The Position of Woman in Primitive Society Part 3

This may be taken as a picture of the human brute-family. It is clear that the relation of the father to the other group members was not one of kinship, but of power. "Every female in my crowd is my property,"

says--or feels--Mr. Atkinson's patriarchal anthropoid, "and the patriarch gives expression to his sentiment with teeth and claws, if he has not yet learned to double up his fist with a stone in it. These were early days."[31]

[31] _Social Origins and Primal Law_, pp. 4, 21. Westermarck, pp. 13, 42. _Primal Law_, pp. 209-212.

We may conclude that there would be many of these groups, each with a male head, his wives and adult daughters, and children of both s.e.xes.

It is probable that they lived a nomadic life, finding a temporary home in a cave, rock, or tree-shelter, in some place where the supply of food was plentiful. The area of their wanderings would be fixed by the existence of other groups; for such groups would almost certainly be mutually hostile to each other, watchfully resenting any intrusion on their own feeding ground. A further, and more powerful, cause of hostility would arise from the s.e.xual antagonism of the males. Around each group would be the band of exiled sons, haunting their former hearth-homes, and forming a constant element of danger to the solitary paternal tyrant. This I take to be important as we shall presently see. For, the most urgent necessity of these young men, after the need for food, must have been to obtain wives. This could be done only by capturing women from one or other of the groups. The difficulties attending such captures must have been great. It is, therefore, probable the young men at first kept together, sharing their wives in polyandrous union. But this condition would not continue, the group thus formed would inevitably break up at the adult stage under the influence of jealousy; the captured wives would be fought for and carried off by the strongest males to form fresh groups.

In this matter I have given the opinion of Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Lang.

They hold that no permanent peaceful union could have been maintained among the groups of young men and their captive wives. Mr. Atkinson gives the reason--

"Their unity could only endure as long as the youthfulness of the members necessitated union for protection, and their immaturity prevented the full play of s.e.xual pa.s.sion." And again: "The necessary Primal Law which alone could determine peace within a family circle by recognising a _distinction between female and male_ (the indispensable antecedent to a definition of marital rights) could never have arisen in such a body. It follows if such a law was ever evoked, it must have been from _within the only other a.s.sembly in existence_, viz. that headed by the solitary polygamous patriarch."[32]

[32] _Social Origins and Primal Law_, p. 230. Mr. Atkinson writes this to show that there can be no connection between these groups of young males and the polyandrous marriages of Mr. McLennan's theory. The first italics in the pa.s.sage are his own; the second are mine. Why I wish to emphasise this point will soon be seen. I have already mentioned how I was recommended to read _Social Origins_ to convince me of my mistake in accepting the mother-age. It has done just the opposite, and has given me the clue to many difficulties that I was before unable to clear up. This is why I am following this book rather than other authorities in my examination of the patriarchal theory. I take this opportunity of recording my debt to the authors, and of expressing my thanks to Mr.

Wells, who recommended me to read the book.

Whether Mr. Atkinson is right I shall not attempt to say; the point is one on which I hesitate a decided opinion; but as this view affords support to my own theory I shall accept it.

Now, to consider the bearing of this on our present inquiry. So far I have followed very closely the family group gathered around the patriarchal tyrant, under the conditions given by Mr. Atkinson and Mr.

Lang, in _Social Origins and Primal Law_. It will not, I think, have escaped the notice of the reader that very little has been said about the women and their children. There is no hint at all that the women must have lived a life of their own, different in its conditions from that of the men. The female members, it would seem, have been taken for granted and not considered, except in so far as their presence is necessary to excite the jealous s.e.xual combats of the males. This seems to be very instructive. The idea of the subjection of all females to the solitary male has been accepted without question. But the group consisted of _many women and only one adult man_. Yet in spite of this, the man is held to be the essential member; all the family obey him. His wife (or wives) and his daughters, though necessary to his pleasure as also to continue the group, are regarded as otherwise unimportant, in fact, mere property possessions to him.

