The Position of Woman in Primitive Society: A Study of the Matriarchy

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

There is still another fact of very special interest. In the large majority of tribes known to us descent is traced through the mother; the proportion of these tribes to those with father-descent being four to one. Now, the question arises as to which of these two systems is the earlier custom? As a rule it is assumed that in all cases descent was originally traced through the mother. But is this really so? The evidence of the Australian tribes points to the exact opposite opinion. For what do we find? The tribes that have established mother-descent have advanced further, with a more developed social organisation, which could hardly be the case if they were the more primitive. To this question Starcke, in The Primitive Family, has drawn particular attention; he regards “the female line as a later development,” arrived at after descent through the father was recognised, such change being due to an urgent necessity which arose in the primitive family for cohesion among its members, making necessary sexual regulation and the maternal clan.

It is certainly difficult to decide on the priority of this or that custom. But what is significant is that in Australia the tribes which maintain the male line of descent must be assigned to the lowest stage of development. The rights established by marriage among them are less clearly defined, and the use of the totem marks, with the sexual taboos arising from them, are less developed. Everything tends to show that clan organisation and union in peace have arisen with mother-descent, which cannot thus be regarded as a survival from the earlier order, but as a later development—a step forward in progress and social regulation.

I take this as being exceedingly important: it serves to establish what it has been my purpose to show, that in the first stage the family was patriarchal—small hostile groups living under the jealous authority of the fathers; and that only as advancement came did the maternal clan develop, since it arose through a community of purpose binding all its members in peace, and thereby controlling the warring individual interests. The reasons for mother-descent have been altogether misunderstood by those who regard it as the earliest phase of the family, and connect the custom with sexual disorder and uncertainty of paternity. In all cases the clan system shows a marked organisation, with a much stronger cohesion than is possible in the restricted family, which is held together by the force of the father. It was within the clan that the rights of the father and husband were endangered: he lost his position as supreme head of the family, and became an alien member in a free association where his position was strictly defined. The incorporation of the family into the clan arose through the struggle for existence forcing it into association; it was the subordinate position of the husband under such a system which finally made the women the rulers of the household. If we regard the social conditions of the maternal system as the first stage of development, they are as difficult to understand as they become intelligible when we consider it as a later and beneficent phase in the growth of society.

This, then, I claim as the chief good of the maternal system. As I see it, each advance in progress rests on the conquest of sexual distrusts and fierceness forcing into isolation. These jealous and odious monopolist instincts have been the bane of humanity. Each race must inevitably in the end outlive them; they are the surviving relics of the ape and the tiger. They arise out of that self-concentration and intensity of animalism that binds the hands of men and women from taking their inheritance. The brute in us still resents association. Am I wrong in connecting this individual monopolist idea of My power! My right! with the paternal as opposed to the maternal family? At any rate I find it absent in the communal clan grouped around the mothers, where the enlarged family makes common cause and life is lived by all for and with each other.

An instructive example of the joint maternal family is furnished by the Naïrs of Malabar, where we see a very late development of the clan system. The family group includes many allied families, who live together in large communal houses and possess everything in common. There is common tenure of land, over which the eldest male member of the community presides; while the mother, and after her death the eldest daughter, is the ruler in the household. It is impossible to give the details of their curious conjugal customs. The men do not marry, but frequent other houses as lovers, without ceasing to live at home, and without being in any way detached from the maternal family. There is, however, a symbolic marriage for every girl, by a rite known as tying the tali; but this marriage serves the purpose only of initiation, and the couple separate after one day. When thus prepared for marriage, a Naïr girl chooses her lovers, and any number of unions may be entered upon without any restrictions other than the strict prohibitions relative to caste and tribe. These later marriages, unlike the solemn initial rite, have no ceremony connected with them, and are entered into freely at the will of the woman and her family.[106]

Now, if we regard these customs in the light of what has already been established, it is clear that they cannot be regarded as the first stage in the maternal family. Such a view is entirely to mistake the facts. The Naïrs are in no respect a people of primitive culture. Through a long period they have most strictly preserved the custom of matriarchal heredity, which has led to an unusual concentration of the family group, and it is probable that here is the best explanation of the conjugal liberty of the Naïr girls. However singular their system may appear to us, it is the most logical and complete of any polyandric system. If we compare it with the more usual form of patriarchal polyandry we see at once the influence of maternal descent. Here, the woman makes a free choice of her husbands; in no sense is she their property. It is common for them to work for her, one husband taking on himself to furnish her with clothes, another to give her rice and food, and so on. It is, in fact, the wife who possesses, and it is through her that wealth is transmitted. In fraternal polyandry, on the other hand (as, for instance, it is practised in Thibet and Ceylon), the husbands of a woman are always brothers; she belongs to them, and for her children there is a kind of collective fatherhood. But among the Naïrs the man as husband and father cannot be said to exist; he is reduced to the most subordinate rôle of the male—he is simply the progenitor.

I know of no stronger case than this of the degraded position of the father. And what I want to make clear is that in such negation of all father-right rested the inherent weakness in the matriarchal conditions—a weakness which led eventually to the re-establishment of the paternal family. We must be very clear in our minds as to the sharp distinction between the restricted family and the communal clan. The clan as a confederation of members was opposed to the family whose interests were necessarily personal and selfish. Such communism, to some may appear strange at so early a stage of primitive cultures, yet, as I have more than once pointed out, it was a perfectly natural development; it arose through the fierce struggle for existence, forcing the primitive hostile groups to expand and unite with one another for mutual protection. Such conditions of primitive socialism were specially favourable for women. As I have again and again affirmed, the collective motive was more considered by the mothers, and must be sought in the organisation of the maternal clan. But since individual desires can never be wholly subdued, and the male nature is ever directed towards self-assertion, the clan, organised on the rights of the mothers, had always to contend with an opposing force. At one stage the clan was able to absorb the family, but only under exceptional conditions could such a system be maintained. The social organisation of the clan was inevitably broken up as society advanced. With greater security of life the individual interests reasserted their power, and this undermined the dominion of the mother.

To bring these facts home, we must now consider some further examples of mother-right, in order to show how closely these customs are connected with the conditions of the maternal familiar clan.

The Yaos of Africa have what may be regarded as a matriarchal organisation. Kinship is reckoned and property is inherited through the mother. When a man marries, he is expected to live in his wife’s village, and his first conjugal duties are to build a house for her, and hoe a garden for her mother. This gives the woman a very important position, and it is she, and not the man, who usually proposes marriage.[107]

In Africa descent through the mother is the rule, though there are exceptions, and these are increasing. The amusing account given by Miss Kingsley[108] of Joseph, a member of the Batu tribe in French Congo, strikingly illustrates the prevalence of the custom. When asked by a French official to furnish his own name and the name of his father, Joseph was wholly nonplussed. “My fader!” he said. “Who my fader?” Then he gave the name of his mother. The case is the same among the negroes. The Fanti of the Gold Coast may be taken as typical. Among them an intensity of affection (accounted for partly by the fact that the mothers have exclusive care of the children) is felt for the mother, while the father is almost disregarded as a parent, notwithstanding the fact that he may be a wealthy and powerful man. The practice of the Wamoimia, where the son of a sister is preferred in legacies, “because a man’s own son is only the son of his wife,” is typical. The Bush husband does not live with his wife, and often has wives in different places.[109]