Female Scripture Biography Volume II Part 15

Essay on What Christianity Has Done for Women.

At this distance of time, and possessing only the very brief information with which it has pleased Infinite Wisdom to furnish us in the commencing chapters of the book of Genesis, it is impossible to ascertain with precision the nature of that disparity which originally subsisted between the first parents of mankind. The evidence does not seem to be decisive, whether their characteristic differences were merely corporeal or mental, exterior or internal, natural and essential, or accidental. It is questionable whether the superiority of Adam arose out of the revelations he received, and the priority of his existence to his "fair partner Eve,"

or from an innate pre-eminence which marked him, not only as the head of the inferior creation, but as the appointed lord of the woman. A close examination of the subject, perhaps, would lead us to infer, that an equality subsisted in all those respects which are not strictly cla.s.sed under the epithet _const.i.tutional_; and that the authority which revelation has conceded to the man, results from his present fallen condition.

It is indeed observable, that when G.o.d determined upon the creation of the woman, because it was not deemed good that the man should be alone, she is represented as the intended "help meet _for_ him;" but this expression is not perhaps to be understood, as referring so much to subserviency as to suitability. The capacity of one being to promote the happiness of another, depends on its adaptation. The virtuous and the vicious, the feeble and the strong, the majestic and the mean, cannot be a.s.sociated together to any advantage, and a general equality appears requisite, to render any being capable of becoming the _help meet_ to a perfect creature. This idea of his new-formed companion pervades the language of Adam, when she was first brought to him by her Almighty Creator: "This,"

said he, "is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and _they shall be one flesh_."

To this it may be added, that subjection to the man is expressly enjoined as a part of the original curse upon the female. This infliction necessarily implies a previous equality in rank and station. There was evidently before, no compet.i.tion, no struggle for dominion, and no sense of inferiority or pre-eminence. The language of Jehovah in denouncing the respective destinies of these transgressors, unquestionably conferred a power or claim upon man, which he did not originally possess, and which was intended as a perpetual memento of the woman having been the first to disobey her Maker. "Unto the woman" he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shall bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and _he shall ride over thee_."

But, whatever were the original equalities or inequalities of the human race, this, at least, is certain, that the influence of depraved pa.s.sions since the fall, is sufficiently conspicuous in rendering the claims and duties of both s.e.xes more and more ambiguous, and disarranging the harmonies of the first creation. In proportion to the degree in which society is corrupt, power will a.s.sume an authority over weakness, and they who ought to be help meets will become compet.i.tors. Opposition generates dislike, and dislike, when a.s.sociated with power, will produce oppression.

It is in vain to plead the principle of right, to solicit attention to the voice of reason, or to attempt to define the boundaries of influence, when no means exist of enforcing the attention of him who can command obedience. There is no alternative but submission or punishment. Upon this principle, the female s.e.x may be expected to become the sport of human caprice, folly, and guilt. But Christianity tends to rectify the disorders which sin has introduced into the universe, and both in a natural and moral sense, to restore a lost paradise. Like that mighty Spirit, which in the beginning moved upon the surface of the waters, when the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, it corrects the confusion of the moral system, pervades and reorganizes the formless ma.s.s of depraved society, and pacifies the turbulence of human pa.s.sions. With a majesty that overawes, a voice that will be heard, an influence that cannot be resisted, it renews the world, and will eventually diffuse its unsetting glory through every part of the habitual globe.

The subject before us presents a large field of research, and it would well repay the labour to walk with a deliberate step around its s.p.a.cious borders and throughout its ample extent; but we must content ourselves with tracing out some of its princ.i.p.al varieties, and collecting comparatively a few of its productions.

Our plan will require the induction _of facts_, as the necessary basis of argument or ill.u.s.tration; and these refer to the state of women, in countries and during periods in which the religion of the Bible was wholly unknown, as in the nations of Pagan antiquity, in Greece and Rome; in savage, superst.i.tious, and Mahometan regions; and their condition previously to the establishment of Christianity, in patriarchal time and places, or during the Jewish theocracy.