Now, I am very sure the rights these group-women must have held have been greatly underrated, and the neglect to recognise this has led, I think, to many mistakes. I am willing to accept the authority of the polygamous patriarch--within limits. But it seems probable, as I shall shortly indicate, that a predominant influence in the domestic life is to be ascribed to the women, and, therefore, "the movement towards peace within the group circle" must be looked for as a result from the feminine side of the family, rather than from the male side. There is still another point: I maintain that precisely through the concentration of the male ruler on the s.e.xual subjection of his females, conditions must have arisen, affecting the conduct and character of the women: conditions, moreover, that would bring them inevitably more and more into a position of power.

It remains for me to suggest what I believe these conditions to have been. Meanwhile let us keep one fact steadily before our minds. The fierce s.e.xual jealousy of the males had by some means to be controlled. It is evident that the way towards social progress could be found only by the peaceful aggregation of these solitary hostile groups; and this could not be done without breaking down the rule that strength and seniority in the male conferred upon him marital right over all the females. In other words, the tyrant patriarch had in some way to learn to tolerate the presence of other adult males on friendly terms within his own group. We have to find how this first, but momentous, step in social progress was taken.

Let us concentrate now our attention on the domestic life of the women. And first we must examine more carefully the exact conditions that we may suppose to have existed in these hostile groups. The father is the tyrant of the band--an egoist. Any protection he affords the family is in his own interests, he is chief much more than father.

His sons he drives away as soon as they are old enough to give him any trouble; his daughters he adds to his harem. We may conceive that the domination of his s.e.xual jealousy must have chiefly occupied his time and his attention. It is probable that he was fed by his women; at least it seems certain that he cannot have provided food for them and for all the children of the group. s.e.x must have been uninterruptedly interesting to him. In the first place he had to capture his wife, or wives, then he had to fight for the right of sole possession.

Afterwards he had to guard his women, especially his daughters, from being carried off, in their turn, by younger males, his deadly rivals, who, exiled by s.e.xual jealousy from his own and the other similar hearth-homes, would come, with each returning year, more and more to be feared. An ever-recurring and growing terror would dog each step of the solitary paternal despot, and necessitate an unceasing watchfulness against danger, and even an antic.i.p.ation of death. For when old age, or sickness decreased his power of holding his own, then the tables would be turned, and the younger men, so hardly oppressed, would raise their hands against him in parricidal strife.

You will see what all this strife suggests--the unstable and advent.i.tious relation of the man to the social hearth-group. Such conditions of antagonism of each male against every other male must favour the a.s.sumption that no advance in peace--on which alone all future progress depended--could have come from the patriarchs.

Jealousy forced them into unsocial conduct.

But advance by peace to progress was by some means to be made. I believe that the way was opened up by women.

I hasten to add, however, in case I am mistaken here, that I am very far from wishing to set up any claim of superiority for savage woman over savage man. The momentous change was not, indeed, the result of any higher spiritual quality in the female, nor was it a religious movement, as is the beautiful dream of Bachofen. I do not think we can credit "a movement" as having taken place at all, rather the change arose gradually, inevitably, and quite simply. To postulate a conscious movement towards progress organised by women is surely absurd. Human nature does not start on any new line of conduct voluntarily, rather it is forced into it in connection with the conditions of life. Just as savage man was driven into unsocial conduct, so, as I shall try to show, savage woman was led by the same conditions acting in an opposite direction, into social conduct.

My own thought was drawn first to this conclusion by noting the behaviour of a band of female turkeys with their young. It was a year ago. I was staying in a Suss.e.x village, and near by my home was the meadow of a farm in which families of young turkeys were being reared.

Here I often sat; and one day it chanced that I was reading _Social Origins and Primal Law_. I had reached the chapter on "Man in the Brutal Stage," in which Mr. Atkinson gives the supposed facts of brute man, and the action of his jealousy in the family group. I was very much impressed; my reason told me that what the author stated so well was probably right. Such s.e.xually jealous conduct on the part of savage man was likely to be true; it was much easier to accept this than the state of promiscuous intercourse, with its friendly communism in women, in which I had hitherto believed. I really was very much disturbed. For I was still unshaken in my belief in mother-right. How were the two theories to be reconciled?

