the present century. It is but a few years since the Grand Duke, Louis
IV of Hesse-Darmstadt, son-in-law of Queen Victoria, made a morganatic
marriage with Madame de Kalamine, whose lover he was long known to have
been, and with whom he had previously lived outside of this relation,
she having borne him several children. From the high position of the
morganatic husband, and because of the previous relationship of the
parties, this marriage became the talk of all Europe, and to some
extent of the United States. Queen Victoria herself did not escape
criticism, notwithstanding the prudery for which she is famed, because
of her entertaining the Grand Duke at Windsor soon after this marriage
unaccompanied by his wife,[100] for the purpose, it was intimated, of
placing him under the influence of Princess Beatrice. The very fact of
such suggestion, whether true or not, as well as the fact that Queen
Victoria, universally conceded a prude in reference to infractions of
the moral law by those of her own sex, received the Grand Duke at her
especial home of Windsor soon after his morganatic marriage, is a vivid
commentary upon the two codes of morals extant in christendom and their
influence even upon woman herself. Morganatic marriage degrades the
wife of the right hand ceremony equally with her of the left hand, as
it is a recognition by the law of a christian country today of man’s
right to become a bigamist, provided he but gives his left hand instead
of his right, to the bride during the marriage ceremony. It is a system
of legalized concubinage under protestantism, which throws the shield
of protection around man in illicit relations, and like all other forms
of woman’s degradation, it reaches back for authority to that religious
teaching which proclaims woman to have been created inferior and
subordinate to man. Because of woman’s former superior position there,
no country but Germany can as fully show the degradation of woman
under Christianity. Not from pagan Greece can more vivid illustration
of her moral degradation be shown, while pagan Rome shines clear and
bright beside the Germanic races of today. While even left-handed
marriages among the higher classes are encouraged and protected, yet
among the lower orders in Germany the ordinary marriage is cumbered
with so many restrictions, as to have become almost an impossibility,
and no disgrace or loss of character falls upon the girl of this class
who becomes a mother outside of legal prevision, but such motherhood
upon the contrary is looked upon as the means of a higher position and
greater wages as nurse. As _amme_ in a rich or noble family she becomes
a person of arrogance, part of the pomp and show of the house.[101]
Despite these wrongs of the ages towards woman, of late so vividly
presented, we still find both Church and State opposing a free
discussion of the question. Within the last decade two northern
European countries have strangely exhibited such hostility, the
opposition coming upon ground of woman’s surpassing sinfulness.[102]
But the most notable opposition has been against the works of two
eminent literary men. “The Doll’s House”[103] by Ibsen, the dramatic
poet of Norway, attacking the irresponsible position of the wife
under present marriage law, brought about the social ostracism of
its author.[104] Sweden’s supremely great thinker of the present
century, August Strindberg, recently published a work entitled “Giftas”
(to marry), which incidentally treated of the influence of religion
upon this relation.[105] The State authorities at once ordered its
confiscation.[106] Instead of a Papal _Librorum Prohibitorum_, it fell
under the censure and prohibition of a Protestant State. But no more
ready method for increasing its circulation could have been devised;
so rapidly was the first edition of four thousand sold that only four
hundred fell into the grasp of the censorious government. In order to
escape the farther penalty of imprisonment that had been pronounced
against him, the author was compelled to temporarily leave the country.
But his work was not without effect upon the minds of his countrymen,
and upon his return a few months later, a great demonstration in his
honor took place. Strindberg defined the rights of woman as those which
came to her by nature but of which, through a perverted social order
she had been deprived. He declared that woman’s desire for deliverance
was the same as man’s restless desire for deliverance. Let us, said
he, therefore emancipate man from his prejudice and then woman will
certainly be freed. To that end it is necessary to work together as
friends not as enemies.
That a work of this moderate character, should fall under the ban of
a protestant government, in the last half of the nineteenth century,
should be confiscated and its author banished, is a striking proof of
the degraded condition of woman in the marriage relation, and of the
power still exerted for the continuance of this subjection. Opposition
to discussion of this question in Sweden, is more strange in view of
the excess of women in the population, as they outnumber the men some
40,000; while of single women over fifteen, there are 259,000. Despite
the fact of this excess, impossible to provide for by marriage even
were that condition one of equity and equality, all effort towards
opening occupations to them, or the avenues of education, still meets
with resistance from the church. The only opponent of Mr. Berner’s
Bill, 1882, for permitting women to take the first two degrees in the
University, those of Arts and Philosophy, was from a clergyman. The
bill passed the Odelstling, one of the two Chambers of the Storthing,
with only his dissentient voice.[107] It received the unanimous vote of
the other house, the Sagthing, April 21, becoming a law June 15 of that
year.
