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WOMAN
IN ALL AGES AND IN ALL COUNTRIES
WOMEN OF ENGLAND
BY
BARTLETT BURLEIGH JAMES, PH.D.
OF WESTERN MARYLAND COLLEGE
THE RITTENHOUSE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyrighted at Washington and entered at Stationers' Hall, London,
1907--1908
and Printed by arrangement with George Barrie's Sons.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Chapter I. The Women of Prehistoric Britain
Chapter II. The Women of Ancient Britain
Chapter III. The Women of the Anglo-Saxons
Chapter IV. The Women of the Anglo-Normans
Chapter V. The Women of the Middle Ages
Chapter VI. The Women of the Manors
Chapter VII. The Women of the Monasteries
Chapter VIII. The Women of the Industrial Classes
Chapter IX. The Women of the Transition Period
Chapter X. The Women of the Tudor Period
Chapter XI. Women of the Commonwealth Period
Chapter XII. The Women of the Restoration Period
Chapter XIII. The Women of the Eighteenth Century
Chapter XIV. The Women of the Nineteenth Century
Chapter XV. The Women of Scotland and Ireland
PREFACE
It is no slight task to follow out the windings of a single thread
in the infinite weave of society and by loosing it from the general
mesh to show how dependent is the pattern of life and custom upon its
presence. Such a task was presented in the endeavor to trace along
from remotest times to the present day the influence of woman upon
the life and character, the efforts and ideals, of that race which
has come to be known as English, although this name may not properly
be used until time has spun into the vista of the past peoples as
vigorous, if not influential, as the one that stands, the inheritor
of their virility, at the apex of modern civilization, whose women,
clasping hands throughout the British Empire, form a splendid chain
of hope for womankind in all the world.
Whether or not continuity and sequence, relation and effect, have been
maintained in the retraversing of the footsteps of woman in all ages
of the history of those isles where femininity has flowered in the
most gracious blossoms, it remains for the reader to say. Certain
it is that unaffected pleasure has been afforded the writer in his
attempt to draw aside the curtain that the muse of history jealously
employs to shut from view the inner sanctuary in which she preserves
those vital relics, the destruction of which by some inconceivable
iconoclast would bring death to the world for lack of materials for
reflection and inspiration. In treating of the prehistoric periods,
although the brush necessarily has been laid broadly upon the canvas,
fancy has been kept in the leash of fact, and imagination given no
more play than its legitimate function. Still, the results of inquiry
into the status of woman at this far remote period furnish a fulcrum
upon which to rest the lever of investigation, in order to lift
into view the strata of undoubted history of the periods immediately
subsequent.
As fast as the widening of social interest afforded the materials for
use, the writer sought to employ them, until, like a mountain rivulet,
ever widening until it reaches the plain, he found himself embarrassed
by the wealth of fact that told the marvellous story of the most
notable emancipation in the history of mankind,--the complete
separation of English woman from the trammels, inherent and
environmental, imposed upon the sex. If the successive chapters
disclose the philosophical relations of woman in society, it will be
because the reader has not failed to grasp the fact that in any such
theme as the one treated mere continuity of subject matter would
constitute a chronicle and not a history; and that the writer, while
seeking not to make obtrusive the connective tissue, has nevertheless
given ample scope for the reflective mind to see that which has ever
been present to his own.
As to the actual materials employed in constructing the book, it is
sufficient to say that no important writer upon any period of the
history of the British Isles or their people has been overlooked, and
that the passing over of the political and constitutional phases in
order to select the purely social has been an endeavor much furthered
by the writers to whom reference is made in the body of the work, and
many others who could not be mentioned without burdening the text.
Each fibre of the thread of interest has been taken hold of at the
point of its appearance, and then not lost sight of until the end.
