MOTHER-RIGHT CUSTOMS AND THE TRANSITION TO FATHER-RIGHT
Endeavour has been made in the previous chapters to present the case
for mother-right as clearly and concisely as possible. The point we
have now reached is this: while mother-right does not constitute or
make necessary rule by women, under that system they enjoy
considerable power as the result (1) of their organised position under
the maternal marriage among their own clan-kindred, (2) of their
importance to the male members of the clan as the transmitters and
holders of property.
It is necessary to remember the close connection between these
mother-right customs and the communal clan, which was a free
association for mutual protection. This is a point of much interest.
As we have seen, the undivided family of the clan could be maintained
only by descent through the mothers, since its existence depended on
its power to retain and protect all its members. In this way it
destroyed the solitary family, by its opposition to the authority and
will of the husband and father.
These conclusions will be strengthened as we continue our examination
of mother-right customs as we shall find them in all parts of the
world. I must select a few examples only and describe them very
briefly, not because these cases offer less interest than the complete
maternal families already examined, but because of the length to which
this part of my inquiry is rapidly growing. The essential fact to
establish is the prevalence of mother-descent as a probable universal
stage in the past history of mankind, and then to show the causes
which, by undermining the dominion of the maternal clan, led to the
adoption of father-right and the re-establishment of the patriarchal
family.
Let us begin with Australia, where the aboriginal population is in a
more primitive condition than any other race whose institutions have
been investigated. I can notice a few facts only from the harvest of
information brought together by anthropologists and travellers. The
tribes are grouped into exogamous sub-divisions, and each group has
its own land from which it takes a local name. Each group wanders
about on its own territory in order to hunt game and collect roots,
sometimes in detached families and, less often, in larger hordes, for
there seems to be a tendency to local isolation. A remarkable feature
of the social organisation is found in the more advanced tribes,
where, in addition to the division into clans, the group is divided
into male and female classes. All the members of such clans regard
themselves as kinsmen, or brothers and sisters; they have the same
totem mark and are bound to protect each other. The totem bond is
stronger than any blood tie, while the sex totems are even more sacred
than the clan totems.
Much confusion has arisen out of the attempts to explain the
Australian system; and for long the close totem kinship was supposed
to afford evidence of group marriage, by which a man of one clan was
held to have sexual rights over all the women in another clan. But
further insight into their customs has proved the error of such a
view, which arose from a misunderstanding of the terms of relationship
used among the tribes. Nowhere is marriage bound by more severe laws;
death is the penalty for sexual intercourse with a person of a
forbidden clan. And it is certain that there is no evidence at all of
communism in wives.[105]
[105] _See_ Westermarck, _op. cit._, pp. 54-56.
A system of taboos is very strongly established, and as we should
expect the women appear to be most active in maintaining these sexual
separations. If a man, even by mistake, kills the sex-totem of the
women, they are as much enraged as if it were one of their own
children, and they will turn and attack him with their long poles.
In Australia it is easy to recognise a very early stage in human
society. The organisation of the family group into the clan is still
taking place. Moreover, the most primitive patriarchal conditions have
not greatly changed, for the males are great individualists and cannot
readily suffer the rights of others than themselves. Mother-right can
hardly be said to exist, and the position of women is low. It is not
the custom among any tribes for the husband to reside in the home of
the wife; this in itself is sufficient to explain the power of the
husbands. Wives are frequently obtained by capture, and fights for
women are of common occurrence. Here it would seem that progress has
been very slow. Indeed, it is the chief interest of the Australian
tribes that we can trace the transformation from the early patriarchal
conditions to the communal clan.
There is still another fact of very special interest. In the large
majority of tribes known to us descent is traced through the mother;
the proportion of these tribes to those with father-descent being four
to one. Now, the question arises as to which of these two systems is
the earlier custom? As a rule it is assumed that in all cases descent
was originally traced through the mother. But is this really so? The
evidence of the Australian tribes points to the exact opposite
opinion. For what do we find? The tribes that have established
mother-descent have advanced further, with a more developed social
organisation, which could hardly be the case if they were the more
primitive. To this question Starcke, in _The Primitive Family_, has
drawn particular attention; he regards "the female line as a later
development," arrived at after descent through the father was
recognised, such change being due to an urgent necessity which arose
in the primitive family for cohesion among its members, making
necessary sexual regulation and the maternal clan.