Russia, which we are accustomed to regard as less than a half civilized
country, gives evidence of an early civilization which in the field
of morals reached a high place. Samokversof, a Russian author, has
made a rich collection relating to pre-historic times, proving that
as early as the first centuries of this era, the Slavonians lived
in large societies, possessed fortified towns with treasurers of
gold and silver, silk, embroidered tissues, iron weapons, ornaments
of gold, silver, bronze and bone; while sickles, and the grasses of
wheat, oats, and barley found in the graves of South Russia, show this
people even to have been devoted to agriculture. The early history
of Russia proves that women then held influential positions in the
family, in the church, in the state; as was the case under the ancient
common law of England, so woman among the ancient Slavs possessed
the right of inheritance and the power of dividing such inheritance
with her brothers. In the State we find woman’s wisdom at early date
still continuing to shape the policy of the Russian empire; to the
wise statesmanship of the Czarina Olga is the unchanging plan of that
country for the ultimate possession of Constantinople due. Visiting
the Patriarch of the East, during the tenth century, she at once
perceived the vast importance of Constantinople to the power desiring
universal domination; the possession of that city giving control of the
Dardanelles, of Asia Minor, and Europe itself. Thenceforth she sought
its annexation or seizure and her policy became that of the Russian
nation, which for more than eight hundred years has made the ultimate
possession of Constantinople the great object of its ambition. Nor has
Olga’s statesmanship less influenced the entire European continent, the
allied powers constantly struggling to defeat Russia’s aggressive plan,
through maintenance of the “sick man” upon his throne.
From the advent of christianity, forced upon the Slav peoples a
thousand years since by Vladimir, their baptism taking place by tens
of thousands as driven into the rivers and streams mid-deep, priests
upon the banks recited the baptism formula, a change was noticeable. As
soon as the thorough establishment of the Byzantine church in Russia,
which took no inconsiderable period, it being brought about by force
rather than free will, its priests, like those of the Western Church,
directed their principal efforts towards control of the marriage
relation, and, through that, of the family. Nor are we to regard this
as strange inasmuch as every form of christianity regards woman as an
inferior being, the creator of original sin, rendering the sacrifice
of a God necessary in order to re-establish the equilibrium overthrown
by her.[108] Edmond Noble, in tracing the cause of the present social
upheaval in that empire, says:[109]
Scarcely had the priests of the Greek Church begun their
teaching of the new faith when change began to unsettle the
position of woman and burden her relationship to the family
with a sense of inferiority ... her status falling with the
natural extension of the ecclesiastical policy. The Russian
woman at last became the slave of her Christian husband; as
much his chattel as if she had been purchased at market or
captured in war.
An examination of history proves that in Christian Russia as in
Christian England the husband could release himself from the marriage
bond by killing his wife, over whom under christian law he had power
of life and death. Her children, as today in Christian England and
America, are not under her control; she is to bear children but not
to educate them, for, as under Catholic and Protestant Christianity,
women are looked upon as a lower order of beings, of an unclean nature.
The assertion of Agathes the Sophist that he detected the smell of
her whose hands had milked the cow, is more than paralleled under
Greek Christianity, woman not even being allowed to kill a fowl under
assertion that should she so do the meat would become poisonous. Wife
beating enjoined as a religious duty became so common, says Noble,
that love was measured by it, “The more whippings the more love.”
“The Domstroii,” a household guide, compiled by a dignitary of the
Greek Church in time of Ivan the Terrible, counseled use of the rod
to keep wives, children, and servants in subjection. By it husbands
were given almost unlimited power over wives, who were not even
permitted to attend church without the husband’s consent. The prominent
ideas regarding woman under Byzantine Christianity have been her
uncleanliness, her sinfulness and the small value of her life.[110] She
is regarded as a being of lower order than man, and as looked upon in a
different light by God.
Where marriage is wholly or partly under church control, its very form
degrades woman, her promise of obedience not yet having passed away.
In the old Covenanter period of Scotland the records give a still
more debased form, in which the man as head was declared united to an
ignoble part, represented by the woman. But in modern times, both in
Catholic and Protestant countries a more decent veil is thrown over
this sacrifice of woman than in the Greek Church, where the wife is
sometimes delivered to the husband under this formula, “Here wolf, take
thy lamb!” and the bridegroom is presented with a whip by his bride
giving her a few blows as part of the ceremony, and bidding her draw
off his boots as a sign of her subjection to him. With such an entrance
ceremony it may well be surmised that the marriage relation permits the
most revolting tyranny. And this condition can be directly traced to
the period since Christianity was adopted under Vladimir, a thousand
years since, as the religion of that nation. The old Slavs recognized
the equality of woman in household, political, and religious matters,
and not until Byzantine Christianity became incorporated with, and a
part of, the civil polity of its rulers, did Russia present such a
picture of domestic degradation as it shows today. The chastisement of
wives is directly taught as part of the husband’s domestic duty. Until
recently, the wife who killed her husband while he was thus punishing
her, was buried alive, her head only being left above ground. Many
lingered for days before death reached them.