Often it is a small thing that points to the way for which one is seeking. All at once my little boy, who had been playing in the field, called out, "Oh, look at the Gobble-gobble,"--the name by which he called the male-turkey. The c.o.c.k, his great tail spread, his throat swelling, was swaggering across the field, making an immense amount of noisy disturbance. A group of females and young birds, many of them almost full grown, were near to where we were sitting; they had been rooting about in the ground getting their food. Their fear at the approach of the strutting male was manifest. All the band gathered together, with the young in the centre, led and flanked by the mothers. As the male continued to advance upon them they retreated further and further, and finally took harbour in a barn. Here the swaggerer tried to follow them, but the rear females turned and faced him and drove him off.

I had found the clue that I was seeking. All I had been reading now had a clear meaning for me. In my delight, I laughed aloud. I saw the egoism of the solitary male; I knew the meaning of the females'

retreat; they were guarding the young from the feared attacks of the father. I realised how the male's unsocial conduct towards his offspring had forced the females to unite with one another. The c.o.c.k's strength, the gorgeous display of s.e.x-charms, were powerless before this peaceful combination. He was alone, a tyrant--the destroyer of the family. But I saw, too, that his polygamous jealousy served as a means to the end of advance in progress. It was the male's non-social conduct that had forced social conduct upon the females. And I understood that the patriarchal tyrant was just the one thing I had been looking for. My belief in mother-power had gained a new and, as I felt then in the first delight of that discovery, and as I still feel, a much surer, because a simpler and more natural foundation.

Having now defined my position, and having related how such conviction came to me, let me proceed to examine the causes that would lead to the a.s.sertion of women's power, in the aboriginal family group. From what has been said, the following conditions acting on the women, may, it is submitted, be fairly deduced.

1. In the group, which comprised the mothers, the adult daughters, and the young of both s.e.xes, the women would live on terms of a.s.sociation as friendly hearth-mates.

2. The strongest factor in this a.s.sociation would arise from the dependence of the children upon their mothers; a dependence that was of much longer duration than among the animals, on account of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child, which entailed a more prolonged infancy.

3. The women and their children would form the group, to which the father was attached by his s.e.xual needs, but remained always a member apart--a kind of jealous fighting specialisation.

4. The temporary hearth-home would be the shelter of the women; and it was under this shelter that children were born and the group acc.u.mulated its members. Whether cave, or hollow tree, or some frail shelter, the home must have belonged to the women.

5. And this state would necessarily attach the mothers to the home, much more closely than the father, whose desire lay in the opposite direction of disrupting the home.

Moreover this attachment always would be present and acting on the female children, who, unless captured, would remain with the mothers, while it could never arise in the case of the sons, whose fate was to be driven from the home. Such conditions must, as time went on, have profoundly modified the women's outlook, bending their desires to a steady, settled life, conditions under which alone the germ of social organisation could develop.

6. Again, the daily search for the daily food must have been undertaken chiefly by the women. For it is impossible that one man, however skilful a hunter, could have fed all the female members and children of the group. We may conceive that his attention and his time must have been occupied largely in fighting his rivals; while much of his strength, as sole progenitor, must have been expended in s.e.x. It is therefore probable that frequently the patriarch was dependent on the food activities of his women.

7. The mothers, their inventive faculties quickened by the stress of child-bearing and child-rearing, would learn to convert to their own uses the most available portion of their environment. It would be under the attention of the women that plants were first utilised for food. Seeds would be beaten out, roots and tubers dug for, and nuts and fruits gathered in their season and stored for use. Birds would have to be snared, sh.e.l.l-fish and fish would be caught; while, at a later period, animals would be tamed for service. Primitive domestic vessels to hold and to carry water, baskets to store the food supplies would have to be made. Clothes for protection against the cold would come to be fashioned. All the faculties of the women, in exercises that would lead to the development of every part of their bodies, would be called into play by the work of satisfying the physical needs of the group.

