is in the mores. A concubine may be a woman who
has a defined and legally guaranteed relation to one man, if the mores
have so determined. Her circumstances have not opened to her the first
rank, that of a wife, but she has another which is recognized in the
society as honorable. The same may be said of a slave woman, or of a
morganatic wife. Amongst the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans of the empire
concubines were a recognized class. A concubine was not a woman who had
cast off her own honor until after the thirteenth century,[1243] and
although her position became doubtful, it was not disreputable for two
or three centuries more. Morganatic marriages for princes have continued
down to our own time. Whatever is defined and provided for in the mores
as a way of solving the problem of life interests is never wrong. Hence
the cases of sacral harlotry, of temporary marriage (as in China, Korea,
Japan, and ancient Arabia), of royal concubines (since the king was
forced to accept a status wife of prescribed rank, etc.), and all the
other peculiar arrangements which have existed in history are accounted
for. Pair marriage, however, has swept all other forms away. It is the
system of the urban-middle-capitalist class. It has gained strength in
all the new countries where all men and women were equal within a small
margin and the women bore their share of the struggle for existence. The
environment, in the new countries, favored the mores of the class from
which the emigrants came. In the old countries the mores of the middle
class have come into conflict with the mores of peasants and nobles. The
former have steadily won. The movement has been the same everywhere,
although the dates of the steps in it have been different. As to women,
the countries which are at the rear of the modern movement keep the old
mores; those which are at the head of it have emancipated women most,
and have swept away from their legislation all toleration for anything
but pair marriage. Vice, of course, still affects facts, and the growth
of wealth and luxurious habits seems to be developing a tendency to take
up again some old customs which bear an aristocratic color. It must be
expected that when the economic facts which now favor the lower middle
classes pass away and new conditions arise the marriage mores will
change again. Democracy and pair marriage are now produced by the
conditions. Both are contingent and transitory. In aristocratic society
a man's family arrangements are his own prerogative. When life becomes
harder it will become aristocratic, and concubinage may be expected to
arise again.
It seems clear that pair marriage has finally set aside the notion
which, in the past, has been so persistently held,--that women are bad
by nature, so that one half of the human race is permanently dragging
down the other half. The opposite notion seems now to be gaining
currency,--that all women are good, and can be permanently employed to
raise up the men. These fluctuations only show how each sway of
conditions and interests produces its own fallacies.
+387. Pair marriage is monopolistic.+ It has been shown that pair
marriage is monopolistic. It produces an exclusive family, and nourishes
family pride and ambition. It is interwoven with capital, and we have
hardly yet reached the point where we can see what it will become with
great wealth, and under the treatment of a plutocratic class. From what
has been said it is evidently most important that man and wife should
have been educated in the same mores. Pair marriage is also
individualistic. It is the barrier against which all socialism breaks
into dust. As the cost of a family increases, the connection between
family and capital becomes more close and vital. Every socialist who can
think is forced to go on to a war on marriage and the family, because he
finds that in marriage and the family lie the strongholds of the
"individualistic vices" which he cannot overcome. He has to mask this
battery, however, because he dare not openly put it forward.
+388. The future of marriage.+ It is idle to imagine that our mores
about marriage have reached their final stage. Since marriage is free
and individualistic as it exists in our mores, there is little care or
pity for those who cannot adapt themselves to it, or it to their
circumstances. They are allowed divorce, but not without some feeling of
annoyance with them if they use it. It is also idle to imagine that
those who are now satisfied will alone control the changes which the
future will bring in the mores. It is not difficult to make marriage
such that men will refuse it. Women have revolted against it in the
past.[1244] It is not beyond imagination that they might do so again.
+389. Normal type of sex union.+ It may be, as Lecky says,[1245] that
"we have ample grounds for maintaining that the lifelong union of one
man and one woman should be the normal or dominant type of intercourse
between the sexes. We can prove that it is, on the whole, most conducive
to the happiness, and also to the moral elevation, of all parties. But
beyond this point it would, I conceive, be impossible to advance, except
by the assistance of a special revelation. It by no means follows that
because this should be the dominant type, it should be the only one, or
that the interests of society demand that all connections should be
forced into the same die."
+390. Divorce.+ In the mother family the woman could dismiss her
husband. This she could also do in all the transition forms in which
the husband went to live with the wife at her childhood home. In the
father family the wife, obtained by capture or purchase, belonged to her
husband on the analogy of property. The husband could reject or throw
away his property if he saw fit. It is clear that the physical facts
attendant on the two customs--one that the man went to live with his
wife, the other that he took her to his home--made a great difference in
the status of the woman. In the latter case she fell into dependence and
subjection to the dominion of her husband. She could not divorce him.
+391.+ In Chaldea a man could divorce his wife by saying, "Thou
art not my wife," by repaying her dowry, and giving her a letter
to her father. If she said to him, "Thou art not my husband," she
was drowned. An adulterous woman was driven into the street
clothed only in a loin cloth, at the mercy of the passers.[1246]
In this view, which ran through the Jewish system and came down
into that of Mohammed, a wife has duties, to which her husband
has no correlative obligations. She must do her duty or be thrust
out. There is no adultery for a man and no divorce for a woman.