I. The Pagan Nations of Antiquity demand the first consideration.

Our knowledge of the _ancient Egyptians_ is extremely limited, being derived from the Greek writers, whose accounts are often contradictory.

Their testimony, however, is sufficiently precise respecting the prevalence of domestic servitude. The Egyptians were a people remarkable for jealousy, which was carried to such an extreme, that after the death of their wives, they even entertained apprehensions respecting the embalmers. [51] Having decreed it to be indecent in women to go abroad without shoes, they deprived them of the means of wearing them, by threatening with death any one who should make shoes for a woman. They were forbidden music, probably with a view of preventing their possessing so dangerous an attraction as that of an elegant accomplishment.

With regard to the _Celtic nations_, it is true, that the Romans were surprised at the degree of estimation in which these barbarous tribes held their women, and the privileges which they conceded to them; and it must be admitted that certain stern virtues characterized those who were addicted to military achievements, resulting partly from their incessant occupation as warriors, and partly from some indefinite but splendid ideas of fame and glory. Seduction and adultery were vices of rare occurrence; the bridegroom bestowed a dowery upon the bride, consisting of flocks, a horse ready bridled and saddled, a shield, a lance, and a sword; [52] and they were often stimulated by their presence and excitement in their warlike expeditions. But though generally contented with one wife, the n.o.bles were allowed a plurality, either for _pleasure_ or _show_; the labours of the field, as well as domestic toil, devolved on the women; which, though practised in very ancient times, even by females of the most exalted rank, evidently originated in the general impression of their inferiority in the scale of existence. Their great Odin, or Odinus, excluded from his paradise all who did not by some violent death follow their deceased husbands; and in time they were so degraded, that by an old Saxon law, he that hurt or killed a woman was to pay only half the fine exacted for injuring or killing a man. But the argument in favour of Christianity, as a.s.signing women their _proper place_ in society, is corroborated by observing the extremes of oppression and adulation, to which the Scandinavian nations alternately veered. While polygamy and infanticide prevailed, the practice of raising into heroines, prophetesses, and G.o.ddesses, some of their women, was no less indicative of a very imperfect sense of the true character of the female s.e.x. [53]

The public and domestic life of the _Greeks_ exhibit unquestionable evidences of barbarity in the treatment of women. Homer, and all their subsequent writers, show that they were subjected to those restrictions, which infallibly indicate their being regarded only as the property of men, to be disposed of according to their will. Hence they were bought and sold, made to perform the most menial offices, and exposed to all the miseries and degradation of concubinage. The daughters, even of persons of distinction, were married without any consultation of their wishes, to men whom, frequently, they had never seen, and at the early age of fourteen or fifteen; previous to which period, the Athenian females were kept in a state of as great seclusion as possible. Their study was dress; and slaves, their mothers excepted, were their only companions. The duties of a good wife were, in the opinion of the wisest of the Greeks, comprised in going abroad to expose herself as little as possible to strangers, taking care of what her husband acquired, superintending the younger children, and maintaining a perpetual vigilance over the adult daughters. After marriage, some time elapsed before they ventured to speak to their husbands, or the latter entered into conversation with them. At no time were wives intrusted with any knowledge of their husbands' affairs, much less was their opinion or advice solicited; and they were totally excluded from mixed society. One of the most excellent of the Athenians admitted, there were few friends with whom, he conversed so seldom as with his wife. [54]

Solon, in his laws, is silent with regard to the education of girls, though he gave very precise regulations for that of boys. That legislator imagined that women were not sufficiently secluded, and therefore directed that they should not go abroad in the daytime, except it were in full dress; or at night, but with torches and in a chariot. He prohibited their taking eatables out of the houses of their husbands of more value than an obolus, or carrying a basket more than a cubit in length. [55] The Athenians had previously possessed the power of selling their children and sisters; and even Solon allowed fathers, brothers, and guardians, this right, if their daughters, sisters, and wards, had lost their innocence.

