But is there nothing in this assumption that would appear to contradict other well-established features of Australian social life? Against the husband's authority there could only be the intervention of the Central Tribal Authority or of the woman's kin. But the former was not strong enough to enter into questions concerning the private life of a married couple. The Tribal Government probably had to deal only with grave offences against the welfare of the whole tribe. And we never hear that it interfered with any household questions. The woman's kin, on the other hand, seems to have waived nearly all its rights over the woman (compare also above what had been said about the betrothal). Nevertheless, as mentioned above, it was the woman's kin who eventually intervened. It must also be borne in mind that as marriages were, without exception, patrilocal,[209] the wife was far away from her family, and, therefore, much less likely to be protected by her relatives. And, as we shall see below, when discussing the aboriginal mode of living, the single families live in considerable isolation, so that it would appear rather difficult to assume any intervention from outside in matters of family life. It appears, therefore, that all the circumstances on which family life depends point very clearly to, and are in complete agreement with, our assumption of a very extensive authority of the husband over his wife (or wives), limited only in some extreme cases by the kin of the woman.
2. Passing now to the other point: how far does the husband make use of his power? in other words, how does he usually treat his wife? Without entering more in detail into the motives that regulate his conduct, it is clear that even if we know his authority, we by no means know how he usually used or misused it. Here our impression when reading the evidence is undoubtedly that the general way in which wives are treated in aboriginal Australia is a very barbarous one. In fact, out of our thirty statements, fourteen speak more or less explicitly of barbarism, slavery, wounds and scars, etc. Only seven assert that the average treatment is a fairly good one and that bad treatment is only a consequence of certain trespasses, which are considered punishable and consequently punished. The remaining nine statements say that treatment is sometimes good, sometimes bad, or do not say anything about the subject. But in this case it is apparently needful to give a more careful consideration of the quality of the information than of its quantity. In fact, four[210] out of the seven of the authorities who affirm good treatment are very clear and explicit, and their statements are consequently quite consistent with themselves; two of them are, besides, our best authorities. Schultze and Bonney seem also in general to be quite trustworthy. From the other part of our evidence (that which asserts barbarous ill-treatment) only three are fairly reliable (Curr, Salvado, and, to a certain extent, Eyre). But even these are not so consistent with themselves: they affirm, that in spite of the barbarous ill-treatment, the women seem to be rather happy. If they were happy as a rule, it means that this ill-treatment did not appear to them cruel, and that they did not suffer under its atrocity. Consequently that it was only apparently bad (the same expression is used by Dawson, loc. cit.) in the eyes of the observers, and was not bad as measured by the standard of native sensitiveness. The statement of Spencer and Gillen confirms this view explicitly. The statements affirming bad treatment (Curr, Salvado, Eyre, etc.) do not distinguish the important point whether this ill-treatment was a punishment or not; whether it was inflicted only in definite cases where, according to the unwritten tribal law, the wife was guilty of an offence, or whether it was inflicted in fits of bad temper and ungracious mood. This distinction is very important; in the first case the husband would have only, so to say, an executive power of the collective, customary will, and his bad treatment would be only an act of justice; in the second case he would have been a real tyrant and his ill-treatment a mere act of brutality. This remark has also an important connection with the problem of authority discussed above. Howitt's statement, as well as Spencer and Gillen's, points very clearly to the fact that the ill-treatment was only an act of justice (from the aboriginal point of view). Mathew, on the other hand, explicitly says that the ill-treatment was caused by fits of anger. The other statements keep silence on the point. Some of them speak, indeed, of a purely arbitrary harshness without any reason, but this refers to "civilized blacks," especially under the influence of rum and other white man's vices.
There is a point that must not be forgotten in dealing with this question. The majority of observations were made on degenerated blacks (such as were in missions, raised on farms, in the service of white men, etc.). These blacks may have had quite different manners and customs from those of the aborigines in their primitive state. And their manners were not changed in the direction of amelioration, but the reverse. This conclusion is corroborated by an interesting passage in Howitt.[211] This author says that examples of alleged contempt and discourtesy of a man to his wife, as e. g. a man gorging himself with meat and throwing only a bone to his wife, may be partly "the consequence of the 'new rule' under the influence of civilization." They sometimes express customary rules of magic origin and are no sign of contempt at all. And the author adds that when he had the opportunity of observing the blacks for a week in more primitive conditions, "this week passed without a single quarrel or dispute." This all shows that, in case of contradiction, we may suppose that the statements affirming unusual ill-treatment are affected by errors due to bad material, insufficient observation, and false inference, rather than that the statements of kindness are exaggerated.