So that if one is interested in the subject of costume, he may find
a full and accurate description of dress from the time when tattooing
was deemed largely sufficient up to the period of the present, when
the variety of feminine attire baffles description. But more serious
subjects, such as woman's rights, from the recognition of primal
rights in her person to the setting forth of the modern programme
under that description, are consecutively treated through the
chapters.
A debt of gratitude cannot be discharged, but some recognition may be
made of the author's sense of the service rendered him in the writing
of this work by Dr. John Martin Vincent, associate professor of
history in Johns Hopkins University, whose courses in the social
history of England furnished the first incentive to range in that
field and a guide through the labyrinth of manners and customs of
the English people. Thanks are due to Mr. J.A. Burgan, whose close
and careful reading of the proof is not the least factor in the
presentation of the book free, as the writer believes, of the errors
that only eternal vigilance may exclude.
BARTLETT BURLEIGH JAMES.
CHAPTER I
THE WOMEN OF PREHISTORIC BRITAIN
It is to the unpremeditated contributions of savage and barbarous
conditions of existence that we must look for those primal elements of
social order which became fundamental in English life and character.
Insomuch as those contributions are intimately connected with woman's
life and work, they must be sought out and set in order if we are to
trace the development of the status of the women of Britain. In doing
this, the confines of history proper must be disregarded and the
inquiry commenced at the earliest period at which the student of
the geology of Britain has been able to discover evidences of human
occupancy of the country. If a consecutive account of the history
of woman in Britain were intended, we should be content to begin the
story with the woman of the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age, for to
such remote times may be traced the stream of life and institutions
in England; but, as we shall aim not solely at consecutiveness,
but at completeness as well in our record of woman's life in the
British Isles, it will be necessary to go back even further into the
geologic ages, when Britain was still a part of the mainland and
its inhabitants the same roving savage tribes that wandered over all
central Europe.
From those barren ages of the Pleistocene era, which were cut off
from the Neolithic by great stretches of time that cannot be certainly
calculated, and during which there was a lapse in the human occupancy
of the country, little of value can be derived. Their chief worth for
our purpose is the picture which they present of the initial stage of
human organization, the study they afford of woman in her relations
to a thoroughly savage stage of society, an era of hunting--that of
the Paleolithic or Rough Stone Age, when there was fixity neither of
residence nor of relations, and when man's contest with savage nature
about him was dependent in its issues upon the slight advantage
furnished him by the rude weapons that he fashioned from flint flakes.
During the Polished Stone era, when inhabitants are next met with in
Britain, the social organization presented is that of the pastoral
stage, which marks a great advance over the hunting.
In all the progressions of uncivilized life, woman is but a part of
the phenomena of her times, but in the history of English civilization
she appears as one of its most active forces. These, then, are the two
correlated views of woman in the history of English life that will
be constantly held in mind during our whole study,--woman as a social
fact, and woman as a social factor; showing her as a product, as
affected by the customs, laws, or manners of a given time, and again
as an influencing factor in the institutions or the manners of those
times. Had her life been as circumscribed as that of the women of
a cultured people, English civilization would not owe to woman the
recognition which is her due as a creative force in the arts, in
science, in literature, in religion, and in all the ever-widening
circle of human interests. An understanding and estimate of her
influence in these more conspicuous relations will depend upon a
proper appreciation of the English home as the principal source of
the English woman's dignity and power. Much that has entered into
the ideals of the English race can be fully accounted for only in the
light of home ideals. By such considerations, then, as have been thus
far set forth, we shall be guided in our endeavor to tell the story of
woman's life in the ages of Britain's history.
The people of the earliest part of the Pleistocene age had no real
home life, nor was there any social organization excepting that into
which men were forced by the necessity for mutual aid in the struggle
with the forces of savage nature. This element of self-protection was
the only factor that entered into the organized life of those earliest
inhabitants of Britain,--the people of the river-drift and the caves.
In this combat between savage man and savage beast were produced the
first instruments pointing to civilization,--weapons for defence and
offence.