Ivan Panim, a Russian exile, while a student at Harvard College, 1881,
made the following statement at a Convention of the Massachusetts Woman
Suffrage Society:
A short time ago the wife of a well-to-do peasant came to the
justice of one of the district courts in Russia and demanded
protection from the cruelty of her husband. She proved
conclusively by the aid of competent witnesses that he had
bound her naked to a stake during the cold weather on the
street, and asked the passers-by to strike her; and whenever
they refused he struck her himself. He fastened her moreover
to the ground, put many stones and weights on her and broke
one of her arms. The court declared the husband “not guilty.”
“It cannot afford,” it said, “to teach woman to disobey the
commands of her husband.”
Mr. Panim declared this to be by no means an extreme or isolated case,
and that few became known to the public through the courts or the
press. While the above incident illustrates the cruelty of the state
towards woman under the Greek form of christianity, others with equal
pertinence proved the cruelty of the church.
A peasant in the village of Zelovia Baltic, having reason to
doubt the fidelity of his spouse, deliberately harnessed her
to a cart in company with a mare—a species of double harness
for which the lady was doubtless unprepared when she took
the nuptial vow—He then got into the cart in company with a
friend, and drove the ill-assorted team some sixteen versts
(nearly eleven English miles,) without sparing the whip-cord.
When he returned from his excursion he sheared the unlucky
woman’s head, tarred and feathered her and turned her out of
doors. She naturally sought refuge and consolation from her
parish priest; but he sent her back to her lord and master,
prescribing further flaggellations. An appeal to justice by
the poor woman and her relatives, resulted in a non-suit, and
recourse to a higher court will probably terminate in the same
manner.
Popular Russian songs allude to woman’s wrongs in the marriage
relation. The wife of a son living with his father, is looked upon as
an additional animal to be urged to the utmost exertion. She is treated
almost like a slave and with less consideration than a horse or cow.
Lady Varney,[111] gives the chorus of a song in the “Lament of a Young
Russian Bride,” which portrays the father-in-law’s part.
CHORUS
“Thumping, scolding, never lets his daughter sleep,”
“Up you slattern! up you sloven sluggish slut!”
The wife also entreats her husband for mercy.
“Oh husband, only for good cause beat thou thy wife,
Not for little things.” “Far away is my father dear,
and farther still my mother.”
While demanding marital fidelity from wives, Russian husbands do not
bind themselves to the same purity; and aside from wife-beating, the
husband’s infidelities form the general subject of songs. Peter the
Great, head of the Greek Church, not only beat his Empress Catherine,
but while demanding marital fidelity from her, was notorious for his
liaisons with women of low rank.[112] Women were not counted in the
census of Russia until the reign of this monarch. So many “souls” no
woman named. So long continued has been this treatment of woman, that
the poet Nekrasof says:
Ages have rolled away, the whole face of the earth has
brightened; only the somber lot of the Mowguk’s wife God
forgets to change.
Man’s opinion of woman is shown in the proverb, “A hen is not a bird,
neither is a woman a human being.” Nekrasof makes one of his village
heroines say: “God has forgotten the nook where he hid the keys of
woman’s emancipation,” which woman’s despair has changed to the proverb
“God remembers everything but the Slavonian woman; he has forgotten
where he hid the keys of her emancipation.” The system of indulgence is
as marked in the Greek as in the Catholic Church, but under slightly
different aspects. The worship of saints is an important part of the
Byzantine religion. There are two saints, to whom if a person prays as
he goes out to commit a crime, however heinous, he takes his pardon
with him.[113] The present condition of Russian affairs is ascribed by
Edmond Noble, to a long felt revolt in the minds of the people, against
the social, political and religious system of that country. While the
peasant implicitly obeys the czar, regarding his position as divine and
all his commands as just, there is an element that recalls the former
period of freedom, with intensity of desire for its re-establishment.
To this class, permeated as it must be with the spirit of the age,
the efforts for constitutional change, and what the world knows as
Nihilism, are attributable. It is in reality a mighty protest against
that christianity which in destroying political freedom, instituted a
monstrous spiritual and material tyranny in its place. Nihilism is not
wholly nor even chiefly a form of political change; it has a depth and
a power much beyond mere social or governmental change; it looks to an
entire overthrow of that religious system which permeates and underlies
all moral and political tyranny in Russia.