From various enactments, it appears that adultery was extremely common, and female modesty could not be preserved even by legislative restraint.

Most of the Greeks, and even their philosophers, concurred with the Eastern nations in general in a.s.sociating with courtesans; who were, indeed, honoured with the highest distinctions. The Corinthians ascribed their deliverance, and that of the rest of Greece, from the power of Xerxes, to the intercession of the priestess of Venus, and the protection of the G.o.ddess. At all the festivals of Venus, the people applied to the courtesans as the most efficacious intercessors; and Solon deemed it advantageous to Athens, to introduce the worship of that G.o.ddess, and to const.i.tute them her priestesses. In the age of Pericles, and still more afterward, prost.i.tution, thus yoked with superst.i.tion, and sanctioned by its solemnities, produced the most baneful effects upon public morals.

From idolatrous temples, the great reservoirs of pollution, a thousand streams poured into every condition of life, and rolling over the whole of this cultivated region, deposited the black sediment of impurity upon the once polished surface of society, despoiling its beauty, discolouring its character, and ruining its glory.

The Athenians did not hesitate to take their wives and daughters to visit the notorious Aspasia in the house of Pericles, though she was the teacher of intrigue, and the destroyer of morals. The most celebrated men lived in celibacy, only to secure the better opportunities of practising vice, which however did not conceal her hideous deformity in the shades, but stalked forth at noonday, emblazoned by the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and enriched by treasuries of opulence.

In many respects the Spartans differed from the other Greeks in their treatment of the female s.e.x. The women were as shamefully exposed as those of the other states were secluded; being introduced to all the exercises of the public gymnasium at an early age, no less than the other s.e.x, and taught the most shameless practices. The laws of Lycurgus were in many instances utterly subversive of morality, and too outrageous for citation.

The depravity of the s.e.x was extreme even at an early period, and Xenophon, Plutarch, and Aristotle, impute to this cause the ultimate subversion of the Spartan state.

The _Romans_ differed materially from the Greeks and the oriental nations in one point with regard to their treatment of women; namely, in never keeping them in a state of seclusion from the society of men: but the husbands were very incommunicative: and it seems at least to have been an _understood_, if not a written law, that they should avoid all inquisitiveness, and speak only in the presence of their husbands. In the second Punic war, the Oppian law prohibited the women, from riding in carriages and wearing certain articles of dress; which was, however, afterward repealed. The ancient laws considered children as slaves, and women as children who ought to remain in a state of perpetual tutelage.

According to the laws of Romulus and Numa, a husband's authority over his wife was equal to that of a father over his children, excepting only that he could not sell her. The wife was stated to be in servitude, though she had in name the rights of a Roman citizen. From the moment of her marriage she was looked upon as the daughter of her husband and heir of his property, if he had no children; otherwise she was considered as his sister, and shared an equal portion with the children. Wives had no right to make wills, nor durst they prefer complaints against their husbands; and the power of the latter over them was as unrestricted as that which they possessed over their children: in fact, the husband could even put his wife to death, not only for gross immoralities, but for excess in wine. [56]

Considerable changes took place in the laws after the period of the destruction of Carthage, some of which allowed greater privileges to females; but as divorces became more frequent, crimes multiplied. In the latter periods of the republic women had the princ.i.p.al share in public plots and private a.s.sa.s.sinations, and practised the worst of sins with the most barefaced audacity.

The morals of women are indicative of the state of society in general, and of the estimation in which they are held in particular. If the other s.e.x treat them as slaves, they will become servile and contemptible, a certain degree of self-respect being essential to the preservation of real dignity of character. The way to render human beings of any cla.s.s despicable is to undervalue them; for disesteem will superinduce degeneracy. If this be the case, then the state of women in any age or country is a criterion of public opinion, since the vices of their lives indicate their condition; upon which principle, Greece and Rome exhibit wretched specimens of female degradation.