The life of woman among the men of the river-drift was of the most
debased order. The only employment of the men was hunting the gigantic
savage beasts that ranged through the forests. While the males were in
pursuit of the rhinoceros, the lion, the hippopotamus, and the great
antlered deer that were a part of the fauna of the whole of that
section of the continent of Europe of which Britain in those remote
times formed a part, the females roamed through the densely wooded
forests whose only clearings were those made by the ravages of fire.
Clad in the skins of beasts but little lower in the scale of being
than themselves, and with their naked offspring about them, they
wandered about in search of berries or, with no better aids than
sharpened sticks, dug up the roots which they dried and stored for
the days when the results of the chase fell short of the needs of the
people. On the home-coming of the hunters to the place where, in their
nomadic wanderings, they had erected temporary shelters, the women
prepared the miserable meal. By skilfully rubbing together pieces
of hard wood, a fire was soon obtained; if fortune had attended the
chase, the hastily skinned animals were cut up with flint flakes,
and the meat was thrown upon the stones placed in the fire for that
purpose. There were no niceties of taste to be considered, so the
half-cooked and badly smoked flesh was snatched from the fire and
eaten with no more decorum than might be found in the meals of the
cave-hyena that, under the shadows of night, skulked through the
underbrush and noisily devoured the remnants of the hunters' feast.
On the day following the hunt, the women undertook the arduous work
of curing the skins of the slain animals. In the initial stage of the
process they used stone scrapers, sharp of edge and probably set in
bone handles. Hundreds of these implements have been found. The women
acquired great dexterity in this, one of their customary employments;
and while the men lounged about, resting from the fatigue of the
hunt, or occupied themselves with painting their bodies with ochre, or
tracing, with a splinter of stone, rude devices on pieces of polished
reindeer antler, the work of the women went industriously on.
Men of such undisciplined natures as those of the people of the
river-drift could not exist together harmoniously; very little,
indeed, was necessary to embroil them in bitter strife. Their women
were a frequent cause of bloody encounters, a circumstance which was
due to the fact that there was no permanence in the relations of the
sexes; such rights--seldom individual--to the women as were vested
in the men were always those acquired by brute force, and held good
only so long as the fancy or strength of the men permitted. In such
a promiscuous society there was nothing to suggest the home of
civilization. To men, women simply represented their chief possession
and were held by them in common, like other forms of property.
Such an age was almost as barren of material utilities as of moral
conceptions; so that one looks in vain for evidence of the knowledge
of such arts as are commonly associated with the life of women in
savage societies. Basket work, weaving, and spinning were occupations
of which, it is thought, the women of those times knew nothing.
Pottery was unknown; gourds served for drinking cups and for the
holding of liquids, and were used also for cooking. Among the
memorials of woman of these remote times appears no trace of the
charms and fetiches which usually accompany the performance of
domestic duties among primitive races. Nothing lower in the scale of
human existence could be imagined than the lives of these women of
the river-drift, to whom nature made no appeal save that of fear of
its furious moods, to whom sex meant not the possibilities of pure
wifehood and motherhood, but servitude to the demands of passion.
When children were not vigorous, or when for any reason their nurture
became irksome, they were ruthlessly slain, even by the mothers
themselves; and every woman knew that the lot of abandonment was
reserved for her when she could no longer fulfil the hard conditions
of her existence.
In some respects, the life of the women of the cave-dwellers of the
later Pleistocene period was of a higher order than that which we have
just described--not that there was any essential difference in the
social grade of the two peoples, but that the cave-dwellers had
learned to make better implements of the chase and to fashion more
effectively all their weapons and tools. The greater security to
life afforded by these improvements and the greater assurance of
subsistence led to more settled living, and thereby afforded an
opportunity to develop a social organization that should have for its
basis something of greater permanence than a temporary need. While it
would be hazardous, then, to assume too much in the way of improvement
in the life of the women of the cave-dwellers over that of the women
of the river-drift, yet it should be borne in mind that in states
of society such as those represented by these remote inhabitants of
Britain, even a slight advance in the scale of living marks an epoch
of progress.
