The Position of Woman in Primitive Society Part 2

Hence it has been necessary first to clear the way of the old errors.

Bachofen's interpretation is too fanciful to find acceptance. Will any one hold it as true that the change came because _women willed it_?

Surely it is a pure dream of the imagination to credit women, at this supposed early stage of society, with rising up to establish marriage, in a revolt of purity against s.e.xual licence, and moreover effecting the change by force of arms! Bachofen would seem to have been touched with the Puritan spirit. I am convinced also that he understood very little of the nature of woman. Conventional morality has always acted on the side of the man, not the woman. The clue is, indeed, given in the woman's closer connection with the home, and in the idea that "she raises herself by the recognition of her motherhood." But the facts are capable of an entirely different interpretation. It will be my aim to give a quite simple, and even commonplace, explanation of the rise of mother-descent and mother-right in place of the spiritual hypothesis of Bachofen.

[19] _The History of Human Marriage_, p. 105.

It will be well, however, to examine further Bachofen's own theory. It is his opinion that the first Amazonian revolt and period of women's rule was followed by a second movement--

"Woman took arms against her foe [_i. e._ man], and was gradually transformed into an Amazon. _As a rival to the man the Amazon became hostile to him, and began to withdraw from marriage and from motherhood. This set limits to the rule of women, and provoked the punishment of heaven and men._"[20]

[20] _Das Mutterrecht_, p. 85.

There is a splendid imaginative appeal in this remarkable pa.s.sage.

Again the italics are mine. It is, of course, impossible to accept this statement, as Bachofen does, as an historical account of what happened through the agency of women at the time of which he is treating. Yet, we can find a suggestion of truth that is eternal. Is there not here a kind of prophetic foretelling of every struggle towards readjustment in the relationships of the two s.e.xes, through all the periods of civilisation, from the beginning until now? You will see what I mean. The essential fact for woman--and also for man--is the sense of community with the race. Neither s.e.x can keep a position apart from parenthood. Just in so far as the mother and the father attain to consciousness and responsibility in their relations to the race do they reach development and power. Bachofen, as a poet, understood this; to me, at least, it is the something real that underlies all the delusion of his work. But I diverge a little in making these comments.

Again the origin of the change from the first period of matriarchy is sought by Bachofen in religion.

"Each stage of development was marked by its peculiar religious ideas, produced by the dissatisfaction with which the dominating idea of the previous stage was regarded; a dissatisfaction which led to a disappearance of this condition." "What was gained by religion, fostering the cause of women, by a.s.signing a mystical and almost divine character to motherhood was now lost through the same cause.

The loss came in the Greek era. Dionysus started the idea of the divinity of fatherhood; holding the father to be the child's true parent, and the mother merely the nurse." In this way, we are asked to believe, the rights of men arose, the father came to be the chief parent, the head of the mother and the owner of the children, and, therefore, the parent through whom kinship was traced. We learn that, at first, "women opposed this new gospel of fatherhood, and fresh Amazonian risings were the common feature of their opposition." But the resistance was fruitless. "Jason put an end to the rule of the Amazons in Lemnos. Dionysus and Bellerophon strove together pa.s.sionately, yet without gaining a decisive victory, until Apollo, with calm superiority, finally became the conqueror, and the father gained the power that before had belonged to the mother."[21]

[21] _Das Mutterrecht_, pp. 73, 85. Compare also McLennan, _Studies_, p. 322, and Starcke, _The Primitive Family in its Origin and Development_.

But before this took place, Bachofen relates yet another movement, which for a time restored the early matriarchate. The women, at first opposing, presently became converts to the Dionysusian gospel, and were afterwards its warmest supporters. Motherhood became degraded.

Baccha.n.a.lian excesses followed, which led to a return to the ancient _hetarism_. Bachofen believes that this formed a fresh basis for a second gynaecocracy. He compares the Amazonian period of these later days with that in which marriage was first introduced, and finds that "the deep religious impulse being absent, it was destined to fail, and give place to the spiritual Apollonic conception of fatherhood."[22]

[22] _Ibid._, p. 85.