The most complete negation of divorce is in Hindostan, where a
woman (perhaps a child of five or six), if married to a man, is
his only, for time and eternity, no matter what may happen. He is
hers until she dies, but then he can have another wife. Romulus
allowed divorce to the man, if the woman poisoned infants, drank
strong wine, falsified keys, or committed adultery.[1247] By a
law of Numa a man who had as many children as he wanted could
cede his wife, temporarily or finally, to another.[1248] These
laws seem to have been forgotten. If they ever really existed
they did not control early Roman society. By the later law a
sentence for crime which produced civil death set free the other
spouse. In the last century B.C. divorce became very easy and
customary. The mores gradually relaxed to allow it. Augustus
compelled the husband of Livia to divorce her because he wanted
her himself. She was about to become a mother.[1249] Cato the
younger gave his wife to his friend Hortensius, and took her back
after Hortensius's death.[1250] Sempronius Sophus divorced his
wife because she went to the games without his consent.[1251]
Women also divorced their husbands in the first century of the
Christian era. Juvenal mentions a woman who had eight husbands in
five years.[1252] Tertullian, writing from the standpoint of a
Christian ascetic, said that "divorce is the product of
marriage."[1253] Jerome knew of a woman who had married her
twenty-third husband, she being his twenty-first wife.[1254]
Seneca said that the women reckoned the years by their husbands,
not by the consuls.[1255] The women got equality by leveling
downwards. "The new woman of Juvenal boldly claims a vicious
freedom equal to her husband's."[1256] These cases belong to the
degeneration of the mores at the period. As they are astonishing,
we are in danger of giving them too much force in the notion we
form of the mores of that time. All the writers repeat them. "In
the _Agricola_, and in Seneca's letters to Marcia and Helvia, we
can see that, even at the darkest hour, there were homes with an
atmosphere of old Roman self-restraint and sobriety, where good
women wielded a powerful influence over their husbands and sons,
and where the examples of the old republic were used, as Biblical
characters with us, to fortify virtue."[1257]
+392. Rabbis on divorce.+ The school of the Rabbi Shammai said, "A man
must not repudiate his wife unless he find in her actual immodesty."
Rabbi Jochanan said, "Repudiation is an odious thing." Rabbi Eliezer
said, "When a first wife is put away the very altar sheds tears."[1258]
+393.+ The early Roman mores about marriage were very rigid and
pitiless. It was in the family, and therefore under the control of the
head of the family. No law forbade divorce, because such a law would
have been an invasion of the authority of the male head of the family,
but the censors, in the name of public opinion, long prevented any
frivolous dissolution of marriage. Few divorces occurred, and then only
for weighty reason, after the family council had found them sufficient.
There was some stain attaching to a second marriage, after the death of
the first spouse. Even men were subject to this stain.[1259]
+394. Pair marriage and divorce.+ With the rise of pair marriage came
divorce for the woman, upon due reason, as much as for the man. Hence
freer divorce goes with pair marriage. Such must inevitably be the case,
if it be admitted that any due reason for divorce ever can exist. The
more poetical and elevated the ideas are which are clustered around
marriage, the more probable it is that experience will produce
disappointment. If one spouse enters wedlock with the belief that the
other is the most superlative man or woman living, the cases must be
very few in which disappointment and disillusion will not result.
Moreover, pair marriage, by its exclusiveness, risks the happiness of
the parties on a very narrow and specific condition of life. The
coercion of this arrangement for many persons must become intolerable.
In the ancient German law there was absolute freedom of divorce by
agreement. The pair could end the relation just as they formed it. In
the laws of the German nations there was little provision for divorce
upon the complaint of the woman. The law of the Langobards allowed it to
her for serious bodily injury.[1260]
+395. Divorce in the Middle Ages.+ It is pretended that the mediæval
church allowed no divorce. This is utterly untrue. Under the influence
of asceticism the church put marriage under more and more arbitrary
restrictions, going far beyond any rules to be found in the Scriptures,
or in the usages of the early church. Divorce was made more and more
difficult. These two tendencies contradicted each other, for the greater
the restrictions on marriage, the greater the probability that any
marriage would be found to have violated one of them, and therefore to
be _ab initio_ void. This set it aside more absolutely than any divorce
_a vinculo_ could undo it. Also, when there was an ample apparatus of
dispensation by which the rich and great could have their marriages
dissolved, by the use of money or political power, the "law of the
church" was no law. Still further, the mediæval church, while it had a
doctrine of perfection and ideality for marriage, had also a practical
system of concession to human weakness, by which it could meet cases of
unhappy marriage. In the canon law, divorce and remarriage of the
innocent party has been allowed to the man, in case of adultery,
physical incapacity, leprosy, desertion, captivity, disappearance, and
conspiracy to murder the husband, on the part of the wife; and to the
wife, when the husband's misconduct rendered living with him impossible.
However, a dispensation from the ecclesiastical authority was
required.[1261]
+396.+ The point of this is that no society ever has existed or ever can
exist in which no divorce is allowed. In all stages of the father
family it has been possible for a man to turn his wife out of doors, and
for a wife to run away from her husband. They divorce themselves when
they have determined that they want to do so. It would be an easy
solution of marriage problems to assert that the society will use its
force to compel all spouses who disagree, or for whom the marriage
relation has become impossible through the course of events,
nevertheless to continue to live in wedlock. Such a rule would produce
endless misery, shame, and sin. There are reasons for divorce. Adultery
is recognized as such a reason in the New Testament. It is a rational
reason, especially under pair marriage. There are other rational
reasons. Some of them are modern forms of the reasons allowed in the
canon law, as above cited. The exegesis of the New Testament is not
simple. It does not produce a simple and consistent doctrine, and
therefore inference and deduction have been applied to it. 2 Cor. vi. 14
contradicts 1 Cor. vii. 12. The mores decide at last what causes shall
be sufficient. The laws in the United States once went very far in an
attempt to satisfy complaining married people. They were no better
satisfied at last than at first. Scandalous cases produced a conviction
that "we have gone too far," and the present tendency is to revoke
certain concessions. The fact that a divorce has been legally obtained
does not satisfy some former friends of the divorced so that they will
continue social intimacy. A code grows up to fit the facts. Sects help
to make such codes. Perhaps they make a code which is too stringent. The
members of the sect do not live by it. They seek remarriage in other,
less scrupulous sects, or by civil authority, or they change domicile in
order to get a divorce. Thus the mores control. When the law of the
state or of ecclesiastical bodies goes with the mores it prevails; when
it departs from the mores it fails. The mores are also sure to act in
regard to a matter which presents itself in a large class of cases, and
which calls for social and ethical judgments. At last, comprehensive
popular judgments will be formed and they will get into legislation.
