SEXUAL MORALITY
There is no point upon which primitive races differ more than in their
regard for chastity. Among civilized peoples there has been an ebb and
flow of sexual morality so marked that historians have had recourse to
the explanations of the example of the Court, or the fluctuations of
religious earnestness among the people, assuming that, but for
Christianity and education, mankind would be sunk in bestial licence.
Every traveller knows this to be a fallacy. In Africa, of two races in
the same stage of social development and in constant intercourse with
one another, the one may tolerate a system bordering on promiscuity, and
the other punish a single lapse with death. If it were possible to
generalize in the matter, one would say that the higher the civilization
and the greater the leisure and luxury, the looser is the sexual
morality; and the ruder the people and the harder the struggle against
nature for subsistence, the weaker is its sexual instinct and the more
rigid is its code. But there are more exceptions than will prove this
rule. The Chinese, who were civilized before our history began, are not
as a race addicted to lechery; the Fuegians, who have scarce learned to
clothe themselves against the bitterest climate in the world, do not
even seek privacy for their almost promiscuous intercourse.
Respect for chastity, in fact, is a question of breed rather than of law
and religion. A full-blooded race may use law to curb its appetites, yet
may break out into periodic rebellion against its own laws; a
cold-blooded people, like the Australian blacks, may tolerate what
appears to us a brutish indulgence, and yet apply the most contemptuous
epithet in their language to the man addicted to sensual pleasure.
There was nothing in the institutions of the two great races of the
Pacific Islands to account for the remarkable difference in their regard
for chastity. They were reared in the same climate, nourished with the
same food; the same degree of industry sufficed to provide them with all
that they required. The power of the aristocracy among the Polynesians
should have been more favourable to social restrictions than the
republican institutions of the Melanesians. If the influence of a strong
central government tended in either direction, which the fact that
sexual restrictions were the same in both the powerful confederations
and the village communes of Fiji effectively disproves, the Polynesians
should have been the more continent. And yet, with nothing save race
temperament to account for the difference, the Polynesians were as lax
as the Melanesians were strict in their social code. It was the licence
of the Tahitian and Hawaiian women which tempted seamen to desert their
ships, and so led to European settlements in the Polynesian groups while
the Melanesian remained almost unknown. The prostitution that sprang up
in the principal ports attracted whaleships, which sometimes took sides
in native quarrels. The stories of their excesses brought the
missionaries, and the destruction of such customary law as still
survived was greatly accelerated.
The Melanesians, on the other hand, offered no such temptation to
passing ships. They practised no open-handed hospitality; their fickle
temper kept their visitors perpetually on their guard against attack;
they generally kept their women out of sight, and the women themselves
were not only ill-favoured, but also excessively shy of Europeans.
Though ships have frequented Fiji for nearly a century, and the group
has had a foreign population of several thousands for five-and-twenty
years, professional prostitution among Fijian women is so rare that it
may be said not to exist. Nevertheless, the decay of custom has by no
means left the morality of the Fijians untouched. Let us compare what
it was with what it is.
[Pageheader: THE OLD CODE PUNISHED INCONTINENCE]
In heathen times, as I have already said, there was a very limited form
of polygamy. The powerful chiefs had as many wives and concubines as
their wealth and influence would support, but the bulk of the people
were monogamists. The high chiefs were an exception to the general rule
of continence. They did not, it is true, often carry on intrigues with
girls of their own station, but they could send for any woman of humble
birth, particularly in the villages of their _vasus_ or of their
dependants by conquest. In this, as in other things, the chiefs were
above the law, and many of them made a practice of asserting the
privileges of their station. A low-born woman, whether maid or wife,
received the summons as if it had been a divine command, however
distasteful it might be to her. If she hesitated, and the chief
condescended so far as to entreat her, sealing his entreaty by sniffing
at her hand (_rengu_), refusal was impossible. This kiss of entreaty
from a chief is, even now, so much dreaded by unwilling girls that they
will use violence to prevent the nose of their wooer from touching their
hand, for the Fijian kiss, like that of all oriental races, is a sharp
inhalation of breath through the nostrils.