The cave-dwellers succeeded the people of the river-drift as
inhabitants of Britain, and the combined occupancy of the country by
these peoples covered a vast stretch of time. It is very probable
that their periods overlapped, and that the later people were in part
contemporary with the former. Though the people of the river-drift
and the dwellers in caves may have avoided intermixture, as have the
Esquimaux and the American Indians, yet there is nothing absolutely
to preclude the idea that such race distinction was observed during
great periods of time. So that all we have to say of the women of the
cave-dwellers may be equally applied to the women of the later times
of the river-drift.
The cave-dwellers, like their predecessors, were hunters. For their
dwellings they chose the caves from which they had driven out the bear
and the lion. These rude homes the women hung about with the skins of
the horse or the wolf, and spread on the floor for couches the hides
of these or of other beasts that had fallen by the arrows of the
hunters or had been ensnared in their pitfalls. Here the tribe
remained until the scarcity of game or the assault of enemies impelled
it to migrate. Where there were no caves, huts were constructed. These
were framed with the branches and trunks of trees and covered with
skins and hides.
The woman of the cave-dwellers was a sturdy specimen of her sex, and
the long and arduous migrations in which the burden of the work fell
upon her shoulders were probably borne with little sense of hardship.
We can imagine a tribe, travelling afoot, for as yet neither the horse
nor any other animal had been domesticated: the men with their long
fish spears across their backs, their stone arrows hanging at their
sides, and their bows in hand, always alert for the wild beasts with
which they waged a relentless warfare; the women laden with all the
paraphernalia of their simple existence, many with a babe slung at the
back, and their naked, uncouth progeny following or gambolling about
them. The strange personal appearance of both men and women would
add to the oddity of the scene in modern eyes, for their bodies were
painted in grotesque patterns, and, if the rigors of the season made
any covering necessary, a simple skin, laced about them with reindeer
sinews, sufficed for clothing. On coming to a fresh hunting region,
near to some body of water or flowing stream, where the game would
naturally come to slake their thirst,--perhaps upon the grassy plains
that still extended over what is now the English Channel and formed a
part of the original land connection with the continent,--they paused
for another term of settled residence. Again the caves were resorted
to, or rudely thatched huts were erected. If the wild beasts pressed
the wanderers too hard, they sometimes had recourse to huts erected
upon rough stone heaps in the midst of an oozy swamp.
While the men gave themselves wholly to hunting, the women went about
their domestic pursuits. To them was assigned the making of such
scanty clothing as was imperatively required in the cold season; for
though the crude carvings of the time invariably represent the hunters
as naked, it cannot be concluded from such evidence that clothing was
not worn at all. The extremely serviceable reindeer sinews served the
women for thread, and a thin reindeer prong, pierced through at the
thick end, made a satisfactory needle. The skins were simply sewed
together at the edges, without shaping, but with apertures through
which to pass the head and arms. The women devised many ornaments;
these consisted of amulets and necklaces made of bone, ivory, and
shells, which, shaped and polished, they painstakingly punctured and
fastened together in long strings for the decoration of their necks
and arms. Apparently, it was not customary to wear foot covering of
any kind, as the feet of such skeletons of this period as have been
found are so symmetrical as to preclude the probability of constraint
during growth. The men may have worn some form of foot covering
when engaged in such exposed work as spearing the seal in the winter
season; but the women, who remained in shelter during the severities
of the winter, did not avail themselves of any such protection. The
fact that gloves were worn by men seems to be established by some of
the rude etchings of the period, for in them such articles appear to
be discernible.