They will adjust interests so that people can pursue self-realization
with success and satisfaction, under social judgments as to the rules
necessary to preserve the institutions of wedlock and the family. The
pursuit of happiness, either in the acquisition of property or in the
enjoyment of family life, is only possible in submission to laws which
define social order, rights, and duties, and against which the
individual must react at every point. It is the mores which constantly
revise and readjust the laws of social order, and so define the social
conditions within which self-realization must go on.
+397. Refusal of remarriage.+ The laws of every State in the United
States, except South Carolina, allow marriage by a minister of religion
or by magistrates. This does not mean that the legislatures meant to
endow ministers of religion with authority to say who may marry and who
may not. Ministers who agree not to marry divorced persons assume
authority which does not belong to them. In England, with an established
church, the fact has recently been ascertained that a clergyman cannot
refuse to marry persons who may marry by the civil law as it stands.
With us the number of sects and denominations is such that no hardship
arises if one sect chooses to adopt stricter laws for the sake of making
a demonstration or exercising educational influence, and decides to run
the risk of driving its own members to other sects. What the next result
of such action will be remains to be learned.
+398. Child marriage.+ Child marriage illustrates a number of points in
regard to the mores, especially the possibility of perversity and
aberration. Wilutzky[1262] thinks that child marriage amongst savages
began in the desire of a man to get a wife to himself (monandry) out of
the primitive communalism, without violating the customs of ancestors.
Girls of ten or twelve years are married to men of twenty-five or thirty
on the New Britain Islands. The missionary says, "The result of such an
early union, for the girl, has been dreadful."[1263] On Malekula girls
are married at six or eight.[1264] Similar cases are reported from
Central and South America where girls of ten are mothers.[1265] Rohlfs
reports mothers of ten or twelve at Fesan.[1266] The Eskimo practice
child betrothal, so that wedlock begins at once at puberty.[1267]
Schwaner reports,[1268] from the Barito Valley, that children are often
betrothed and married by the fathers when the latter are intoxicated.
The motives of the match are birth, kinship, property, and social
position, and the marriage is hastened, lest the parents should see
their plans to satisfy these motives frustrated by the children if they
should delay. The intimacy of the children is left to chance. Wilken
says that child marriage seems to be, in the Dutch East Indies, an
exercise of absolute paternal authority, especially seeing that they
have marriage by capture. The father wants to secure, in time, the
realization of plans which he has made. Especially, the purpose is to
make the man take the status-wife appointed for him by the marriage
rule,--his mother's brother's daughter. Wilken also explains child
betrothal and marriage by the fact that girls have entire liberty until
betrothed, and the future husband wants to put an end to this. Girls are
often betrothed at birth and married at six, although they remain with
their parents. In some parts of the East Indies the custom is declining;
in others it is extinct. In some places it continues, although marriage
by capture is extinct. Where marriage by capture exists, the reason for
child marriage is the fear that the girl may be stolen by another than
the desired husband.[1269]
+399. Child marriage in Hindostan.+ By the laws of Manu[1270] a man may
give his daughter in marriage before she is eight years old to a man of
twenty-four, or a girl of twelve to a man of thirty, and he loses his
dominion over her if he has not found a husband for her by the time that
she might be a mother; yet intercourse before puberty is especially
forbidden.[1271] The Hindoos, including Mohammedans, practice child
marriage and cling to it, in spite of the efforts of the English to
dissuade them from it, and in spite of the opinion of their own most
enlightened men that it is a harmful custom. It is deeply rooted in
their mores. The modern Hindoo father or brother considers it one of the
gravest faults he can commit to allow a daughter or sister to arrive at
puberty (generally eight years) before a husband has been found for her.