But there is one circ.u.mstance in the history of the Romans which must not be wholly overlooked. Their conduct was marked by _capriciousness._ Though the usual treatment of their women resembled that of other Pagan nations in barbarity, like some of them, too, they frequently rendered them extraordinary honours. On some occasions they even transferred to their princ.i.p.al slaves the right of chastising their wives; and yet, on others they paid them distinguished deference: as in the case of vestals, and the privileges conceded to them after the negotiation between the Romans and Sabines. Various individual exceptions to a barbarous usage might be adduced; sufficient, however, only to evince the general debas.e.m.e.nt of the female s.e.x, and the total absence of all fixed principles of moral action in unchristianized man.

II. Next to the nations of antiquity, the state of women in SAVAGE, SUPERSt.i.tIOUS, AND MAHOMETAN COUNTRIES, comes under review.

In treating this part of the subject, it will be necessary to make a rapid circ.u.mnavigation of the globe, touching at least at the most remarkable places.

EUROPE.

GREENLAND. The situation of females in this country might well justify the exclamation of an ancient philosopher, who thanked G.o.d that _he was born a man and not a woman_. The only employment of girls, till their fourteenth year, is singing, dancing, amus.e.m.e.nts, attending on children, and fetching water; [57] after which they are taught, by their mothers, to sew, cook, tan the skins of animals, construct houses, and navigate boats. It is common for the men to stand by as idle spectators, while the women are carrying the heaviest materials for building; the former never attempting to do any thing but the carpenter's work. Parents frequently betroth their daughters in infancy, and never consult their wishes respecting marriage; if no previous pledge be given, they are disposed of to the first suiter that chances to make the application. From their twentieth year, the usual period of marriage, the lives of the women, says Cranz, are a continued series of hardships and misery. The occupations of the men solely consist in hunting and fishing; but so far from giving themselves the trouble to carry home the fish they have caught, they would think themselves eternally disgraced by such a condescension.

The Greenlanders have two kinds of boats, adapted to procure subsistence.

One of them is the great woman's boat called the _umiak_, from twelve to eighteen yards in length, and four or five in width. These boats are rowed by four women, and steered by a fifth, without any a.s.sistance from the men, excepting in cases of emergency. If the coast will not allow them to pa.s.s, six or eight women take the boat upon their heads, and carry it over land to a navigable place.

Mothers-in-law are absolute mistresses in the houses of their married sons, who frequently ill-treat them; and the poor women are sometimes obliged to live with quarrelsome favourites, and may be corrected or divorced at pleasure. Widows who have no friends, are commonly robbed of a considerable portion of their property by those who come to sympathize with them by an affected condolence; and can obtain no redress,--on the contrary, they are obliged to conciliate their kindness by the utmost obsequiousness. After a precarious subsistence in different families, and being driven from one hut to another, they are suffered to expire without help or notice. When widows have grown-up sons, their condition is much superior to that in which they formerly lived with their husbands. When aged women pretend to practise, or are suspected of witchcraft--if the wife or child of a Greenlander happen to die--if his fowling piece miss fire, or his arrow the mark at which it was shot--the supposed sorceress is instantly stoned, thrown into the sea, or cut in pieces by the _angekoks_ or male magicians. There have even been instances of sons killing their mothers, and brothers their sisters. The infirmities of age expose women to violent deaths, being sometimes with their own consent, and sometimes forcibly, interred alive by their own offspring.

RUSSIA. Over this extensive empire, including sixteen different nations, the condition of women is such as equally to evince the degraded character of the men. Among the Siberians, an opinion is entertained that they are impure beings, and odious to the G.o.ds; in consequence of which, they are not permitted to approach the sacred fire, or the places of sacrifice. In the eastern islands, in particular, there exists tribes to whom the nuptial ceremony is unknown; and in cases where the daughters are purchased by goods, money, or services, their fathers never consult their children, and their husbands treat them as slaves or beasts of burden. In Siberia, conjugal fidelity is bartered for gain, or sacrificed at the shrine of imaginary hospitality. The sale of their wives is by no means uncommon, for a little train oil, or other paltry considerations. To this the women offer no objection, and at an advanced age frequently seek younger wives for their husbands, and devote themselves to domestic drudgery. [58] The same degrading facts apply to the Tungusians and other tribes. In some respects the Kamtschadales differ from the rest, but the extreme debas.e.m.e.nt arising from their libidinous brutality must not be described, and can scarcely be credited. [59]