The sanitary condition of the homes of these hunting tribes was of the
worst description; the offal and refuse were thrown at the very doors
of the cave, there to decay and poison the air. The caves themselves
were smoke-begrimed and foul, for house cleaning had not yet entered
into the economy of woman. While, by reason of their simple, open-air
life, they were a vigorous race, the ills to which the cave-dwellers
fell a prey, the injuries they suffered in warfare or from the attacks
of wild beasts, or the diseases contracted through unsanitary living,
must have been sources of great dread to them, as they were without
any medical knowledge of which we have trace. When the women,
particularly, became too sick to perform their allotted tasks, they
were carried out to die or to become the victims of savage beasts; but
this was only one of the inevitable phases of an existence that was
replete with tragedies.
From the evidence afforded by the great abundance of arrow heads and
spear points surviving from this period, there is no doubt that the
cave men were much given to warfare. Aside from the natural pugnacity
and ferocity of savage races, which lead them to fight upon very
little provocation, there was with the cave-dwellers another source
of constant hostility. As has been stated with reference to the
river-drift people, the women were not permanently attached to the
men. It is just as true that they were not permanently attached to
their tribes, for when, through disease or the ravages of wild beasts,
the women of any horde became greatly diminished in number, their
ranks were recruited by forays upon other tribes. These attacks for
the purpose of stealing the women of their enemies were especially
provocative of fierce conflicts, as the depletion of its stock of
women often seriously crippled a tribe and sometimes even threatened
its extinction. Such forcible transfers of ownership must have added
greatly to the hardness of the woman's lot, for by such means many
mothers were permanently separated from their offspring.
The weight of probability and of evidence seems to leave little room
for doubt that the early inhabitants of Britain were cannibals. While
there was no scarcity of game as a rule, it is quite likely that these
savage peoples, as those of the same grade of culture in all times,
when experiencing the delirium of a victory over their enemies, put
to death by cruel tortures the unhappy captives that fell into their
hands, and then, to complete their triumph, roasted and ate the flesh
of the slain. Aside from the deductive probability of the case,
human bones dating back to this period have been found along with the
remains of weapons and in association with the ashes of camp fires;
and in such cases the bones have invariably been broken, in order to
extract from them their marrow. The story of the battle, the tortures,
and the feast is eloquently suggested by the silent memorials that
have been preserved through the lapse of ages. As we picture the
far-off scene of human savagery, the figure of woman flits through the
lights and shadows of the horrid orgy: for she it was who prepared the
gruesome repast; it was in defence of her, perhaps, that the fierce
battle was fought; some of her own near of kin, it may be, she has
been forced to prepare for the unnatural appetites of her enemies.
Possibilities! but read in the light of the times, they become
probabilities, and probabilities furnish much of the data of history.
The tragedy of woman's life is again brought before us with startling
vividness when we look upon the skull of a woman of this remote race,
as it lies in a cave, with a little stone hatchet beside it, where
it was ruthlessly cast after the commission of a bloody crime; for in
that skull is a jagged hole into which fits the blade of the hatchet.
The scene, sketched from a remote past, might have been an occurrence
of yesterday, so close to us is it brought by the silent witnesses;
these and similar relics disclose the sad lot of woman in that savage
society.
There are fuller evidences of the state of domestic resources among
the women of the cave-dwellers than with those of the river-drift. The
remains show, too, a greater variety and adaptation; for while there
is no clear proof of the existence of pottery, yet the cave people
appear not to have lacked substitutes for it. Vessels for boiling
meats were probably fashioned of small stones cemented together, and
they had, also, vessels of hollowed wood. The skulls of animals served
well for drinking purposes, besides which receptacles for holding
liquids were made from the skins of beasts. Water was heated by
placing hot stones in a vessel containing it, by which means the fluid
could be raised to any desired temperature. Long flint flakes set
in handles answered for knives; when rounded at the edge, the same
material made serviceable scrapers. Spoons were constructed from
pieces of reindeer antlers, hollowed at the thick end, or if they were
intended to be used to scoop out the marrow from bones, the tapered
end was hollowed. For their food, the cave-dwellers, though they
possessed no domesticated animals, had a wide choice of large and
small game, birds, fish, reptiles, and grubs; to these they added
edible roots and berries.