It is a disgrace for a family to have in it an unmarried marriageable
girl. What is proper is that, from five to sixteen days after puberty,
the previously married husband shall beget with her a child in a solemn
ceremonial which is one of the twelve (or sixteen) sacraments of Hindoo
life.[1272] The idea of child marriage was that the woman should be
already married to her chosen husband, so that she might be given to him
at the proper time.[1273] Moreover, "marriage completes, for the man,
the regenerating ceremonies, expiatory, as is believed, of the sinful
taint which every child is supposed to contract in the mother's womb;
and being, for sudras and for women, the only [ceremony for this
purpose] which is allowed, its obligatoriness is, as to the latter, one
of the ordinances of the Veda."[1274]
+400.+ The wife of the missionary Gehring was present at the marriage of
a girl of ten to an adult man amongst the Tamil Mohammedans. The story
of the child's shrinking terror is very pathetic. When her veil was
withdrawn she fainted from nervousness and excitement. Those present
showed no pity for her, but crowded around to enjoy the opportunity of
gazing at her. They saw no reason why she was to be pitied.[1275]
+401.+ If a girl has had no husband provided for her by her responsible
male relative, she may act for herself, but then she forfeits her share
in the family property. She may be abducted with impunity. In Manu[1276]
it is said that three years must elapse before she gets the right of
self-disposition. The right is long since a dead letter. The "Law of
Manu" can lose its authority where it is favorable to women! or when it
runs counter to the mores, for Hindoo women have no training to take up
self-disposition, if the case occurs.[1277] Female virtue is rated low,
and must be secured by marriage. Independent action by a boy and girl is
against the mores and could only lead to inferior forms of marriage, by
love or capture.[1278] Finally, religion bears its share in furnishing
motives for child marriage. The souls of ancestors cannot stay in heaven
unless there are male descendants to keep up the sacrifices. It is,
therefore, impossible to provide male descendants too soon. Among the
Tamil-speaking Malaialis of the Kollimallais hills a man takes an adult
wife for his little son, and with her he begets a son who will perform
this religious duty for himself and his son. This goes on from
generation to generation.[1279]
+402.+ Nevertheless, it is held to be proved that in ancient India child
marriages were unknown and that women were often far beyond puberty
before they were married. The human husband was also held to be the
fourth. Three gods had preceded him in each case.[1280] The custom of
child marriage has now spread to the lowest classes, and in the lowlands
of the Ganges cohabitation follows at once upon child marriage, with
very evil results on the physique of the population.[1281]
There was child marriage in Chaldea 2200 years B.C.[1282]
+403. Child marriage in Europe.+ The marriage of children was not in the
mores of the ancient Germans. The mediæval church allowed child marriage
for princes, etc. The motive was political alliance, or family or
property interest.[1283] The fable was that Joseph was an old man and
the Virgin Mary only a girl. This story was invented to make the notion
of a virgin wife and mother easier. The marriage was only a child
marriage. In England, from the end of the thirteenth to late in the
seventeenth century, cases of child marriage occurred, at first in the
highest classes, later in all classes, and finally most frequently in
the highest and lowest classes. In Scotland premature marriages were so
common that, in 1600, they were forbidden, the limits being set at
fourteen and twelve years for males and females respectively. The chief
motive was to avoid feudal dues on the part of tenants in chief of the
crown, if the father should die and leave infants who would become
wards liable to forced marriages or to mulcts to avoid the same.[1284]
+404.+ Child marriage is due, then, to the predominance of worldly
considerations in marriage, especially when the interests considered are
those of the parents, not of the children; also to abuse of parental
authority through vanity and self-will; also to superstitious notions
about the other world and the interests of the dead there; also to
attempts, in the interest of the children, to avoid the evil
consequences of other bad social arrangements.
+405. Cloistering.+ The custom of cloistering women has spread, within
historic times, from some point in central Asia. The laws of Hammurabi
show that, 2200 years B.C., men and women, in the Euphrates Valley,
consorted freely and equally in life. Later, in the Euphrates Valley, we
find the custom of cloistering amongst the highest classes. It became
more and more vigorous amongst the Persians and spread to the common
people. It was not an original custom of the Arabs and was not
introduced by the Mohammedan religion. It was learned and assumed from
the Persians.[1285] Seclusion of women, to a greater or less degree, has
prevailed in the mores of many nations. In fact, there is only a
question of degree between an excessive harem system and our own code of
propriety which lays restraints on women to which men are not subject.
The most probable explanation of the customs of veiling and cloistering
is that they are due to the superstition of the evil eye. Pretty women
attracted admiration, which was dangerous, as all prosperity, glory, and
preëminence were dangerous under that notion. When _pretty_ women were
veiled or secluded, the custom was sure to spread to others. The wives
and daughters of the rich and great were secluded in order to shield
them from easy approach, and to pet and protect them. This set the
fashion which lesser people imitated so far as they could. The tyranny
of husbands and fathers also came into play, and another force acting in
the same direction was the seduction exerted on women themselves by the
flattering sense of being cared for and petted. Lane[1286] tells us
that "an Egyptian wife who is attached to her husband is apt to think,
if he allows her unusual liberty, that he neglects her, and does not
sufficiently love her; and to envy those wives who are kept and watched
with greater strictness." "They look on the restraint [imposed by
husbands] with a degree of pride, as evincing the husband's care for
them, and value themselves on being hidden as treasures." Women who earn
their own living have to go into the streets and the market and to come
in contact with much from which other classes of women are protected.
The protected position is aristocratic, and it is consonant with
especial feminine tastes. The willingness to fall into it has always
greatly affected the status of women.
+406. Second marriages. Widows.+ Second marriages affect very few people
beyond those immediately concerned, and they are not connected with any
social principle or institution so as to create what is sometimes called
a "societal interest," unless there is current in the society some
special notion about ghosts and the other world. Nevertheless, the
bystanders have, until very recent times, pretended to a right to pass
judgment and exert an influence on the remarriage of widows, and less
frequently of widowers. The story of the status of widows is one of the
saddest in the history of civilization. In uncivilized society a widow
is considered dangerous because the ghost of her husband is supposed to
cleave to her. Under marriage by capture or purchase she is the property
of her husband, and, like his other property, ought to accompany him to
the other world. When she is spared she has no rational place in the
society; therefore widows were a problem which the mores had to solve.
In no other case have societies shown so much indifference to misfortune
and innocent misery. If a widow has value for any purpose, she falls to
the heir and he may exploit her. On the Fiji Islands a wife was
strangled on her husband's grave and buried with him. A god lies in wait
on the road to the other world who is implacable to the unmarried.
Therefore a man's ghost must be attended by a woman's ghost to pass in
safety.[1287] Mongol widows could find no second husbands, because they
would have to serve their first husbands in the next world. The youngest
son inherited the household and was bound to provide for his father's
widows. He could take to wife any of them except his own mother, and he
did so because he was willing that they should go to his father in the
next world.[1288] In the laws of Hammurabi the widow was secured a share
in her husband's property and was protected against the selfishness of
her sons. If she gave up to her sons what she had received from her
husband, she could keep what her father gave her and could marry again.