Considerable licence was tolerated at every high chief's court between
the chief's retainers and the female servants of his wives. These were
women taken in war, or good-looking girls from the vassal villages who
had enjoyed the short-lived honour of concubinage. They did the rough
work of his kitchen, and were lent to distinguished visitors who cared
for that kind of hospitality. But the wives and daughters and favourites
of the chief were inviolable, and the man who dared to meddle with them
played with his life.
Boys and girls were allowed to associate freely during the day-time, and
to play such games as _veimbili_ and _sosovi_ together, but they were
kept apart during the night. The girls slept with their mother, and the
boys, as soon as they had attained puberty, were compelled to sleep in
the _mbure-ni-sa_, the village club-house, in which the unmarried men,
the village elders and strangers slept. The girls were so carefully
watched that they seem generally to have retained their chastity until
marriage, and the young men, fully occupied with the training proper to
their age, had neither the opportunity nor the inclination for sexual
intrigue.
In every community sexual laws were of slow growth; they were not the
expression of a high ethical standard, for primitive races see no sin in
sexual intercourse _per se_, but rather of a growing sense of public
convenience; they were not the inspiration of a lawgiver, but the
expression of the tribal conscience. The Seventh Commandment was an
inscription upon tablets of a law that was already observed by the
Hebrews. The Fijians had evolved their law from considerations that were
purely practical. Women were chattels; a virgin was more marketable than
a girl who had had adventures; an illegitimate child was a burden upon
its mother's parents. And besides these primitive considerations,
incontinence was an infringement of the Fijian marriage law which
provided each individual woman with her proper partner, and maintained
the equilibrium of exchange of women with the intermarrying tribe and a
just interchange of marriage gifts. A people who can complain in such
terms as, "They have had four of our women already, and we but two of
theirs, and here they ask us for a fifth," was not likely to tolerate
clandestine love affairs among their daughters. That a high moral
standard was not the cause of their strict law was shown by the fact
that the married women in heathen times practised a laxity of morals
unknown to them before marriage. Adultery was punished by fine if the
parties were of equal rank, and by death if the offender was of lower
rank than the husband and the act could be interpreted into an insult.
But the women went about their amours discreetly, choosing the times
when their husbands were absent on war parties, and reflecting that
"what the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve for."
[Pageheader: ILL EFFECTS OF EDUCATION]
With the introduction of Christianity there came a change. Sexual
licence, formerly prevented, was now only forbidden. The missionaries'
endeavours to inculcate "family life" on the English plan produced a
surprising result. The _mbure-ni-sa_ was gradually deserted by all but
the old men; the youths went to sleep in their parents' houses, and,
when once the novel idea of unmarried men sleeping in the same house
with women had been digested, the other houses of the village were open
to them. Association of the sexes and emancipation from parental control
did the rest. There were other changes. Education begat in the young a
contempt for the opinions of their elders. Against the precepts of the
old men, who had formerly controlled every detail of the village life,
there were the opposing teachings of the missionary and the trader, both
startling the young with echoes of a wider world than their own. While
the elders stayed at home, the young made voyages to the European
settlements of Suva and Levuka and tasted vice with the loafers on the
beach; they served three years with the constabulary and the police, or
worked a year on the plantations, revelling in their new-found freedom,
aping the manners of half-castes and white men who talked evil of
dignities, and would pass the highest chiefs, even the governor of the
colony, without doffing their turbans. Their favourite topic of
conversation is their amours, and they have the Gallic indifference to
the good fame of the women who have yielded to them. Illicit relations
extend far beyond the limits of the village. When young men are together
in a strange village some one exclaims, "_Me-nda-kari_" (_lit._, "Let us
rasp," _i.e._ shape to our will by repeated solicitation); and the
inferiors in rank will immediately constitute themselves procurers to
their chief--a _role_ which suggests no taint of infamy in their minds.