This almost indispensable domestic handicraft was not, however, the
limit of their achievement in designing. We have seen that woman's
thought and some of her activities were applied to the production of
merely decorative objects. She had already acquired an appreciative
taste for the auxiliary attractions of personal adornment. The art
of designing certainly found a place in the occupations of these
cave-dwellers, and the most familiar animated objects would be their
necessary choice. Hence, we may readily conceive that, in the moments
of respite from the chase, the rude artist of this age would make
of the cave passages a canvas for his work and thereon delineate
the animals whose importance to his existence rendered them the most
interesting objects. Nor, for this reason, would his subject fail of
appreciative criticism and of educational value.
It is impossible to state the nature or the extent of the social
organization among these people, but that there must have been
something of the sort there can be no doubt. It seems equally
plausible that there could have been no recognition of law in the
lives of these passionate savages, excepting as the will of some more
than ordinarily forceful warrior was for the time so recognized.
An association of this kind admitted of the sloughing of the groups
whenever a difference of inclination or of interest suggested such a
course. Promiscuity undoubtedly remained the characteristic form of
the relation of the sexes, the conditions of life admitting of no more
enduring relations.
The culture of the peoples of the river-drift and of the caves
signified little in British civilization, as these shadowy tribes
passed completely out of view. For a period of time that could be
expressed only in the term of vague geological computation, the
country remained devoid of inhabitants. Meantime, changes were wrought
in Britain's physical features. The land became insular, although the
subsidence that gave rise to the English Channel was not yet complete.
In an indirect way, the earliest peoples may be said to have passed
on the elements of their culture; for, while there was a lapse in the
continuity of social development, the Neolithic races that are next
met with in Britain became the inheritors of the culture of the ruder
hunter stages of society represented by the river-drift and cave
peoples.
The social grade of the Neolithic races was a great advance over that
of the peoples last considered. Instead of bands of nomadic wanderers,
we find a pastoral people whose migrations were doubtless periodical
and made only in search of new pastures. Hunting did not form an
important part of their lives, for their food was supplied by the
flesh of domesticated animals and the cereals that they raised for
their own needs and, in the winter season, for those of their stock.
Although caves continued to be used to some extent for dwellings,
they were not characteristic of the civilization of the times. Man had
become a home builder. The evolution from the cave dwellings is seen
in the style of houses that were first constructed. They consisted of
pits dug to a depth of seven to ten feet, and about seven feet wide at
the base. These pits were roofed over with a sort of thatch, filled in
with imperfectly burnt clay. They were built singly and in groups, and
were sometimes connected by a system of underground passages. Access
was had to these dwellings by a slanting, shaftlike entrance. A pit
village was usually stockaded to protect it against the assaults of
foes. Outside it were the arable lands and the common pasture lands
for the sheep and goats; enclosing these, the forest stretched out in
all directions.
Looking down from one of the surrounding hilltops upon such a village,
it would have presented to the eye of the observer the appearance of
a number of round hillocks but little higher than the ground level.
Thin lines of smoke, slowly ascending, would mark the places where the
common meals were in course of preparation. As the traveller descended
the hillside, his approach would be challenged by gaunt, savage sheep
dogs, from whose attacks he would need to defend himself. As he passed
out into the clearing, he would be confronted by the men, some of them
tilling the soil, others acting as shepherds or swineherds. Perhaps a
field of golden wheat would lend its beauty to the scene, Approaching
the dwellings, the women would be seen at their several employments;
some busy cutting up the meat and swinging it over the fires to roast,
or boiling it in pots with herbs and roots to make a savory stew,
others mixing dough and spreading it upon flat stones over hot embers
to bake. Sitting about on the rocks or squatting upon skins spread
upon the ground, other women would be found busily making pottery,
modelling the clay with their hands, and scratching upon it lines,
circles, and pyramids in various combinations, or fashioning designs
by pressing reindeer sinews into the substance. Still others would be
discovered busily spinning and weaving flax and wool into fabrics for
the clothing that marked one of the advances of the Neolithic people.