It is certainly difficult to decide on the priority of this or that
custom. But what is significant is that in Australia the tribes which
maintain the male line of descent must be assigned to the lowest stage
of development. The rights established by marriage among them are less
clearly defined, and the use of the totem marks, with the sexual
taboos arising from them, are less developed. Everything tends to show
that clan organisation and union in peace have arisen with
mother-descent, which cannot thus be regarded as a survival from the
earlier order, but as a later development--a step forward in progress
and social regulation.
I take this as being exceedingly important: it serves to establish
what it has been my purpose to show, that in the first stage the
family was patriarchal--small hostile groups living under the jealous
authority of the fathers; and that only as advancement came did the
maternal clan develop, since it arose through a community of purpose
binding all its members in peace, and thereby controlling the warring
individual interests. The reasons for mother-descent have been
altogether misunderstood by those who regard it as the earliest phase
of the family, and connect the custom with sexual disorder and
uncertainty of paternity. In all cases the clan system shows a marked
organisation, with a much stronger cohesion than is possible in the
restricted family, which is held together by the force of the father.
It was within the clan that the rights of the father and husband were
endangered: he lost his position as supreme head of the family, and
became an alien member in a free association where his position was
strictly defined. The incorporation of the family into the clan arose
through the struggle for existence forcing it into association; it was
the subordinate position of the husband under such a system which
finally made the women the rulers of the household. If we regard the
social conditions of the maternal system as the first stage of
development, they are as difficult to understand as they become
intelligible when we consider it as a later and beneficent phase in
the growth of society.
This, then, I claim as the chief good of the maternal system. As I see
it, each advance in progress rests on the conquest of sexual distrusts
and fierceness forcing into isolation. These jealous and odious
monopolist instincts have been the bane of humanity. Each race must
inevitably in the end outlive them; they are the surviving relics of
the ape and the tiger. They arise out of that self-concentration and
intensity of animalism that binds the hands of men and women from
taking their inheritance. The brute in us still resents association.
Am I wrong in connecting this individual monopolist idea of My power!
My right! with the paternal as opposed to the maternal family? At any
rate I find it absent in the communal clan grouped around the mothers,
where the enlarged family makes common cause and life is lived by all
for and with each other.
An instructive example of the joint maternal family is furnished by
the Naïrs of Malabar, where we see a very late development of the
clan system. The family group includes many allied families, who live
together in large communal houses and possess everything in common.
There is common tenure of land, over which the eldest male member of
the community presides; while the mother, and after her death the
eldest daughter, is the ruler in the household. It is impossible to
give the details of their curious conjugal customs. The men do not
marry, but frequent other houses as lovers, without ceasing to live at
home, and without being in any way detached from the maternal family.
There is, however, a symbolic marriage for every girl, by a rite known
as tying the _tali_; but this marriage serves the purpose only of
initiation, and the couple separate after one day. When thus prepared
for marriage, a Naïr girl chooses her lovers, and any number of unions
may be entered upon without any restrictions other than the strict
prohibitions relative to caste and tribe. These later marriages,
unlike the solemn initial rite, have no ceremony connected with them,
and are entered into freely at the will of the woman and her
family.[106]
[106] Starcke's _Primitive Family_, pp. 85-88. Letourneau,
_Evolution of Marriage_, pp. 80-81, 311-312. Hartland,
_Primitive Paternity_, Vol. I, pp. 269, 288.
Now, if we regard these customs in the light of what has already been
established, it is clear that they cannot be regarded as the first
stage in the maternal family. Such a view is entirely to mistake the
facts. The Naïrs are in no respect a people of primitive culture.
