Experience shews that women do not object to polygyny when it is
customary: on the contrary, they are its most ardent supporters. The
reason is obvious. The question, as it presents itself in practice to
a woman, is whether it is better to have, say, a whole share in a
tenth-rate man or a tenth share in a first-rate man. Substitute the word
Income for the word Man, and you will have the question as it presents
itself economically to the dependent woman. The woman whose instincts
are maternal, who desires superior children more than anything else,
never hesitates. She would take a thousandth share, if necessary, in a
husband who was a man in a thousand, rather than have some comparatively
weedy weakling all to herself. It is the comparatively weedy weakling,
left mateless by polygyny, who objects. Thus, it was not the women of
Salt Lake City nor even of America who attacked Mormon polygyny. It
was the men. And very naturally. On the other hand, women object to
polyandry, because polyandry enables the best women to monopolize all
the men, just as polygyny enables the best men to monopolize all the
women. That is why all our ordinary men and women are unanimous in
defence of monogamy, the men because it excludes polygyny, and the women
because it excludes polyandry. The women, left to themselves, would
tolerate polygyny. The men, left to themselves, would tolerate
polyandry. But polygyny would condemn a great many men, and polyandry a
great many women, to the celibacy of neglect. Hence the resistance any
attempt to establish unlimited polygyny always provokes, not from the
best people, but from the mediocrities and the inferiors. If we
could get rid of our inferiors and screw up our average quality until
mediocrity ceased to be a reproach, thus making every man reasonably
eligible as a father and every woman reasonably desirable as a mother,
polygyny and polyandry would immediately fall into sincere disrepute,
because monogamy is so much more convenient and economical that nobody
would want to share a husband or a wife if he (or she) could have a
sufficiently good one all to himself (or herself). Thus it appears that
it is the scarcity of husbands or wives of high quality that leads woman
to polygyny and men to polyandry, and that if this scarcity were cured,
monogamy, in the sense of having only one husband or wife at a
time (facilities for changing are another matter), would be found
satisfactory.