In the distance would be heard the dull strokes of the stone axes with
which, in the depth of the wood, the men felled the tall timber.
For the industries presented in this picture of a Neolithic village,
there were suitable implements. For all domestic purposes, the art of
pottery making had solved the question of satisfactory vessels. These
were generally in two colors, either brown or black. The potter's
wheel had not yet been invented, so that the vessels lacked the grace
and uniformity of later work of the sort. Wheat was ground by means of
a mortar and pestle. Knives for various uses, saws, and scrapers were
all made of highly polished and very keen-edged flint flakes. The
great superiority of their stone implements over those of earlier
races has given a name to the people, but the culture of the Polished
Stone Age reveals, as its most salient fact, not this, but rather
the domestication of animals and the tilling of the soil. It is
significant to note that these most characteristic features of the
Polished Stone Age denote the advance of society in the arts of
peaceful living. War was prevalent enough, but human development
had discovered another line of advancement, and, by reason of
the increased incentives to peaceful living, war was not usually
undertaken simply for the pleasure of fighting. Protection of flocks
and herds, of cleared fields and settled homes, became the chief
occasion of the wars waged by the Neolithic people.
In such a society as we have described, there is a community of
interest that tends to give stability to the ties of relationship. The
fairly settled state of life was undoubtedly accompanied by a social
organization of some sort that could properly deal with the matters
of individual rights. The family had become evolved from the horde;
promiscuity had doubtless given place to polygamy, or, under the
exceptional conditions of a greater number of men than of women, to
polyandry. Neither of these forms of marriage carried with it the idea
of fixity and of family responsibility.
A feature of the Neolithic age was its commerce. By a system of
intertribal traffic, the simple commodities of the widely dispersed
peoples of Europe became distributed among the various tribes. By this
means, many articles not of domestic manufacture were added to the
comfort of the people of Britain. Thus, the women were enabled to
adorn themselves with jade beads that must have come from the region
of the Mediterranean Sea, and even with gold ornaments from as distant
points. These instances, however, were exceptional, and are to be
accounted for in the same manner that we account for the most unlikely
things in the possession of the tribes of Central Africa--by gradual
hand-to-hand passage.
There was probably an absence of religious ideas among the
predecessors of the Polished Stone races; but among the remains of the
latter are ample proofs of the prevalence among them of such notions.
Caves that once had served them as residences were later used for
places of burial, the bodies being piled up with earth until the
cavities were completely filled. Accompanying human remains have
been found urns, supposedly for burning incense, personal ornaments,
implements, and weapons, placed there for the use of the dead. If the
people possessed religious conceptions that led them to believe in an
after life, there is no room for doubt that religion had a place in
the economy of their living. The women of this time, then, could look
forward to something better than abandonment to starvation after they
became enfeebled by age or sickness, and they may not have lacked
religious associations in their everyday life to give to it deeper
meaning and interest.
From the foregoing sketch of her life, it is very clear that the
condition of Neolithic woman, the range of her ideas, and the elements
of her comfort, were much in advance of those of the woman of the
Paleolithic period. The contributions to her existence were indeed
elements of civilization, and formed the basis for all that the life
of the sex has come to be. In the realm of institutions, the home was
beginning to have a place and a meaning in the life of the people.
Religion, also, had come to widen the horizon of life. Very crude, but
real, elements of social progress were all these.