Through a long period they have most strictly preserved the custom of
matriarchal heredity, which has led to an unusual concentration of the
family group, and it is probable that here is the best explanation of
the conjugal liberty of the Naïr girls. However singular their system
may appear to us, it is the most logical and complete of any
polyandric system. If we compare it with the more usual form of
patriarchal polyandry we see at once the influence of maternal
descent. Here, the woman makes a free choice of her husbands; in no
sense is she their property. It is common for them to work for her,
one husband taking on himself to furnish her with clothes, another to
give her rice and food, and so on. It is, in fact, the wife who
possesses, and it is through her that wealth is transmitted. In
fraternal polyandry, on the other hand (as, for instance, it is
practised in Thibet and Ceylon), the husbands of a woman are always
brothers; she belongs to them, and for her children there is a kind of
collective fatherhood. But among the Naïrs the man as husband and
father cannot be said to exist; he is reduced to the most subordinate
rôle of the male--he is simply the progenitor.
I know of no stronger case than this of the degraded position of the
father. And what I want to make clear is that in such negation of all
father-right rested the inherent weakness in the matriarchal
conditions--a weakness which led eventually to the re-establishment of
the paternal family. We must be very clear in our minds as to the
sharp distinction between the restricted family and the communal
clan. The clan as a confederation of members was opposed to the family
whose interests were necessarily personal and selfish. Such communism,
to some may appear strange at so early a stage of primitive cultures,
yet, as I have more than once pointed out, it was a perfectly natural
development; it arose through the fierce struggle for existence,
forcing the primitive hostile groups to expand and unite with one
another for mutual protection. Such conditions of primitive socialism
were specially favourable for women. As I have again and again
affirmed, the collective motive was more considered by the mothers,
and must be sought in the organisation of the maternal clan. But since
individual desires can never be wholly subdued, and the male nature is
ever directed towards self-assertion, the clan, organised on the
rights of the mothers, had always to contend with an opposing force.
At one stage the clan was able to absorb the family, but only under
exceptional conditions could such a system be maintained. The social
organisation of the clan was inevitably broken up as society advanced.
With greater security of life the individual interests reasserted
their power, and this undermined the dominion of the mother.
To bring these facts home, we must now consider some further examples
of mother-right, in order to show how closely these customs are
connected with the conditions of the maternal familiar clan.
The Yaos of Africa have what may be regarded as a matriarchal
organisation. Kinship is reckoned and property is inherited through
the mother. When a man marries, he is expected to live in his wife's
village, and his first conjugal duties are to build a house for her,
and hoe a garden for her mother. This gives the woman a very important
position, and it is she, and not the man, who usually proposes
marriage.[107]
[107] Alice Werner, "Our Subject Races", _National Reformer_,
Aug. 1897, p. 169.
In Africa descent through the mother is the rule, though there are
exceptions, and these are increasing. The amusing account given by
Miss Kingsley[108] of Joseph, a member of the Batu tribe in French
Congo, strikingly illustrates the prevalence of the custom. When asked
by a French official to furnish his own name and the name of his
father, Joseph was wholly nonplussed. "My fader!" he said. "Who my
fader?" Then he gave the name of his mother. The case is the same
among the negroes. The Fanti of the Gold Coast may be taken as
typical. Among them an intensity of affection (accounted for partly by
the fact that the mothers have exclusive care of the children) is felt
for the mother, while the father is almost disregarded as a parent,
notwithstanding the fact that he may be a wealthy and powerful man.
The practice of the Wamoimia, where the son of a sister is preferred
in legacies, "because a man's own son is only the son of his wife," is
typical. The Bush husband does not live with his wife, and often has
wives in different places.[109]
[108] _Travels_, p. 109.
[109] Lippert, _Kulturgeschichte_, etc., Vol. II, p. 57.
Hartland, _Primitive Paternity_, Vol. I, pp. 274, 286.
In Africa the clan system is firmly established, which explains the
prevalence of mother-descent. Women, on the whole, take an important
position, and here, as elsewhere, their inheritance of property
enables them to maintain their equality with their husbands.