In later Chaldea annuities were provided for widows by payments to
temples.[1289] In the Mahabharata the morning salutation to a woman is,
"May you not undergo the lot of a widow."[1290]
+407. Burning of widows.+ It appears certain that the primitive Aryans
practiced the burning of widows, perhaps by the choice of the widows,
and that the custom declined in the Vedic period of India. The burning
of widows and the levirate could not exist together.[1291] As Manu[1292]
gives rules for the behavior of widows (not name any man but the
deceased husband; not remarry), he assumes that they will live. The
custom of suttee was strongest in the lower castes.[1293] Akbar, the
Mogul emperor, forbade suttee about 1600.[1294] He acted from the
Mohammedan standpoint. His ordinance had no effect on the usage. The
English put an end to the custom in 1830. This did not affect the native
states, where the latest instance reported took place in 1880.[1295] A
man who knows India well says that it was no kindness to widows to put a
stop to suttee because, if they live on, their existence is so wretched
that death would be better. Wilkins[1296] quotes a Hindoo widow's
description of the treatment she received, which included physical abuse
and moral torture. She was addressed as if she was to blame for the
death of her husband. The head of a widow is shaved, although Hindoo
women care very much for their hair. She is allowed but one meal a day
and must fast frequently. She is shunned as a creature of ill omen.
Inasmuch as girls are married at five or six, all this may happen to a
child of ten or twelve, if her husband dies, although she never has
lived with him. In 1856 the English made a law by which widows might
remarry, but the higher classes very rarely allow it. If they do allow
it, the groom is forced to marry a tree or a doll of cotton, so that he
too may be widowed. The mores resist any change which is urged, although
not enforced, by people of other mores. The reforms proposed in the
treatment of widows have no footing at all in the experience and the
judgment of Hindoos, if we except a few theists in Calcutta, and they
have never taken a united and consistent position. Monier-Williams[1297]
describes the case of a man who married a widow. He was boycotted so
completely that all human fellowship was denied him. He had to go to a
distant place and take a position under the government. Among the lower
castes of the Bihari Hindoos a widow may marry the younger brother of
her deceased husband, to whom her relation is always one of especial
intimacy and familiarity.[1298]
+408. Difficulty of reform.+ It appears that the difficulty about the
remarriage of widows is due to the fact that it runs counter to
fundamental religious ideas. The Hindoo reformers are charged with using
forms of wedding ceremony which are inconsistent with facts. Some widows
are virgins, but there is not always a father or mother to give them
away by the formula of "virgin gift." The women all have a notion, taken
from the words of a heroine in the Mahabharata, that a woman can be
given but once.[1299] They cling to the literal formula. By the form of
first marriage also a woman passes into the kin of her husband for seven
births (generations), the limit of degrees of consanguinity. It is
irreligious and impossible to change the kin again, because consequences
have been entailed which run seven generations into the future.[1300]
This is all made to depend, not on the consummation of the marriage, but
on the wedding or even betrothal. The census shows that the taboo on the
remarriage of widows and the custom of child marriage extend and
increase together.[1301] Where husbands are scarce girls are married in
childhood in order to secure them, and widows are not allowed to
remarry.[1302] By the remarriage of widows rajpoots and rajpoot families
lose their rank and precedence.[1303] In Homer the remarriage of men is
rare, and only one stepmother is mentioned.[1304] The prejudice against
second marriages continued amongst the Greeks, even for men, for whom
second marriage was restrained, in some parts of Greece by political
disabilities, if the man had children. The reason given was that a man
who had so little devotion to his family would have little devotion to
his country.[1305] In the classical period widows generally married
again. Sometimes the dying husband bequeathed his widow. In later times
some widows contracted their own second marriages.[1306] Marcus Aurelius
would not take a second wife as a stepmother for his children. He took a
concubine. Julian, after the death of his wife, lived in
continence.[1307] On Roman tombstones of women the epithet "wife of one
husband" was often put as praise.[1308]
+409. Widows and remarriage in the Christian church.+ The pagan emperors
of Rome encouraged second marriages as they encouraged all marriage, but
the Christian emperors of the fourth century took up the ascetic
tendency. About 300 the doctrine was, "Every second marriage is
essentially adultery."[1309] Augustine, in his tract on "Continence,"
uttered strong and sound doctrine about self-control and discipline of
character. In the tract on the "Benefit of Marriage" he defended
marriage, intervening in a controversy between Jerome and Jovinian, in
which the former put forth the most extravagant and contradictory
assertions about virginity. Augustine's formula is: "Marriage and
fornication are not two evils of which the second is worse, but marriage
and continence are two goods, of which the second is better." Although
this statement is very satisfactory rhetorically, it carries no
conclusion as to the rational sense of regulation of the sex passion, or
as to the limit within which regulation is beneficial. Augustine laid
great stress on 1 Cor. vii. 36. In a tract on "Virginity" he glorified
that state according to the taste of the period. In a tract on
"Widowhood" (chaps. 13 and 14), he repudiated the extreme doctrine about
second and subsequent marriages, but he exhorted widows to continence.
The church fathers, like the mediæval theologians, had a way of
admitting points in the argument without altering their total position
in accordance with the admissions or concessions which they had made.