In Bachofen's opinion this triumph of fatherhood was the final salvation. This is what he says--

"It was the a.s.sertion of fatherhood which delivered the mind from natural appearances, and when this was successfully achieved, human existence was raised above the laws of natural life. The princ.i.p.al of motherhood is common to all the spheres of animal life, but man goes beyond this tie in gaining pre-eminence in the process of procreation, and thus becomes conscious of his higher vocation. In the paternal and spiritual principle he breaks through the bonds of tellurism, and looks upwards to the higher regions of the cosmos. Victorious fatherhood thus becomes as distinctly connected with the heavenly light as prolific motherhood is with the teeming earth."[23]

[23] _Das Mutterrecht_, Intro., p. xxvii.

Here, Bachofen, as is his custom, turns to point an a.n.a.logy with the process of nature.

"All the stages of s.e.xual life from Aphrodistic _hetarism_ to the Apollonistic purity of fatherhood, have their corresponding type in the stages of natural life, from the wild vegetation of the mora.s.s, the prototype of conjugal motherhood, to the harmonic law of the Uranian world, to the heavenly light which, as the _flamma non urens_, corresponds to the eternal youth of fatherhood. The connection is so completely in accordance with law, that the form taken by the s.e.xual relation in any period may be inferred from the predominance of one or other of these universal ideas in the worship of a people."[24]

[24] _Ibid._, Intro., p. xxix.

Such, in outline, is Bachofen's famous matriarchal theory. The pa.s.sages I have quoted, with the comments I have ventured to give, make plain the poetic exaggeration of his view, and sufficiently prove why his theory no longer gains any considerable support. To build up a dream-picture of mother-rule on such foundations was, of necessity, to let it perish in the dust of scepticism. But is the downthrow complete? I believe not. A new structure has to be built up on a new and surer foundation, and it may yet appear that the prophetic vision of the dreamer enabled Bachofen to see much that has escaped the sight of those who have criticised and rejected his a.s.sumption that power was once in the hands of women.

One great source of confusion has arisen through the acceptance by the supporters of the matriarchate of the view that men and women lived originally in a state of promiscuity. This is the opinion of Bachofen, of McLennan, of Morgan, and also of many other authorities, who have believed maternal descent to be dependent on the uncertainty of fatherhood. It will be remembered that Mr. McLennan brought forward his theory almost simultaneously with that of Bachofen. The basis of his view is a belief in an ancient communism in women. He holds that the earliest form of human societies was the group or horde, and not the family. He affirms that these groups can have had no idea of kinship, and that the men would hold their women, like their other goods, in common, which is, of course, equal to a general promiscuity.

There he agrees with Bachofen's belief in unbridled _hetarism_, but a very different explanation is given of the change which led to regulation, and the establishment of the maternal family.

According to Mr. McLennan, the primitive group or horde, though originally without explicit consciousness of relationships, were yet held together by a _feeling_ of kin. Such feeling would become conscious first between the mother and her children, and, in this way, mother-kin must have been realised at a very early period. Mr.

McLennan then shows the stages by which the savage would gradually, by reflection, reach a knowledge of the other relationships through the mother, sister and brother relationships, mother's brother and mother's sister, and all the degrees of mother-kin, at a time before the father's relation to his children had been established. The children, though belonging at first to the group, would remain attached to the mothers, and the blood-tie established between them would, as promiscuity gave place to more regulated s.e.xual relationships, become developed into a system. All inheritance would pa.s.s through women only, and, in this way, mother-right would tend to be more or less strongly developed. The mother would live alone with her children, the only permanent male members of the family being the sons, who would be subordinate to her. The husband would visit the wife, as is the custom under polyandry, which form of the s.e.xual relationship Mr. McLennan believes was developed from promiscuity--a first step towards individual marriage. Even after the next step was taken, and the husband came to live with his wife, his position was that of a visitor in her home, where she would have the protection of her own kindred. She would still be the owner of her children, who would bear her name, and not the father's; and the inheritance of all property would still be in the female line.[25]

[25] _Studies in Ancient History_, pp. 83, _et seq._

We have here what appears to be a much more reasonable explanation of mother-kin and mother-right than that of Bachofen. Yet many have argued powerfully against it. Westermarck especially, has shown that belief in an early stage of promiscuous relationship is altogether untenable.[26] It is needless here to enter into proof of this.[27]

What matters now is that with the giving up of promiscuity the whole structure of McLennan's theory falls to pieces. He takes it for granted that at one period paternity was unrecognised; but this is very far from being true. The idea of the father's relationship to the child is certainly known among the peoples who trace descent through the mother; the system is found frequently where strict monogamy is practised. Again, Mr. McLennan connects polyandry with mother-descent, regarding the custom of plurality of husbands as a development from promiscuity. Here, too, he has been proved to be in error. Whatever the causes of the origin of polyandry, it has no direct connection with mother-kin, although it is sometimes practised by peoples who observe that system.