Individual possession of wealth is allowed, but a married man usually
cannot dispose of any property unless his wife agrees, and she acts as
the representative of the children's claims upon the father. The
privilege that, according to Laing, the Soulima women have, of leaving
their husbands when they please, is also proof of the maternal
customs.[110] Moreover, among some tribes, the influence of the
mothers as the heads of families extends to the councils of state; it
is even said that the chiefs do not decide anything without their
consent.[111]
[110] Letourneau, pp. 306-307; citing Laing, _Travels in
Western Africa_.
[111] Giraud-Teulon, _Les origines du mariage et de la
famille_, pp. 215 _et seq._
Mother-right is still in force in many parts of India, though owing to
the influence of Brahminism on the aboriginal tribes the examples of
the maternal family are fewer than might be expected. Among the once
powerful Koochs the women own all the property, which is inherited
from mother to daughter. The husband lives with his wife and her
mother, and, we are told, is subject to them. These women are most
industrious, weaving, spinning, planting and sowing, in a word, doing
all the work not above their strength.[112] The Koochs may be compared
with the Khasis, already noticed, and these maternal systems among the
Indian hill tribes may surely be regarded as showing conditions at one
time common. Even tribes who have passed from the clan organisation to
the patriarchal family preserve numerous traces of mother-right. Thus,
the choice of her lover often remains with the girl; again, divorce is
easy at the wish either of the woman or the man.[113] Such freedom in
love is clearly inconsistent with the patriarchal authority of the
husband. I must note too the practice, common among many tribes, by
which the husband remains in the wife's home for a probationary
period, working for her family.[114] This is clearly a step towards
purchase marriage, as is proved by the Santals, where this service is
claimed when a girl is ugly or deformed and cannot be married
otherwise, while other tribes offer their daughters when in want of
labourers. This service-marriage must not be confused with the true
maternal form, where the bridegroom visits or lives with the wife and
any service claimed is a test of his fitness; it shows, however, the
power of the woman's kindred still curbing the rights of the husband.
[112] Hodgson, _Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 1855,
Vol. XVIII, p. 707, cited by Starcke, _op. cit._, pp. 79,
285.
[113] Hartland, _op. cit._, Vol. II, pp. 155-157.
[114] This custom prevails, for instance, among the Kharwârs
and Parahiya tribes, and is common among the Ghasiyas, and is
also practised among the Tipperah of Bengal.
The existence of mother-descent among the peoples of Western Asia has
been ascertained with regard to some ancient tribes; but I may pass
these over, as they offer no points of special interest. I must,
however, refer briefly to the evidence brought forward by the late
Prof. Robertson Smith[115] of mother-right in ancient Arabia. We find
a decisive example of its favourable influence on the position of
women in the custom of _beena_ marriage. Under this maternal form, the
wife was not only freed from any subjection involved by the payment of
a bride-price in the form of compulsory service or of gifts to her
kindred (which always places her more or less under authority), but
she was the owner of the tent and the household property, and thus
enjoyed the liberty which ownership always entails. This explains how
she was able to free herself at pleasure from her husband, who was
really nothing but a temporary lover. Ibn Batua, even in the
fourteenth century found that the women of Zebid were perfectly ready
to marry strangers. The husband might depart when he pleased, but his
wife in that case could never be induced to follow him. She bade him a
friendly adieu and took upon herself the whole charge of any children
of the marriage. The women in Jâhilîya had the right to dismiss their
husbands, and the form of dismissal was this: "If they lived in a
tent they turned it round, so that if the door faced east it now faced
west, and when the man saw this, he knew he was dismissed and did not
enter." The tent belonged to the woman: the husband was received
there, and at her good pleasure. We find many cases of _beena_
marriage among widely different peoples. Frazer[116] cites an
interesting example among the tribes on the north frontier of
Abyssinia, partially Semitic peoples, not yet under the influence of
Islam, who preserve a maternal marriage closely resembling the _beena_
form, but have as well a purchase marriage, by which a wife is
acquired by the payment of a bride-price and becomes the property of
her husband.