Among all the Slavon nations of Europe, wives and daughters have ever been kept in a state of exclusion. Brides are purchased, and instantly become slaves. Formerly sons were compelled by blows to marry, and daughters dragged by their hair to the altars; and the paternal authority is still unbounded. The lower cla.s.ses are doomed to incessant labour, and are obliged to submit to the utmost indignities. [60]

The picture of Russian manners varies little with reference to the prince or the peasant.... They are all, high and low, rich and poor, alike servile to superiors; haughty and cruel to their dependants, ignorant, superst.i.tions, cunning, brutal, barbarous, dirty, mean. The emperor canes the first of his grandees; princes and n.o.bles cane their slaves; and the slaves their _wives_ and _daughters_. [61]

ITALY AND SPAIN. These two countries may be cla.s.sed together, because the condition of the female s.e.x is very similar in both: the education of woman is totally neglected, and they are not ashamed of committing the grossest blunders in common conversation. Such is their situation that they cannot intermeddle with the concerns of their husbands, without exciting their jealousy. Girls are in early years left to the care of servants who are both ill educated and immoral; the same may be said of their mothers, whose conversation and public conduct tend to perfect the growth of licentiousness in their uncultivated children.

PORTUGAL. Young women in this kingdom are not instructed in any thing truly useful or ornamental; and even those who belong to respectable families, are often ignorant of reading and writing. Parents keep their daughters in the most rigid confinement, frequently not allowing them even to go abroad to church to hear ma.s.s, and never unattended. They are secluded from all young persons of the other s.e.x, who are not permitted to visit families where there are unmarried females. The consequence of this austerity is an extended system of intrigue, for the purpose of evading all this circ.u.mspection--by which means they are full of cunning and deceit.

TURKEY. Women, in Constantinople, are confined in seraglios for life, or shut up in their apartments. They are not permitted to appear in public without a vail, and can only obtain their freedom by devoting themselves to prost.i.tution.

"The slave market," says Mr. Thornton, "is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments. The manner of purchasing slaves is described in the plain and unaffected narrative of a German merchant, which, as I have been able to ascertain its general authenticity, may be relied on as correct in this particular. He arrived at Kaffa, in the Crimea, which was formerly the princ.i.p.al mart of slaves; and hearing that an Armenian had a Georgian and two Circa.s.sian girls to dispose of, feigned an intention of purchasing them, in order to gratify his curiosity, and to ascertain the mode of conducting such bargains. A Circa.s.sian maiden, eighteen years old, was the first who presented herself; she was well dressed, and her face was covered with a vail. She advanced towards the German, bowed down, and kissed his hand: by order of her master, she walked backwards and forwards in the chamber to show her shape, and the easiness of her gait and carriage: her foot was small, and her gesture agreeable. When she took off her vail, she displayed a bust of the most attractive beauty. She rubbed her cheeks with a wet napkin, to prove that she had not used art to heighten her complexion; and she opened her inviting lips, to show a regular set of teeth of pearly whiteness. The German was permitted to feel her pulse, that he might be convinced of the good state of her health and const.i.tution. She was then ordered to retire, while the merchants deliberated upon the bargain. The price of this beautiful girl was four thousand piastres, [equal to four thousand five hundred florins of Vienna."] [62]

GREECE. The condition of females, in Modern Greece, may be inferred from an anecdote or two related by _Lieutenant Collins_. He and his friends were approaching _Macri_, on the coast of Asia Minor. "Encouraged to proceed," he remarks, "we approached the second groupe, which we pa.s.sed in a similar manner; but some woman, who were near them, appeared to fly at our approach, and view us at a distance with astonishment and fear. But no sooner had we advanced, than, as with general consent, they all caught their children in their arms, and with the fears of a mother apprehensive for the safety of a beloved child, flew to their houses, and shut themselves in, and we saw no more of them till our return.