The positions taken by Augustine in these tracts about the sex mores
cannot be embraced in an intelligible and consistent statement. "At a
period of early, although uncertain, date the rule became firmly and
irrevocably established, that no digamus, or husband of a second wife,
was admissible to Holy Orders; and although there is no reason for
supposing that marriage after taking orders was prohibited to a
bachelor, it was strictly forbidden to a widower."[1310] So it came
about that, inasmuch as marriage was, in any case, only a concession and
a compromise, and in so far a departure from strict rectitude, a second
marriage was regarded with disfavor, and any subsequent ones were
regarded with reprobation which increased in a high progression. This
has remained the view of the Eastern church, in which a fourth marriage
is unlawful. The Western church has not kept the early view, and has set
no limit to remarriage, but orthodox and popular mores have frowned upon
it after the second or, at most, the third. In Arabia, before the time
of Mohammed, widows were forced into seclusion and misery for a year,
and they became a class of forlorn, almost vagabond, dependents. It was
a shame for a man if his mother contracted a second marriage.[1311] In
the Middle Ages popular reprobation was manifested by celebrations
which were always grotesque and noisy, and sometimes licentious. They
were called charivaris. They were enacted in case of the remarriage of
widows and sometimes in the case of widowers. They are said to have
been a very ancient custom in Provence.[1312] This might mean that
opposition to second marriages was due to Manichæan doctrines which were
widely held in that region. The customs of popular reprobation were,
however, very widespread, and nowadays amongst us the neighbors
sometimes express in this way their disapproval of any sex relations
which are in any way not in accord with the mores. In the Salic law it
was provided that any woman who married a second time must do so at
night.[1313] The other laws of the barbarian nations contain evidence of
disapproval.[1314] Innocent III ruled, in 1213, that a man did not incur
the ecclesiastical disabilities of second marriage, "no matter how many
concubines he might have had, either at one time or in succession."[1315]
The mediæval _coutumes_ of northern France are indifferent to second
marriages.[1316] The ancient German custom approved of the self-immolation
of a widow at her husband's death, but did not require it. The
remarriage of widows was not approved and the widows did not desire it.
This was a consequence of the ancient German notion of marriage,
according to which a wife merged her life in that of her husband for
time and for eternity.[1317] The usage, however, was softened gradually.
The widow got more independence, and more authority over her children
and property, over the marriage of her daughters, and at last the right
to contract a second marriage after a year of mourning.[1318] In
England, in the eleventh century, a widow's dower could not be taken to
pay her husband's taxes, although the exchequer showed little pity for
anybody else. The reason given is that "it is the price of her
virginity."[1319] The later law also exempted a wife's dower from
confiscation in the case of any criminal or traitor.[1320] In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in France, "a period in which,
perhaps, people supported widowhood less willingly than in any other,"
the actual usages departed from the acknowledged standards of right and
propriety.[1321] The same was true in a greater or less degree elsewhere
in Europe, and the widowed probably destroyed the prejudice against
remarriage by their persistency and courage in violating it. In the
American colonies it was by no means rare for a widow or widower to
marry again in six or even in three months.
+410. Remarriage and other-worldliness.+ It is evident that the customs
in regard to the treatment of widows, second marriages, etc., are
largely controlled by other-worldliness. If the other world is thought
of as close at hand, and the dead as enjoying a conscious life, with
knowledge of all which occurs here, then there is a rational reluctance
to form new ties by which the dead may be offended. If the other world
and its inhabitants are not so vividly apprehended, the living pursue
their own interests, and satisfy their own desires.
+411. Tree marriage.+ In several cases which have been presented, we
have seen how the folkways devise means of satisfying interests in spite
of existing (inherited) institutions which bear injuriously on
interests. A remarkable case of this kind is tree marriage amongst the
Brahmins of southern India. The established opinion is that a younger
brother ought not to marry before an older one. The latter may be
willing. That is immaterial. The device is employed of marrying the
older brother to a tree, or (perhaps the idea is) to a spirit which
resides in the tree. He is then out of the way and the younger brother
may marry.[1322]
+412. The Japanese woman.+ The Japanese woman has been formed in an
isolated state, of a militant character, with strong and invariable
folkways. "Before this ethical creature, criticism should hold its
breath; for there is here no single fault, save the fault of a moral
charm unsuited to any world of selfishness and struggle.... How
frequently has it been asserted that, as a moral being, the Japanese
woman does not seem to belong to the same race as the Japanese man!...
Perhaps no such type of woman will appear again in this world for a
hundred thousand years: the conditions of industrial civilization will
not admit of her existence.... The Japanese woman can be known only in
her own country,--the Japanese woman as prepared and perfected by the
old-time education for that strange society in which the charm of her
moral being,--her delicacy, her supreme unselfishness, her childlike
piety and trust, her exquisite tactful perception of all ways and means
to make happiness about her,--can be comprehended and valued.... Even if
she cannot be called handsome according to western standards, the
Japanese woman must be confessed pretty,--pretty like a comely child;
and if she be seldom graceful in the occidental sense, she is at least
in all her ways incomparably graceful: her every motion, gesture, or
expression being, in its own oriental manner, a perfect thing,--an act
performed, or a look conferred, in the most easy, the most graceful, the
most modest way possible.... The old-fashioned education of her sex was
directed to the development of every quality essentially feminine, and
to the suppression of the opposite quality. Kindliness, docility,
sympathy, tenderness, daintiness,--these and other attributes were
cultivated into incomparable blossoming. 'Be good, sweet maid, and let
who will be clever; do noble things, not dream them, all day
long,'--those words of Kingsley really embody the central idea in her
training. Of course the being, formed by such training only, must be
protected by society; and by the old Japanese society she was
protected.... A being working only for others, thinking only for others,
happy only in making pleasure for others,--a being incapable of
unkindness, incapable of selfishness, incapable of acting contrary to
her own inherited sense of right,--and in spite of this softness and
gentleness ready, at any moment, to lay down her life, to sacrifice
everything at the call of duty: such was the character of the Japanese
woman."[1323]
[1129] Campbell, _Differences in the Nervous Organization of Men
and Women_, 29.