[115] _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia._ See also
Barton, _Semitic Origins_.
[116] _Academy_, March 27, 1886.
A very curious form of conjugal contract is recorded among the
Hassanyeh Arabs of the White Nile, where the wife passed by contract
for a portion of her time only under the authority of her husband. It
illustrates in a striking way the conflict in marriage between the old
rights of the woman and the rising power of the husband.
"When the parents of the man and the woman meet to settle
the price of the woman, the price depends on how many days
in the week the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. The
woman's mother first of all proposes that, taking everything
into consideration, with due regard to the feelings of the
family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due
observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to
command for more than two days in the week. After a great
deal of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the
part of the relations of the man to pay more, it is arranged
that the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the
first families of the tribe, for four days in the week, viz.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and in compliance
with old established custom, the marriage rites during the
three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which
days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may
think proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or
by enjoying her freedom and independence from all observance
of matrimonial obligations."[117]
[117] Spencer, _Descriptive Sociology_, Vol. V, p. 8, citing
Petherick, _Egypt, the Soudan, and Central Africa_, pp.
140-141.
A further striking example of mother-right is furnished by the Mariana
Islands, where the position of women was distinctly superior.
"Even when the man had contributed an equal share of
property on marriage, the wife dictated everything, and the
man could undertake nothing without her approval; but if the
woman committed an offence, the man was held responsible and
suffered the punishment. The women could speak in the
assembly; they held property, and if a woman asked anything
of a man, he gave it up without a murmur. If a wife was
unfaithful, the husband could send her home, keep her
property, and kill the adulterer; but if the man was guilty
or even suspected of the same offence, the women of the
neighbourhood destroyed his house and all his visible
property, and the owner was fortunate if he escaped with a
whole skin; and if the wife was not pleased with her
husband, she withdrew, and a similar attack followed. On
this account many men were not married, preferring to live
with paid women."[118]
[118] Thomas, _Sex and Society_, pp. 73-74, quoting
Waitz-Gerland.
A similar case of the rebellion of men against their position is
recorded in Guinea, where religious symbolism was used by the husband
as a way of obtaining control and possession of his wife. The maternal
system held with respect only to the chief wife.
"It was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to
wife a slave, a friendless person with whom he could deal at
pleasure, who had no kindred who could interfere with her,
and to consecrate her to his Bossum, or god. The Bossum
wife, slave as she had been, ranked next to the chief wife,
and was exceptionally treated. She alone was very jealously
guarded, she alone was sacrificed at her husband's death.
She was, in fact, wife in a peculiar sense. And having by
consecration been made of the kindred and worship of her
husband her children could be born of his kindred and
worship."[119]
[119] McLennan, _The Patriarchal Theory_, p. 235.
It will be readily seen that the special rights held by the husband
over these captive-wives would come to be greatly desired. But the
capture of women was always difficult, as it frequently led to
quarrels and even warfare with the woman's tribe, and for this reason
was never widely practised. It would therefore be necessary for
another way of escape from the bonds of the maternal marriage to be
found. This was done by a system of buying the wife from her
clan-kindred, in which case she became the property of her husband.
The change did not, of course, take place at once, and we have many
examples of a transition period where the old customs are in conflict
with the new. Both forms of marriage, the maternal and the purchase
contract, are practised side by side by many peoples. These cases are
so instructive that I must add one or two examples to those already
noticed. The _ambel-anak_ marriage of Sumatra is the maternal form,
but there is another marriage known as _djudur_, by which a man buys
his wife as his absolute property. There is a complicated system of
payments, on which the husband's rights to take the wife to his home
depends. If the final sum is paid (but this is not commonly claimed
except in the case of a quarrel between the families) the woman
becomes to all intents and purposes the slave of the man; but if, on
the other hand, as is not at all uncommon, the husband fails or has
difficulty in making the main payment, he becomes the debtor of his
wife's family, and he is practically the slave, all his labour being
due to his wife's family without any reduction in the debt, which must
be paid in full, before he regains his liberty.[120] In Ceylon, again,
there are two forms of marriage, called _beena_ and _deega_, which
cause a marked difference in the position of the wife. A woman married
under the _beena_ form lives in the house or immediate neighbourhood
of her parents, and if so married she has the right of inheritance
along with her brothers; but if married in _deega_ she goes to live in
her husband's house and village and loses her rights in her own
family.[121]
[120] Marsden, _History of Sumatra_, pp. 225-227.