"Our company during dinner consisted of Greeks only--it was served up by the women, attended by one of her children, who with all the family appeared in an abject state; for on offering her a little of the wine, which they so kindly furnished us with, she shrunk back, with an expression of surprise at our condescension, which excited ours also; and the man understanding a little Italian, we inquired the reason; 'Such,'

says he, is the inferiority and oppression we labour under, that it is in general thought too great honour for a Turk to present a person of this description with, any token of respect, and forward in her to accept it, which is the reason of her timidity, in not accepting the wine from you.'" [63]

In Greece, the women are closely confined at home; they do not even appear at church till they are married. The female slaves are not Greeks, but such as are either taken in war or stolen by the Tartars from Russia, Circa.s.sia, or Georgia. Many thousands were formerly taken in the Morea, but most of them have been redeemed by the charitable contributions of the Christians, or ransomed by their own relations. The fine slaves that wait upon great ladies, are bought at the age of eight or nine years, and educated with great care to accomplish them in singing, dancing, embroidery, &c. They are commonly Circa.s.sian, and their patron rarely ever sells them, but if they grow weary of them, they either present them to a friend, or give them their freedom.

ASIA.

TARTARY. This immense country, in its utmost limits, reaches from the Eastern Ocean to the Caspian Sea; and from Corea, China, Thibet, Hindoostan, and Persia, to Russia, and Siberia; including a s.p.a.ce of three thousand six hundred miles in length, and nine hundred and sixty in width, and comprehending all the middle region of Asia. Its two great divisions are into Eastern and Western; the former chiefly belongs to the emperor of China, the latter to Russia.

The Mahometan Tartars are continually waging war against their neighbours for the purpose of procuring slaves. When they cannot obtain adults, they steal children to sell, and even make no scruple of selling their own, especially daughters. In case of any disgust, their wives share a similar fate. Among the pagan Tartars incestuous practices are prevalent, and their wives are generally dismissed at, or previous to, the age of forty.

The mothers of sultans, among the Crim Tartars, neither eat with their sons, nor sit in their presence. They are, in fact, the slaves of their caprice, often ill-treated by them, and sometimes even put to death. [64]

The _Calmucks_ are considered as remarkably lenient in their conduct to the women: but fathers dispose of their daughters without their consent, and even antecedently to their birth. Their chiefs and princes have, besides, large harems or seraglios where domestic rivalship imbitters existence. They are, moreover, regarded in general as servants, and infidelity is compensated by a trifling offering to their mercenary rapacity.

The _Georgians and Circa.s.sians_ are celebrated for their surpa.s.sing beauty, and their young women are brought up to some industrious habits.

The daughters of slaves receive a similar education, and are sold according to their beauty, at from twenty to a hundred pounds each, or upwards. They consider all their children in the light of property, exposing them to sale as they would their cattle, and too often obtain large sums from the agents of despotism and depravity.

CHINA. In this, and almost all the countries of Southern Asia, the condition of women is truly deplorable. Forced marriages and sales are universal, and the Chinese are so excessively jealous, that they do not permit their wives to receive any visitors of the other s.e.x, and transport them from place to place in vehicles secured by iron bars. Their concubines are not only treated with the most degrading inhumanity, but are slaves to the wives, who never fail to sway a despotic sceptre; they are besides liable at any time to be sold. The children of concubines are regarded as the offspring of the legitimate wife; hence they manifest no affection for their real mothers, but often treat them with the most marked disrespect. The laws of China and Siam allow the lawful wives and sons, after the death of their husbands and fathers, to exclude concubines and their children from all share in the property of the deceased, and to dispose of their persons by public or private sale.