Sometimes they work through an old woman, sometimes through a young man
of the place who is dazzled by the notice taken of him by such
distinguished guests. The women are beguiled to the trysting-place, and
yield rather from feebleness of will than from appetite for vice. It is
this frailty of will that makes it difficult to believe in the charges
of rape that are frequently tried in the courts. The Fijian woman seems
rarely to yield willingly to any but her chosen lover. She is, moreover,
so muscular that any real and sustained resistance would prevail against
violence, but whether from her habit of obedience or some psychological
reaction of the sexual instinct, she cannot resist ardent solicitation.
"He took me by the hand," a girl exclaimed to the court, when asked why
she did not cry out, as if the accusation of violence was by no means
weakened. If a woman cannot be brought to a tryst her lover resorts to
_vei-ndaravi_ (_lit._, crawling); that is to say, he will crawl into the
house where she is sleeping with her companions and lie down beside her
without awakening them, and profit by her frailty of will. I have known
of cases where a young chief, personally distasteful to the woman he
desired, has compelled her lover to do the wooing in a dark house, and
has then taken his place without her discovery of the fraud. The lack of
self-control seems to be more marked in low-born than in chief women.
When Andi Kuila, the daughter of King Thakombau, had been reproving two
of her women for levity of conduct, they replied, "It is all very well
for you great ladies to talk, but as for us common women we cannot
control ourselves" (_keimami sa senga ni vosoti keimami rawa_:" _lit._,
"endure ourselves"). This speech did not imply that the sexual impulse
was uncontrollable, for in the Fijian woman the contrary is the case,
but that their power of resistance was weak.
Apud tribus quasdam quae regiones montanas habitant, dixit princeps
Vaturemba, non fit coitus in modo assueto, saltem a senioribus. Mas,
genibus nixus, crura feminae levat atque trahit donec nates in suis
femoribus jacent, et sic fit coitus. In judicio quum senex virginis
violatione accusatus est, testimonium puellae non fuit perspicuum utrum
animum verum ad deflorationem habuerit accusatus necne. Interro-gavit
ille princeps, qui judex fuit, "Crura tua levavit?" et quum negavit
puella "Ergo, quamquam animum libidinosum habuit, non te deflorare
voluit," dixit judex.
[Pageheader: INFLUENCE OF CONCUBITANCY]
There is a mass of evidence to show that in heathen times the majority
of girls were virgin until they married or entered into concubinage,
because the law of custom allowed them no opportunities for secret
amours; whereas, after fifty years of individual freedom, it is
extremely rare for a girl to preserve her virtue to the age of
eighteen. The commonest age for seduction seems to be from fourteen to
fifteen, and grown men are more often to blame than boys of the same
age. On the other hand, many young girls give themselves to their
_ndavola_ (_i.e._ concubitant cousin), who, by Fijian custom, has a
right to them, and their relations do not appear to resent this so far
as to prosecute the man for fornication. The birth-rate being high,
these early excesses cannot affect their prolificness, but it is quite
possible that it may injure the viability of the children born after
marriage.
Though the girls do not appear to fear suspicion of their chastity, they
do fear the disgrace which follows the discovery of their pregnancy. It
is to avoid such exposures that they resort to means to procure
abortion, though habitual profligacy seems to be so seldom followed by
pregnancy that this fear does not act as a deterrent. Vitienses credunt
nullam feminam ex uno coitu gravidam fieri, ultroque hymenem ruptum
sarciri posse herbis quibusdam maceratis et immissis. Itaque virgines,
quum ad coitum solicitantur, facilius concedunt. Some Fijians also
believe that girls who have been deflowered before puberty retain their
youthful appearance long after the usual period. There is also a
widespread belief that when a woman has been cohabiting with more than
one man before conception the paternity of her child is shared equally
by all her paramours.
When the morality of unmarried women is compared with that of the
married the position is reversed, for whereas in heathen times married
women were lax, they are now less accessible. This is due, no doubt, to
the state of espionage in which the married woman now lives. Formerly
the husband and his relations only were concerned with her behaviour,
and if they were indifferent, she was free to follow her inclinations;
but since the Missions have branded adultery as a crime, and the law has
made it a criminal offence, every person in the village makes it his or
her concern to bring the offenders to justice. Probably half the acts of
adultery that take place are committed by the wife to avenge herself
upon the husband for his infidelity or unkindness.