[121] Forbes, _Eleven Years in Ceylon_, Vol. I, p. 333.
In Africa where the _beena maternal marriage_ is usual, and the
husband serves for his wife and lives with her family, it is said that
families are usually more or less willing _for value received_ to give
a woman to a man to take away with him, or to let him have his _beena_
wife to transfer to his own house. Among the Wayao and Mang'anja of
the Shirehighlands, south of Lake Nyassa, a man on marrying leaves his
own village and goes to live in that of his wife; but, as an
alternative, he is allowed to pay a bride-price, in which case he
takes his wife away to his home.[122] Again among the Banyai on the
Zambesi, if the husband gives nothing the children of the marriage
belong to the wife's family, but if he gives so many cattle to his
wife's parents the children are his.[123] Similar cases may be found
elsewhere. In the Watubela Islands between New Guinea and Celebes a
man may either pay for his wife before marriage, or he may, without
paying, live as her husband in her parents' house, working for her. In
the former case, the children belong to him, in the latter to the
mother's family, but he may buy them subsequently at a price.[124]
Campbell records of the Limboo tribe (where the bride is usually
purchased and lives with the husband), that if poverty compels the
bridegroom to serve for his wife, he becomes the slave of her father,
"until by his work he has redeemed his bride."[125] An interesting
case occurs in some Californian tribes where the husband has to live
with the wife and work, until he has paid to her kindred the full
price for her and her child. So far has custom advanced in favour of
father-right that the children of a wife not paid for are regarded as
bastards and held in contempt.[126]
[122] Macdonald, _Africana_, Vol I, p. 136.
[123] Livingstone, _Travels_, p. 622.
[124] Riedel, p. 205; cited by McLennan, _Patriarchal
Theory_, p. 326.
[125] _Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal_, Vol. IX, p. 603.
[126] Bancroft, Vol. I, p. 549.
Wherever we find the payment of a bride-price, in whatever form, there
is sure indication of the decay of mother-right: woman has become
property. Among the Bassa Komo of Nigeria marriage is usually effected
by an exchange of sisters or other female relatives. The men may marry
as many wives as they have women to give to other men. In this tribe
the women look after the children, but the boys, when four years old,
go to live and work with the fathers.[127] The husbands of the Bambala
tribe (inhabiting the Congo states between the rivers Inzia and Kwilu)
have to abstain from visiting their wives for a year after the birth
of each child, but they are allowed to return to her on the payment to
her father of two goats.[128] Among the Bassanga on the south-west of
Lake Moeru the children of the wife belong to the mother's kin, but
the children of slaves are the property of the father.
[127] _Journal African Society_, VIII, 15 _et seq._
[128] Torday and Joyce, _J. A. I._, XXXV, 410.
The right of a father to his children was established only by
contract. Even where the wife had been given up by her kindred and
allowed to live with her husband, we find that the children may be
claimed by her family. Thus among the Makolo the price paid on
marriage might merely cover the right to have the wife, and in this
case the children belonged to the wife's family. It might, however,
cover a certain right to the children if that had been contracted for,
but never such a right as separated them wholly from the mother's
family. To effect this it was necessary that a further price should be
paid at the father's death. This sum once paid, her family had "given
her up" and her children were entirely severed from them.[129] The
legal acknowledgment of fatherhood in all cases had to be paid for.
[129] McLennan, _The Patriarchal Theory_, pp. 324-325, 240.