[1130] _Ibid._, 43.
[1131] _Ibid._, 34.
[1132] Campbell, _Differences in the Nervous Organization of Men
and Women_, 46.
[1133] _Ibid._, 45.
[1134] _Ibid._, 68.
[1135] _Ibid._, 66.
[1136] _Ibid._, 53 f.
[1137] _Ibid._, 223.
[1138] _Ibid._, 84.
[1139] _Ibid._, 90.
[1140] _Ibid._, 133.
[1141] _West Afr. Studies_, 375.
[1142] _Globus_, LXXXIII, 285.
[1143] Bebel, _Die Frau_, 73.
[1144] _Decret. Gratiani_, II, c. XXXII, qu. iv, c. 7.
[1145] Molmenti, _Venezia nella Vita Privata_, 393.
[1146] For cases see JAI, XXIII, 364.
[1147] _Globus_, LXXXVII, 179 (Caroline Isl.).
[1148] _Globus_, LXXXIII, 312.
[1149] Xenophon, _Lacedæmon_, I, 7, 8; Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 15.
[1150] Pellison, _Roman Life in Pliny's Time_, 100.
[1151] _Third Journey_ (_russ._), 259.
[1152] _Ladak_, 306.
[1153] Molmenti, _Venezia nella Vita Privata_, 386.
[1154] _Madras Gov. Mus._, III, 227.
[1155] Zimmer, _Altind. Leben_, 313; JASB, II, 316, 319; JAI,
XII, 291.
[1156] Lane, _Modern Egyptians_, I, 274, Cf. Snouck-Hurgronje,
_Mekka_, II, 106 ff.
[1157] Hauri, _Islam_, 135.
[1158] _Madras Gov. Mus._, III, 229.
[1159] Rockhill in _U. S. Nat. Mus._, 1893, 677.
[1160] Bishop, _Among the Thibetans_, 92.
[1161] Herod., I, 173.
[1162] Schoemann, _Griech. Alterthümer_, I, 51.
[1163] _Descent of Man_, 590.
[1164] Westermarck, _Marriage_, 130.
[1165] Sarasin, _Veddahs_, 462.
[1166] Schmidt, _Ceylon_, 277.
[1167] _Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde_, XXXV, 215.
[1168] _Soc. Einrichtungen der Pelauer_, 59.
[1169] _Umschau_, VI, 52, after Haeckel, _Aus Insulinde_.
[1170] _Ehe bei den Arabern_, 447.
[1171] Krieger, _Neu Guinea_, 300, 321.
[1172] _London Graphic_, 1902, 534.
[1173] _Cults of the Greek States_, 448.
[1174] Strange, _Hindu Law_, I, 57.
[1175] _Economica_, I, 4.
[1176] _Politics_, VII, 16.
[1177] VII-IX.
[1178] _Epist._, XCIV, 26.
[1179] _Ibid._, XCV, 39.
[1180] _Opera_ (Paris, 1635), VI, 358.
[1181] _Digest_, XLVIII, 13, 5.
[1182] Act IV, scene 8.
[1183] Migne, _Patrol. Latina_, XXII, 691.
[1184] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 346.
[1185] _Od._, I, 433.
[1186] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 347.
[1187] _Ibid._, 135.
[1188] _Globus_, LXXV, 271.
[1189] Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, 159.
[1190] Wellhausen, _Ehe bei den Arabern_, 450.
[1191] _Ibid._, 432.
[1192] Hauri, _Islam_, 124.
[1193] _Ibid._, 131.
[1194] Hauri, _Islam_, 121.
[1195] Cf. Snouck-Hurgronje, _Mekka_, II, 110 ff.
[1196] _Smithson. Rep._, 1895, 673.
[1197] _Od._, XVI, 392; XX, 74; XXI, 162.
[1198] _Iliad_, IX, 341.
[1199] _Od._, VI, 180.
[1200] _Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium libri novem_, IV, 6.
[1201] _Metamor._, VIII.
[1202] Pliny, _Letters_.
[1203] Friedländer, _Sittengesch._, II, 410.
[1204] E.g. _Burnt Njal_, 238.
[1205] Holtzmann, _Ind. Sagen_, I, 253.
[1206] _Ibid._, 256.
[1207] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 33.
[1208] _Ibid._, 45.
[1209] _Globus_, LXXXII, 104, 187-194, 279.
[1210] _Ibid._, 322.
[1211] Strausz, _Die Bulgaren_, 309.
[1212] _Globus_, LXXIX, 155.
[1213] _Madras Gov. Mus._, II, 162.
[1214] _Globus_, LXXXII, 323.
[1215] _Globus_, LXXXII, 321.
[1216] Ralston, _Songs of the Russ. People_, 7.
[1217] _Globus_, LXXVI, 316.
[1218] Ralston, as above, 65.
[1219] _Ztsft. f. vergl. Rechts-wsnsft._, XIV, 180.
[1220] _Ecole d'Anthrop. de Paris_, XIV, 411.
[1221] Schultz, _Höf. Leben_, I, 581, and the whole of Chap. VII;
Scherr, _D.F.W.I._, 220.
[1222] Migne, _Patrol. Lat._, Vol. 210.
[1223] Line 18,580.
[1224] I, 90, 92, 251; III, 103, 104 (in spite of love), 109,
167, 278.
[1225] III, 171.
[1226] I, 150.