8. This interest and providence for the family would certainly have its effect on the development of the women.

The formation of character is largely a matter of attention, and the attention of the mothers being fixed on the supply of the necessary food, doubtless often difficult to obtain, their energies would be driven into productive activities, much more than in the case of the father, whose attention was fixed upon himself.

9. In all these numerous activities the women of each group would work together. And through this co-operation must have resulted the a.s.sertion of the women's power, as the directors and organisers of industrial occupations. As the group slowly advanced in progress, such power increasing would raise the women's position; the mothers would establish themselves permanently as of essential value in the family, not only as the givers of life, but as the chief providers of the food essential to the preservation of the life of its members.

10. And a further result would follow in the treatment by the male of this new order. The women by obtaining and preparing food would gain an economic value. Wives would become to the patriarch a source of riches, indispensable to him, not only on account of his s.e.x needs, but on account of the more persistent need of food. Thus the more women he possessed the greater would be his own comfort, and the physical prosperity of the group. The women would become of ever greater importance, and the economic power that they thus acquired would more and more favourably influence their position.

11. There is one other matter in this connection. The greater number of women in the group the stronger would become their power of combination. I attach great importance to this. Working together for the welfare of all, the social motive would grow stronger in women, so that necessarily they would come to consider the collective interests of the group. Can it be credited that such conditions could have acted upon the patriarch, whose conduct would still be inspired by individual appet.i.te and selfish inclinations? I maintain such a view to be impossible.

12. Another advantage, I think, would arise for women out of the male's jealous tyranny in the s.e.xual relationship. Such an idea may appear strange, if we think only of the subjection of the females to the brute-appet.i.te of the patriarch. Yet there is another side. The women must have gained freedom by being less occupied with s.e.x pa.s.sions, and also from being less jealously interested in the man than he was in them. It may be urged that the women would be jealous of each other. I do not think this could have been. Jealousy has its roots in the consciousness of possession, and is only aroused through fear of loss. This could not have acted with any great power among the women in the patriarchal group. Their interest of possession in s.e.x must have been less acute in consciousness than the interest of the male.

Doubtless the woman would be attracted by the male's courageous action in fighting his rivals for possession of her, but when the rival was the woman's son such attraction would come into strong conflict with the deeper maternal instinct.

13. From the standpoint of physical strength, the patriarch was the master, the tyrant ruler of the group, who, doubtless, often was brutal enough. But the women, leading an independent life to some extent, and with their mental ingenuity developed by the conditions of their life, would learn, I believe, to outwit their master by pa.s.sive united resistance. They would come to utilise their s.e.x charms as an accessory of success. Thus the unceasing s.e.xual preoccupation of the male, with the emotional dependence it entailed on the females, must, I would suggest, have given women an immense advantage. If I am right here, the patriarch would be in the power of his women, much more surely than they would be in his power.

14. Again, an antagonism must have arisen between the despot father and his women, in particular with his daughters, forced to submit to his brute-pa.s.sions. I confess I find grave difficulty in reconciling the view that the group-daughters would willingly become the wives of their father. I cannot conceive them without some power to exercise that choice in love, which is the right of the female throughout nature. There is great insistence by Mr.

Atkinson, and all who have written on the subject, on the s.e.xual pa.s.sions of the males, while the desires of the women are not considered at all. Apparently they are held to have had none! This affords yet another instance of the strange concentration on the male side of the family. It is taken for granted, for instance, that in every case the young men, when driven from their home, had to capture their wives from other groups. I would suggest that often the capture was aided by the woman herself; she may even have escaped from the hearth-home in her desire to find a partner, preferring the rule of a young tyrant to an old one, who moreover was her father. I believe, too, that the wives and mothers must frequently have a.s.serted their will in rebellion. I picture, indeed, these savage women ever striving for more privileges, and step by step advancing through peaceful combination to power.