The succeeding age--the Bronze--has been credited with working as
great a revolution in life and giving it as great an impetus as did
the invention of gunpowder in the Middle Ages. It is certainly a fact
that the invention of this beautiful alloy was looked upon by the
ancients who lived close to its age as of incalculable importance
in its influence upon civilization--a judgment that is confirmed by
anyone who studies its abundant remains. Manufactures and commerce
were important interests of the times: smelting furnaces and
the smith's shop turned out beautiful specimens of wares of all
sort--shields, spears, arrow tips, cups of graceful pattern, vessels
for all purposes, ornaments, and the trimmings for the large boats
made necessary by a wide commerce, were all manufactured beyond the
needs of domestic consumption. The stimulated inventiveness of the
people added many new articles of comfort to their lives.
The development of bronze was not original with the people of Britain,
but was introduced through an invasion of bronze-using people. For
this reason, the change made in the life of the people was radical,
instead of being, as on the continent, a gradual process. The struggle
that ensued between the bronze users and the stone users was a contest
between an advanced civilization and one of a lower order; and its
issue was predetermined. The newcomers became the controlling element
in the country. The tendency of the new order of things was toward
individualism. Personal ownership brought with it social grades, so
that it is impossible to make statements with regard to the bronze
people that apply equally to all the race.
But we are concerned with the conditions of the times only as the
setting in which we are to study the life of woman. In the Bronze
Age, there was introduced into her life nothing to be compared to the
contributions made thereto in the preceding age. While her horizon
was greatly broadened, and while she benefited by the improvements
in living,--better facilities, comforts, and even luxuries,--yet the
advance was along established lines. We may surely believe that closer
intercourse with outside peoples brought a corresponding quickening
of thought and an appreciation of the merits of grades of life higher
than her own. There was no marked change in the style of dwellings
of the people of the Bronze Age from those of the Neolithic period;
but their furnishings were better, and, instead of the skins of wild
animals, those of domestic animals and, perhaps, woven and brightly
dyed fabrics now served for couches, and were hung about the walls as
a protection against dampness. The utensils of the home were varied
and ornamental, the conventional patterns having given place to other,
though still simple, designs. In the homes of the wealthy, knives and
spoons and the finer grades of vessels were of bronze.
The dress of the women had now become something more than mere
protection for the body. The skins of animals might still suffice
for the clothing of the poor, but the rich man's attire consisted of
well-bleached linens, and, doubtless, woollen fabrics as well. The
garments made of these materials were probably dyed in rich colors, as
the principles of dyeing were well understood. We can picture, then,
a woman of the higher grade, dressed in a tunic, with a mantle of
contrasting color, her hair done up in an elaborate coiffure and set
off by a cap of goat or sheep skin. Projecting from under this would
appear bronze hairpins, perhaps twenty inches in length, of ornamental
design; indeed, her coiffure was such an elaborate affair that it is
quite likely that she slept with it in a head rest, similar to those
which we know were used by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and are
still used in Japan. Pendent from her neck hung strings of beads and
ornaments made of bone, polished stone, bronze, and even glass and
gold. Her arms were weighted with bracelets, and her legs were adorned
with anklets.
Spinning, weaving, the milking of the goats, the making of curd
and cheese, the modelling of pottery, the preparation of the meals,
assisting with the outdoor work, and the care of her children, made up
the round of woman's life in those days. But there was another element
that had come to be a serious one in her existence, and that was
religion. Although the form of the prevailing religious belief is
lost, yet we have evidence that it was elaborate enough to call for
special places for its observance. Indeed, none of the remains of the
Bronze Age are more instructive, or present food for more fruitful
speculation as to the manner of life or the scope of mentality during
that era, than the curious tumuli that show how closely associated
in the common consciousness were religion and death; for these mounds
were probably places both of worship and burial. These ideas still
remain in such close connection that the vicinity of a church, and
indeed the edifice itself, seems especially appropriate for the
interment of the dead or for the depositing of crematory urns. Such
religion as existed must have had its reflex influence upon woman's
life and have entered into its duties; it may be that, as with the
later Druids, she assisted in the public offices of worship.