[1227] _D. L._, 271, 276, 277.
[1228] Schultz, _D. L._, 259, 271-277.
[1229] Lichtenberger, _Poeme des Nibelungen_, 380.
[1230] _Ibid._, 390.
[1231] _Nibelungen_, line 837.
[1232] Lichtenberger, 368, 375, 391, 400; Uhland, _Dichtung und
Sage_, 315.
[1233] Barthold, _Hansa_, III, 178.
[1234] Schultz, _D. L._, 414.
[1235] Weinhold, _D. F._, II, 209.
[1236] Eicken, _Mittelalt. Weltanschauung_, 467.
[1237] _Hist. de Paris_, 268.
[1238] Schultz, _D. L._, 277.
[1239] _Ibid._, 283; cf. Janssen, VIII, 391.
[1240] Herod., IV, 104.
[1241] See sec. 366.
[1242] See sec. 178.
[1243] Lea, _Sacerd. Celibacy_, 203, note.
[1244] JAI, XXIV, 119.
[1245] _Eur. Morals_, II, 348.
[1246] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 736.
[1247] Plutarch, _Romulus_, 22.
[1248] Plutarch, _Comp. of Numa and Lykurgus_.
[1249] Tacitus, _Annals_, I, 10.
[1250] Plutarch, _Cato_.
[1251] Valer. Maxim., VI, 3, 12.
[1252] _Sat._, VI, 230.
[1253] _Apolog._, 6.
[1254] _Epist._, 2.
[1255] _Epist._, 95; _Consolation to his Mother_, 16.
[1256] Dill, _Nero to M. Aurel._, 87.
[1257] _Ibid._, 188.
[1258] Cook, _Fathers of Jesus_, II, 142.
[1259] Grupp, _Kulturgesch. der Röm. Kaiserzeit_, 113.
[1260] Heusler, _Deut. Privatrecht_, II, 291.
[1261] Reichel, _Canon Law_, I, 343.
[1262] _Mann und Weib_, 32.
[1263] JAI, XVIII, 288.
[1264] _Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci._, 1892, 704.
[1265] Schomburgk, _Brit. Guiana_, I, 122, 164; JAI, XXIV, 205.
[1266] _Peterm. Mittlgen, Erg. heft_, XXV, 9.
[1267] Holm, _Angmagslikerne_, 52; Nelson in _Bur. Eth._, XVIII,
Part i, 292.
[1268] _Borneo_, I, 194.
[1269] _Bijdragen tot T.L. en V.-kunde_, XXXV, 161, 165; Wilken,
_Volkenkunde_, 277.
[1270] IX, 88, 93, 94.
[1271] XI, 59, 171.
[1272] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte der Indo-Arier_, 54, 58.
[1273] Jolly, _Stellung der Frauen bei den allen Indern_, 425.
[1274] Strange, _Hindu Law_, I, 35.
[1275] Gehring, _Süd-Indien_, 78, 80.
[1276] IX, 90.
[1277] _Jo. Soc. Comp. Legisl., N. S._, VIII, 253.
[1278] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte_, 54.
[1279] _Madras Gov. Mus._, II, 162.
[1280] Monier-Williams, _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 354.
[1281] _Pol.-Anth. Rev._, III, 711.
[1282] Winckler, _Gesetze des Hammurabi_, 22.
[1283] Grimm, _Rechts-Alt._, 436.
[1284] Furnival, _Child-marriages_, XXVII, XXXIX, XL.
[1285] Hauri, _Islam_, 131.
[1286] _Modern Egyptians_, I, 268, 466.
[1287] JAI, X, 138.
[1288] Rubruck, _Eastern Parts_, 78.
[1289] Kohler and Peiser, II, 9.
[1290] Holtzmann, _Ind. Sagen_, I, 258.
[1291] Zimmer, _Altind. Leben_, 328-331.
[1292] V, 157, 161-164.
[1293] Jolly, _Stellung der Frauen_, 448.
[1294] _Nineteenth Cent._, XLV, 769.
[1295] Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, 391.
[1296] _Ibid._, 365.
[1297] _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 472.
[1298] JASB, VI, 119.
[1299] Cf. sec. 376.
[1300] JASB, VI, 376.
[1301] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte_, 61.
[1302] JAI, XII, 290.
[1303] _Ethnol. App. Census of India_, 1901, 74-75.
[1304] Keller, _Homeric Society_, 227; _Iliad_, XXII, 477; V,
389.
[1305] Diodorus Siculus, XII, 12.
[1306] Becker-Hermann, _Charikles_, III, 289.
[1307] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 316.
[1308] Friedländer, _Sittengesch._, I, 411.
[1309] Athenagoras, _Apolog._, 28; _Constit. Apost._, III, 2.
[1310] Lea, _Sacerd. Celibacy_, 35.
[1311] Wellhausen, _Ehe bei den Arabern_, 433, 455.
[1312] Jolly, _Seconds Mariages_, 194.
[1313] _Ibid._, 177.
[1314] _Ibid._, 193.
[1315] Lea, _Sacerd. Celib._, 283.
[1316] Jolly, _Seconds Mariages_, 193.
[1317] Tacitus, _Germ._, 19.
[1318] Stammler, _Stellung der Frauen im alten Deutschen Recht_,
37.
[1319] _Dialog. of the Exchequer, B_ 2, XVIII.
[1320] Pike, _Crime in England_, I, 428.
[1321] Jolly, _Seconds Mariages_, 202.
[1322] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte der Indo-Arier_, 59; Hopkins,
_Religions of India_, 541; Kohler, _Urgesch. der Ehe_, 28.
[1323] Hearn, _Japan_, 393 ff.