Class legislation of extreme character is still constantly met in all
christian lands. The English Bill of 1887, for extending Parliamentary
Franchise to woman, as shown, having as its last clause, “Provided that
nothing in this Act contained shall enable women under coverture to
be registered or to vote at such elections.” In this Bill, the State
recognized the marital subordination of woman, held by law as under
her husband’s control not possessing freedom of thought, judgment, or
action upon questions of vital importance to herself. Walter Besant
declares:
That it is only by searching and poking among unknown
pamphlets and forgotten books that one finds out the actual
depth of the English savagery of the last century ... that for
drunkenness, brutality and ignorance the Englishmen of the
baser kind, reached the lowest depth ever reached by civilized
men ... a drunkard, a brawler, a torturer of dumb beasts, a
wife-beater, a profligate.
It is not necessary to search “unknown pamphlets and forgotten books,”
in order to find out the depths of English or other christian savagery
of the present century. Every newspaper report, every court decision,
every Act of Parliament or Legislature, every decree of king, or czar,
or other potentate; every canon, decree or decision of the church,
proclaims the ignorance, brutality and savagery of Christendom. Nor
is it among men of the baser kind with their infliction of corporal
punishment upon wives, but in the subtler and more refined methods
of torture made use of by men of the highest position, that we most
truly find out the depths of the savagery of the nineteenth century.
Profligacy among men of the highest position never flourished more
luxuriantly than at the present time; drunkenness has by no means
passed away; wife-beating is still a common amusement; the law still
fails to extend a protecting arm around those most needing its defence;
the church yet fails to recognize a common humanity in all classes of
people. Old traditional customs of thought and action still prevail,
and the men of a hundred years hence will look upon the present time
with the same criticising astonishment that the historian of today
looks upon the last century. Savagery instead of civilization is still
the predominant power in christendom. In comparison with the treatment
many wives receive in christian lands, that of women among the American
Indians, or the most savage races of the old world, is far more humane
than shown in England, America and other christian lands, where even
maternity does not free woman from the coarsest brutality upon the part
of husbands, nor the illness incident upon bringing a new being into
the world, from writs of “contempt,” even though the death of mother
or babe result. In 1890, the Press of New York City reported the case
of Mrs. R. Bassman, who was summoned to appear before the Surrogate
Court, for a funeral debt. Being in confinement she was unable to
appear. Thereupon an order for her arrest for Contempt of Court was
issued, and while still unrecovered from her illness, she was arrested
and incarcerated in Ludlow Street jail. Her newly born babe deprived
of its mother’s care sickened and died; and this is part of Christian
civilization for woman, in nearly the two thousandth year of its
existence.
Booth’s “Darkest England”[114] relates a somewhat parallel case,
parallel in so far as it shows the enslaved condition of the English
wife under present christian laws.
A woman who lived just opposite had been cruelly kicked and
cursed by her husband, who had finally bolted the door against
her, and she had turned to Barbie, as the only hope, Barbie
took her in with her rough and ready kindness, got her to
bed and was both nurse and doctor for the poor woman till
her child was born and laid in the mother’s arms. Not daring
to be absent longer she got up as best she could and crawled
on hands and knees down the little steep steps, across the
street, and back to her own door; ... it might have cost the
woman her life to be absent from her home more than a couple
of hours.
That brutal men exist everywhere, that women and children are in all
lands abused, that prize-fighting with its concomitants of broken jaws,
noses, heads, takes place in christian lands, are undeniable facts,
usually although in defiance of law and subjecting their perpetrators
to punishment. But the peculiarity of the cases noted and of ten
thousand others, is that they are done under the authority of the
law, to a being whom the law seems not bound to protect. No husbands
in the world are more brutal than lower-class Englishmen into whose
hands the wife is given by law, and he protected by the law in his
ill-usage of her. It is Christian law of which complaint is made; it
is the effect of Christian civilization, in its treatment of woman, to
which attention is called. “Darkest England” furnishes still fuller
statements of woman’s degraded condition in that country. In the
opening pages of that work it is said:
Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley’s pages of the
slave-traders coldly arranging for the surprise of a village,
the capture of the inhabitants, the massacre of those who
resist, and the violation of all the women; but the stony
streets of London, if they could but speak, would tell of
tragedies as awful, of ruin as complete, of ravishments as
horrible, as if we were in Central Africa; only the ghostly
devastation is covered, corpse-like, with the artificialities
of modern civilization.
The lot of a negress in the Equatorial Forest is not, perhaps,
a very happy one but is it so much worse than that of many a
pretty orphan girl’s in our christian capital? We talk about
the brutalities of the dark ages and we profess to shudder as
we read in the books of the shameful exactions of the rights
of feudal superiors. And yet here, beneath our very eyes, in
our theaters, in our restaurants, and in many other places
unspeakable, it be enough but to name it, the same hideous
abuse flourishes unchecked. A young penniless girl, if she be
pretty, is often hunted from pillar to post by her employers,
confronted always by the alternative—starve or sin. Darkest
England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with malaria.