There are many customs pointing to this new father-force asserting
itself, and pushing aside the mother-power. In Africa, among the
Bavili the mother has the right to pawn her child, but she must first
consult the father, so that he may have a chance of giving her goods
to save the pledging.[130] This is very plainly a step towards
father-right. There is no distinction between legitimate and
illegitimate children. Similar conditions prevail among the Alladians
of the Ivory Coast, but here the mother cannot pledge her children
without the consent of her brother or other male head of the family.
The father has the right to ransom the child.[131] An even stronger
example of the property value of children is furnished by the custom
found among many tribes, by which the father has to make a present to
the wife's family when a child dies: this is called "buying the
child."[132] A similar custom prevails among the Maori people of New
Zealand; when a child dies, or even meets with an accident, the
mother's relations, headed by her brothers, turn out in force against
the father. He must defend himself until wounded. Blood once drawn,
the combat ceases; but the attacking party plunders his house and
appropriates the husband's property, and finally sits down to a feast
provided by him.[133]
[130] Dennett, _Jour. Afr. Soc._, I, 266.
[131] _Jour. Afr. Soc._, I, 412.
[132] Hartland, _Primitive Paternity_, Vol. I, pp. 275 _et
seq._
[133] _Old New Zealand_, p. 110.
These cases, with the inferences they suggest, show that the power a
husband and father possessed over his wife and her children was gained
through purchase. And it is not the fact of the husband's power,
however great it might be, that is so important, but the fact that by
the change in the form of marriage the wife and her children were cut
off from the woman's clan-kindred, whose duty to protect them was now
withdrawn. Here, then, was the reason of the change from mother-right
to father-right. The monopolist desire of the husband to possess for
himself the woman and her children (perhaps the deepest rooted of all
the instincts) reasserted itself. But the regaining of this individual
possession by man was due, not to male strength, but to purchase. I
must insist upon this. As soon as women became sexually marketable
their freedom was doomed.
There are many interesting cases of transition in which the children
belong sometimes to the mother and sometimes to the father. Again I
can give one or two examples only. In the island of Mangia the parents
at the birth of the child arranged between themselves whether it
should be dedicated to the father's god or to the mother's. The
dedication took place forthwith, and finally determined which parent
had the ownership of the child.[134] Among the Haidis, children belong
to the clan of the mother, but in exceptional cases when the clan of
the father is reduced in numbers, the new-born child may be given to
the father's sister to suckle. It is then spoken of as belonging to
the paternal aunt and is counted to its father's clan.[135] It is also
possible to transfer a child to the father by giving it one of the
names common to his clan. There are many curious customs practised by
certain tribes, wavering between mother and father descent. In Samoa
religion decides the question. At the birth of a child the totem of
each parent is prayed to in turn (usually, though not always, starting
with that of the father) and whichever totem happens to be invoked at
the moment of birth is the child's totem for life and decides whether
he or she belongs to the clan of the mother or the father.[136]
Equally curious was the custom of the Liburni, where the children were
all brought up together until they were five years old. They were then
collected and examined in order to trace their likeness to the men and
they were assigned to their fathers accordingly. Whoever received a
boy from his mother in this way regarded him as his son.[137]
Similarly with the Arabs, where one woman was the wife of several men,
the custom was either for the woman to decide to which of them the
child was to belong, or the child was assigned by an expert to one of
the joint husbands to be regarded as his own.[138]
[134] McLennan, _The Patriarchal Theory_.
[135] _Survey of Canada_, Report for 1878-79, 134 B. Cited by
Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 76.
[136] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 78.
[137] _Das Mutterrecht_, p. 20, quoted by Starcke, _op.
cit._, pp. 126-127.
[138] Wilken, _Das Matriarchat bei den alten Arabern_, p. 26.