[26] _History of Human Marriage_, pp. 51-133. It is on this question that my own opinion has been changed, compare _The Truth about Woman_, p. 120.

[27] See next chapter on the Patriarchal Theory.

For myself, I incline to the opinion that the system by which inheritance pa.s.ses through the mother needs no explanation. It was necessarily (and, as I believe, is still) the _natural_ method of tracing descent. Moreover, it was adopted as a matter of course by primitive peoples among whom property considerations had not arisen.

Afterwards what had started as a habit was retained as a system. The reasons for naming children after the mother did not rest on relationship, the earliest question was not one of kinship, but of a.s.sociation. Those were counted as related to one another who dwelt together.[28] The children lived with the mother, and therefore, as a matter of course, were called after her, and not the father, who did not live in the same home.

[28] Starcke, _The Primitive Family in its Origin and Development_, pp. 36, 37.

All these questions will be understood better as we proceed with our inquiry. The important thing to fix in our minds is that mother-kin and mother-right (contrary to the opinion of McLennan and others) may very well have arisen quite independently of dubious fatherhood. It thus becomes evident that the maternal system offers no evidence for the hypothesis of promiscuity; we shall find, in point of fact, that it arose out of the regulation of the s.e.xual relations, and had no connection with licence. It is necessary to understand this clearly.

Bachofen is much nearer to what is likely to have happened in the first stage of the family than Mr. McLennan, though he also mistakenly connects the maternal system with unregulated _hetarism_. Still he suggests (though it would seem quite unconsciously) the patriarchal hypothesis, which founds the family first on the brute-force of the male. Mother-right has been discredited chiefly, as far as I have been able to find, because it is impossible to accept, at this early period, s.e.xual conditions of the friendly ownership of women, entirely opposed to what was the probable nature of brute man. At this stage the eldest male in the family would be the ruler, and he would claim s.e.xual rights over all the women in the group. Bachofen postulates a revolt of women to establish marriage. We have seen that such a supposition, in the form in which he puts it, is without any credible foundation. Yet, it is part of my theory that there was a revolt of women, or rather a combination of the mothers of the group, which led to a change in the direction of s.e.xual regulation and order. But the causes of such revolt, and the way in which it was accomplished, were, in my opinion, entirely different from those which Bachofen supposes.

The arguments in support of my view will be given in the next two chapters.

CHAPTER III

DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS: AN ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE MOTHER-RIGHT WITH THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY.

The foundation of the Patriarchal theory is the jealous s.e.xual nature of the male. This is important; indeed profoundly significant. The strongest argument against promiscuity is to be gained from what we know of this factor of jealousy in the s.e.xual relationships.

"The season of love is the season of battle," says Darwin. Such was the law pa.s.sed on to man from millions of his ancestral lovers. The action of this law[29] may be observed at its fiercest intensity among man's pre-human ancestors. Courtship without combat is rare among all male quadrupeds, and special offensive and defensive weapons for use in these love-fights are found; for this is the s.e.x-tragedy of the natural world, the love-tale red-written in blood.

[29] The reader is referred to _The Truth about Woman_, pp.

87-114. In the courtships and perfect love marriages of many birds we find jealous combats replaced by the peaceful charming of the female by the male.

This factor of s.e.xual jealousy--the conflict of the male for possession of the female--has not been held in sufficient account by those who regard promiscuity as being the earliest stage in the s.e.xual relationships. That jealousy is still a powerful agent even in the most civilised races is a fact on which it is unnecessary to dwell.

This being so, and since the action of jealousy is so strong in the animal kingdom, it cannot be supposed to have been dormant among primitive men. Rather, in the infancy of his history this pa.s.sion must have acted with very great intensity. Thus it becomes impossible to accept any theory of the community of women in the earliest stage of the family. For inevitably such peaceful a.s.sociation would be broken up by jealous battles among the males, in which the strongest member would kill or drive away his rivals.