The Fijian is not naturally a hot-blooded or lascivious race, in spite
of all that I have said. Its growing profligacy has been called in to
fill the place of the forms of excitement that formerly contented it.
Yet in certain directions the sexual appetite is easily aroused. The act
of _tokalulu_ (spying upon women bathing) is reprobated by the tribal
conscience, but is nevertheless exceedingly common among the young men,
and the women exhibit their contempt for it in a remarkable manner.
Slightly clad as they are, Fijian women are as particular about absolute
nudity as their European sisters. A Mbau girl of rank who was bathing in
the river discovered a young mountaineer spying upon her from behind a
clump of reeds. Instead of concealing herself, as her instinct prompted
her, she allowed him to see that he was observed, and came out of the
water before him _in puris naturalibus_. Having passed him proudly by,
she dressed herself leisurely and returned home to announce what she had
done. The man never held up his head again in that village, for he
caught the meaning of the action--that he was of no more account to her
than a pig who had strayed down to the bathing-place. To the Fijian mind
no explanation was necessary.
Dancing in the _meke_ appears to be a strong stimulus to passion in the
women. At a big _meke_ on the Ra coast one young man surpassed all his
fellows in the war-dance, and as the torchlight gleamed on his oily
limbs a young woman, unable to contain herself, rushed into the middle
of the dancing ground, and clutching him, took his loin-cloth in her
teeth. This terrible breach of decorum became the gossip of the
district, and when she came to her senses she would have taken her own
life for shame if her friends had not prevented her.
I must touch lightly on certain horrible forms of sexual exaltation
provoked by carnage. The corpses destined for the oven were received by
the women with indecent songs and dances which were only ceremonial in
part. At the sack of a fortress the corpses of young girls were subject
to outrage, vagina cadaveris fructu bananae cocto immisso calefacta.
[Pageheader: FIJIANS ARE NEUROTIC]
Some forms of sexual perversion exist, but are not common. They are held
to be contemptible rather than criminal and horrible. Offences against
nature seem to be confined to the inland tribes of Western Vitilevu, who
have been the least affected by intercourse with Europeans, and they
have there, no doubt, been occasionally practised from very remote
times, though, curiously enough, they are there called "white man's
doings" (_valavala vavalangi_). In one lamentable case of a European
addicted to such vice, Thakombau ordered him to leave the group, and he
was afterwards killed in the New Hebrides.
The nervous system of the Fijian is curiously contradictory, and it is
at least probable that the premature excitement of the sexual instinct
in the women has an injurious effect upon their fecundity. In sexual
matters they are certainly neurotic. I have met with several cases of
what is called _ndongai_, which corresponds with what is called "broken
heart" in Europeans. Two young people who have come together once or
twice, and who have been suddenly separated, sicken and pine away, and
unless their intrigue can be resumed, they do not recover. It is not
regarded as a psychological or interesting malady, as love-sickness is
with us, but as a physical ailment for which but one remedy is known.
The causes of the growing laxity of morals lie too deep for the efforts
of the Wesleyan missionaries to check it. They have prohibited tattooing
(_veinkia_), hair cutting and hair-dressing by persons of the opposite
sex, and the old swimming games. But, on the other hand, certain church
festivals have innocently tended in the opposite direction. All the
older natives are agreed in saying that the dances of school-children
(_meke ni kilovolt_), which bring together the young people of several
villages, are made the occasion for dissoluteness as soon as the native
teachers' backs are turned. The early missionaries failed to see that in
breaking down the _mbure_ system, and inculcating family life on the
English plan, they were leaving the native to follow his own
inclinations. Intertribal peace and the possession of boats to make
travel easy did the rest. Nevertheless, the Fijians as a race practise
less sexual licence than many races which are not decreasing, and if it
were not for the frequent attempts to procure abortion on the part of
unmarried girls in order to conceal their shame, it would have but
little influence upon the vital statistics of the race.