These facts throw a strong light on the bond between the father and
the child, which was a legal bond, not dependent, as it is with us,
upon blood relationship. Fatherhood really arose out of the ownership
of purchase. And for this reason the father's right came to extend to
all the children of the wife. It does not appear that the husband
makes any distinction between his wife's children, even if they were
begotten by other men. Chastity is not regarded as a virtue, and in
those cases where unfaithfulness in a wife is punished, it is always
because the woman, who has passed from the protection of her kindred,
acts without her husband's permission. Interchange of wives is common,
while it is one of the duties of hospitality to offer a wife to a
stranger guest. Husbands sometimes, indeed, seek other men for their
wives, believing they will obtain sons who will excel all others. Thus
of the Arabs we are told, there is one form of marriage according to
which a man says to his wife, "Send a message to such a one and beg
him to have intercourse with you." The husband acts in this way in
order that his offspring may be noble.[139] When a Hindu marries, all
the children previously born from his wife become his own; in
Pakpatan, even when a woman has forsaken her husband for ten years,
the children she brings forth are divided between her and her
lover.[140] Similarly in Madagascar, when a woman is divorced, any
children she afterwards bears belong to her husband.[141] Campbell
tells us of children born out of wedlock in the Limboo tribe that the
father may obtain possession of the boys by purchase and by naming
them, but the girls belong to the mother.[142]
[139] Wilken, _op. cit._, p. 26.
[140] Wade, _Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal_, Vol. VI, p.
196.
[141] See _Truth about Woman_, pp. 160-161, for account of
Madagascar.
[142] _Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal_, Vol. IX, p. 603.
I am very certain that it was through property considerations and for
no moral causes that the stringency of the moral code was tightened
for women. It seems to me of very great importance that women should
grasp firmly this truth: the virtue of chastity owes its origin to
property. Our minds fall so readily under the spell of such ideas as
chastity and purity. There is a mass of real superstition on this
question--a belief in a kind of magic in chastity. But, indeed,
continence had at first no connection with morals. The sense of
ownership has been the seed-plot of our moral code. To it we are
indebted for the first germs of the sexual inhibitions which,
sanctified, by religion and supported by custom, have, under the
unreasoned idealism of the common mind, filled life with cruelties and
jealous exclusions, with suicides, and murders, and secret
shames.[143]
[143] This passage is quoted from _The Truth about Woman_, p.
171. I give it here, because its importance seems to me to be
very great.
This brings me to summarise the point we have reached. Father-right
was dependent on purchase-possession and had nothing to do with actual
fatherhood. The payment of a bride-price, the giving of a sister in
exchange, as also marriage with a slave, gained for the husband the
control over his wife and ownership of the children. I could bring
forward much more evidence in proof of this fact that property, and
not kinship, was the basis of fatherhood, did the limits of my space
allow me to do so; such cases are common in all parts of the world
where the transitional stage has been reached. The maternal clan, with
its strong social cohesion is then broken up by the growing power of
individual interests pushing aside the old customs, and bringing about
the restoration of the family. I believe that the causes by which the
father gained his position as the dominant partner in marriage must be
clear to every one from the examples I have given. Fatherhood
established in the first stage of the family on jealous authority,
now, after a period of more or less complete obscuration, rises again
as the dominant force in marriage. The father has bought back his
position as patriarch. On the other hand the mother has lost her
freedom that came with the protection of her kindred, under the social
organisation of the clan. Looking back through the lengthening record,
we find that another step has been taken in the history of the family.
This time is it a step forward, or a step backward? This is a question
I shall not try to answer, for, indeed, I am not sure.
Yet in case I am mistaken here, let me say at once I am certain that
this return to the restricted family was a necessary and inevitable
step. The individual forces had to triumph. This may seem a
contradiction to all I have just said. What I wish to show is this:
one and all the phases in the development of society have been needful
and fruitful as successive stages in growth; yet none can
continue--none be regarded as the final stage, for each becomes
insufficient and narrow from the standpoint of the needs of a later
stage. We have reached the third stage--the patriarchal family which
still endures. And last and hardest to eradicate is that monopoly of
sexual possession, which says: "This woman and her children are mine:
I have tabooed her for life." Mankind has still to outlive this brute
instinct in its upward way to civilisation.