15. I desire also to maintain that all I have here suggested finds support from what is known of the position of women among primitive peoples; and I may add also, from the character of women to-day.

Now I have summarised briefly what seem to me the probable conditions of the women's daily life in these earliest groups. I have attempted to show how the s.e.xual jealousy, which acted for the destruction of the mutually hostile male members, would necessitate for the women conditions in many ways favourable; conditions of union in which lay the beginnings of peace and order. What we have to fix in our thoughts is the significant fact of the sociability of the women's lives in contrast with the solitude of the jealous sire, watchfully resenting the intrusion of all other males. Such conditions cannot have failed to domesticate the women, and urged them forward to the work that was still to be done in domesticating man. During the development of the family, we may expect that the patriarch will seek to hold his rights, and that the women will exert their influence more and more in breaking these down; and this is precisely what we do find, as I presently shall show.

One point further. It may, of course, be urged that all I am affirming for women in this far back beginning is but a process of ingenious guessing. Such criticism is just. But I am speaking of conditions at a time when conjecture is necessary. I venture to say that my suggestions are in accord with what is likely to have happened.

Moreover, many difficulties will be made clearer if these guesses are accepted. I believe that here in the earliest patriarchal stage we have already the germs of the maternal family. All the chances for success in power rested with the united mothers, rather than with the solitary father. a.s.suredly the jealous patriarchs paid a heavy price for their s.e.xual domination.

CHAPTER IV

DEVELOPMENT IN THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY AND THE RISE OF MOTHER-POWER

The essential question, now, is how these small hostile groups were brought by a.s.sociation to expand into larger groups. In what way was the s.e.xual monopoly of the male ruler first curbed, and afterwards broken down, for only by this being done could peace be gained?

However advantageous the habits of the patriarch may have been for himself, they were directly opposed to progress. Jealousy depends on the failure to recognise the rights of others. This s.e.xual egoism, by which one man through his strength and seniority held marital rights over all the females of his group, had to be struck at its roots. In other words, the solitary despot had to learn to tolerate the a.s.sociation of other adult males.

How was this happy change to be brought about? Social qualities are surely developed in the character by union with one's fellow beings.

From what has been stated, it seems certain that it was in the interests of the women to consolidate the family, and by means of a.s.sociation to establish their own power. Jealousy is an absolutely non-social quality. Regarding its influence, it is certainly absurd to believe any voluntary a.s.sociation to have been possible among the males of the hostile patriarchal groups; to credit this is to give the lie to the entire theory. We are driven, therefore, to seek for the beginnings of social conduct among the women. I have suggested the conditions forcing them into combination with one another against the tyranny of the patriarch. I have now to show how these causes, continually acting, brought the women step by step into a position of authority and power. There is, however, no suggestion of a spiritual revolt on the part of women. I do not wish to set up any claim for, because I do not believe in, the superiority of one s.e.x over the other s.e.x. Character is determined by the conditions of living. If, as I conceive, progress came through savage women, rather than through savage men, it was because the conditions were really more favourable to them, and drove them on in the right path. However strange it may appear, their s.e.xual subjection to the fierce jealousy of the patriarch acted as a means to an end in advancing peace.

The strongest force of union between the women would grow out of the consciousness of an ever-threatening and common danger. Not only had the young to be fed and cared for during infancy and childhood, but, as they grew in years, they had to be guarded from the father, whose relation to his offspring was that of an enemy. It has been seen how the sons were banished at p.u.b.erty from the family group to maintain the patriarch's marital rights. Doubtless the strength of maternal love gained in intensity through the many failures in conflicts, that must have taken place with the tyrant fathers. Would not this community of suffering tend to force the women to unite with one another, at each renewed banishment of their sons? May they not, after the banishment, have a.s.sisted their sons in the capture of their wives? I think it must be allowed that this is possible. And there is another point to notice. The exiled sons and their captured wives would each have a mother in the groups they had left. May it not be conceived that, as time brought progress in intelligence, some friendly communication might have been established between group and group, in defiance of the jealous guardianship of the patriarchs?