It would be interesting to note what effect the widespread practice of exchange of relatives (see above) had on the treatment of wives. Naturally it might be supposed that for his own sisters' (or relatives') sake every man would probably be more lenient towards his wife. But as Mr. Thomas justly pointed out, the exchange of females may be conceived also in the light of a certain family giving up its rights to a female, and receiving another one in exchange.[212] It would be, therefore, difficult to say anything a priori on this influence. A phrase quoted by Curr suggests that the former assumption would be nearer to truth. A black said once to him, speaking about his sister given in exchange for his wife: "If he beats my sister I shall beat my wife." Whether this common-sense idea of justice prevailed in general in the aboriginal mind it would be difficult to decide without further knowledge. But possibly exchange of females was also a cause of the amelioration of the woman's lot.
To sum up shortly, we have ten against four statements in favour of indiscriminate ill-treatment of wives. But, if we reduce both these figures by using only reliable ones, we have four against three in favour of good treatment. By closer analysis we find that ill-treatment is—in the primitive state of the aboriginal society—in most cases probably a form of regulated intra-family justice; and that although the methods of treatment in general are very harsh, still they are applied to much more resistant natures and should not be measured by the standard of our ideas and our nerves. For otherwise we should not understand how the feature of happiness, which is reported by nearly all our informants, could be present.
3. These considerations directly lead us up to an answer to our last question, viz. whether there is a kind of mutual affection or whether there is only the power of the man, and the legal factors, that bind the consorts together. In the first place, it is well to bear in mind that in this respect there must have been a great variety of cases corresponding to the characters of the individuals concerned. We only ask here, therefore, the quite general question whether, as implied in some statements, there was an absolute absence of any kind of personal feeling in all Australian families and the wife considered her husband as her master only and her natural enemy, she being merely his slave. But here we find also that the few statements (Curr, Eyre, Meyer, Mitchell) that imply such an opinion are not very clear and explicit (in this category we include all the statements as to slavery and drudgery which can possibly embrace not only the treatment itself but the underlying feelings); whereas there are ten statements (Howitt, Bonney, Dawson, Lumholtz, J. D. Lang, Salvado, Turnbull, Grey, Mathew, Macgillivray)[213] which affirm that there is real affection between husband and wife. Some of them come from our most reliable writers and are very explicit (Howitt, Bonney, Lumholtz, Salvado). As what has been said of the treatment refers indirectly to this point (for treatment is regulated by personal feelings and not by tribal authority), we may say that the assumption of a complete lack of any feelings of affection or attachment does not seem very plausible. That these feelings would show themselves in another way than in our society seems beyond doubt. But that they would be completely absent and their places taken only by fear and awe—that is not in agreement with our evidence. Even judging on this question a priori, we could hardly suppose that there would be a complete absence of all factors that tend to create mutual affection between consorts. In the first place we may remember that in many cases the motive of sexual love was not absent from the aboriginal marriages. This was apparently always the case in marriages by elopement, which occurred in all tribes and was, under certain conditions, a legal and recognized form of contracting marriage. In the cases when, following infant betrothal and other circumstances, the husband was much older than his wife, the motive of sexual love was probably not reciprocal, but it would operate as a cause for more tender feelings on the part of the males. In the second place, it must be remembered that there are no reasons why the blacks should be completely alien to the feelings of attachment. Husband and wife lived more or less completely separated from the community, forming a more or less isolated unit (see below, [on the mode of living]). They had many interests in common, and, this being the strongest bond, they had common children to whom they were usually much attached.
To sum up this chapter, it may be said that the husband had a well-nigh complete authority over his wife; that he treated her in harmony with the low standard of culture, harshly, but not excessively harshly; that apparently the more tender feelings of love, affection and attachment were not entirely absent from the aboriginal household. But it must be added that, on these two last points, the information is contradictory and insufficient.
Mourning and Burial Ceremonies
Among the duties and obligations which determine the relationship of husband and wife, there are some which may be mentioned in this place. I mean the customs and rites connected with mourning. Mourning expresses a whole complex of feelings and ideas, of which two sets are important here, inasmuch as they throw light upon the relationship of the mourner and the mourned. Firstly, mourning always expresses sorrow and grief (real or feigned) for the deceased; secondly, the various mourning ceremonies imply the idea that there was a strong tie between the two persons involved, a tie which persists after death and which must be broken by the magical virtue of rites.[214] Both these interpretations of mourning (sorrow for the deceased and the necessity of breaking the bond) involve the idea that the relationship between husband and wife was acknowledged by society as an individual and strong personal tie. As the modes of obtaining wives have shown us that to bring about a marriage it was necessary to get the sanction of society; so the long mourning of the widow and the different formalities she has to perform, before she becomes the property of the dead man's heir or is allowed to remarry, show that marriage was not dissolved at once, even by the death of the man. It shows, therefore, that the tie between husband and wife was not a loose one, and not merely established by the fact of possession or cohabitation; and that the appropriation was based not only on legal ideas, but deeply rooted in magico-religious feelings and representations.
The idea that mourning is performed in order to express sorrow, apart from its being obvious in the ceremonies themselves, is realized and formulated by the natives. When a very old and decrepit woman dies, or an old man who has lost his memory and is useless in tribal matters, the natives do not perform any elaborate ceremonies. They allege as a reason that they "do not feel enough sorrow for them."[215]