Great stress is laid, by the supporters of promiscuity, on the danger that such conflicts must have been to the growing community. It is, therefore, held that in order to prevent this check on their development, it was necessary for the male members not to give way to jealousy, but to be content with promiscuous ownership of women. But this is surely to credit savage man with a control of the driving jealous instinct that he could not then have had? What we do not find in the s.e.xual conduct of men, as they now are, cannot be credited as existing in the infancy of social life. We fall into many mistakes in judging these questions of s.e.x; we under-estimate the strength of love-pa.s.sion--the uncounted ancestral forces dating back to the remote beginnings of life. Doubtless conflicts over the possession of women were frequent from the beginning of man's history. But these disputes would not lead to promiscuous intercourse, only to a change in the tyrant male, who ruled over the women in the group.

Another fact against a belief in promiscuity is that the lowest savages known to us are not promiscuous, in so far as there is no proved case of the s.e.xual relations being absolutely unregulated. They all recognise sets of women with whom certain sets of men can have no marital relations. Again these savages are very far removed from the state of man's first emergence from the brute, as is proved by their combination into large and friendly tribes. Such peaceful aggregation could only have arisen at a much later period, and after the males had learnt by some means to control their brute appet.i.tes and jealousy of rivals in that movement towards companionship, which, first resting in the s.e.xual needs, broadens out into the social instincts.

For these reasons, then, we conclude that the theory of a friendly union having existed among males in the primitive group is the very reverse of the truth. This question has now been sufficiently proved.

I am thus brought into agreement with Dr. Westermarck, Mr. Crawley, and Mr. Lang, in his examination of Mr. Atkinson's _Primal Law_, as well as with other writers, all of whom have shown that promiscuity cannot be accepted as a stage in the early life of the human family.

I have now to show how far this rejection of promiscuity affects our position with regard to mother-descent and mother-right. It is clearly of vital importance to any theory that its foundations are secure. One foundation--that of promiscuity, on which Bachofen and McLennan, the two upholders of matriarchy, base their hypothesis--has been overthrown. It thus becomes necessary to approach the question from an altogether different position. Mother-right must be explained without any reference to unregulated s.e.xual conduct. I am thus turned back to examine the opposing theory to matriarchy, which founds the family on the patriarchal authority of the father. Nor is this all. What we must expect a true theory to do is to show conditions that are applicable not only to special cases, but in their main features to mankind in general. I have to prove that such conditions arose in the primitive patriarchal family as it advanced towards social aggregation, that would not only make possible, but, as I believe, would necessitate the power of the mothers a.s.serting its force in the group-family. Only when this is done can I hope that a new belief in mother-right may find acceptance.

The patriarchal theory stated in its simplest form is this: Primeval man lived in small family groups, composed of an adult male, and of his wife, or, if he were powerful, several wives, whom he jealously guarded from the s.e.xual advances of all other males. In such a group the father is the chief or patriarch as long as he lives, and the family is held together by their common subjection to him. As for the children, the daughters as soon as they grow up are added to his wives, while the sons are driven out from the home at the time they reach an age to be dangerous as s.e.xual rivals to their father. The important thing to note is that _in each group there would be only one adult polygamous male, with many women of different ages and young children_. I shall return to this later. Such is the marked difference in the position of the two s.e.xes--the solitary jealously unsocial father and the united mothers. I can but wonder how its significance has escaped the attention of the many inquirers, who have sought the truth in this matter. Probably the explanation is to be found in this: they have been interested mainly in one side of the family--the male side; I am interested in the other side--in the women members of the group. The position of women has seemed of primary importance to very few. Bachofen is almost alone in placing this question first, and his mystical far-fetched hypothesis has failed to find acceptance.

Let me now, in order to make the position clearer, continue a rough grouping of the supposed conditions in this primordial family, with all its members in subjection to the common father. It may be argued that we can know nothing at all about the family and the position of the two s.e.xes at this brute period. This is true. The conditions are, of course, conjectural, and any suggested conclusions to be drawn from them must be still more so. Yet some hypothesis must be risked as a starting-point for any theory that attempts to go so far back in the stream of time.

We may suppose, then, that mankind aboriginally lived in small families in much the same way as the great monkeys: we see the same conditions, for instance, among the families of gorillas, where the group never becomes large. The male leader will not endure the rivalry of the young males, and as soon as they grow up a contest takes place, and the strongest and eldest male, by killing or driving out the others, maintains his position as the tyrant head of the family.[30]

[30] Darwin, _Descent of Man_. Wallace, _The Malay Archipelago_, and Brehm, _Thierleben_.