The change did not, of course, take place at once, and we have many examples of a transition period where the old customs are in conflict with the new. Both forms of marriage, the maternal and the purchase contract, are practised side by side by many peoples. These cases are so instructive that I must add one or two examples to those already noticed. The ambel-anak marriage of Sumatra is the maternal form, but there is another marriage known as djudur, by which a man buys his wife as his absolute property. There is a complicated system of payments, on which the husband’s rights to take the wife to his home depends. If the final sum is paid (but this is not commonly claimed except in the case of a quarrel between the families) the woman becomes to all intents and purposes the slave of the man; but if, on the other hand, as is not at all uncommon, the husband fails or has difficulty in making the main payment, he becomes the debtor of his wife’s family, and he is practically the slave, all his labour being due to his wife’s family without any reduction in the debt, which must be paid in full, before he regains his liberty.[120] In Ceylon, again, there are two forms of marriage, called beena and deega, which cause a marked difference in the position of the wife. A woman married under the beena form lives in the house or immediate neighbourhood of her parents, and if so married she has the right of inheritance along with her brothers; but if married in deega she goes to live in her husband’s house and village and loses her rights in her own family.[121]
In Africa where the beena maternal marriage is usual, and the husband serves for his wife and lives with her family, it is said that families are usually more or less willing for value received to give a woman to a man to take away with him, or to let him have his beena wife to transfer to his own house. Among the Wayao and Mang’anja of the Shirehighlands, south of Lake Nyassa, a man on marrying leaves his own village and goes to live in that of his wife; but, as an alternative, he is allowed to pay a bride-price, in which case he takes his wife away to his home.[122] Again among the Banyai on the Zambesi, if the husband gives nothing the children of the marriage belong to the wife’s family, but if he gives so many cattle to his wife’s parents the children are his.[123] Similar cases may be found elsewhere. In the Watubela Islands between New Guinea and Celebes a man may either pay for his wife before marriage, or he may, without paying, live as her husband in her parents’ house, working for her. In the former case, the children belong to him, in the latter to the mother’s family, but he may buy them subsequently at a price.[124] Campbell records of the Limboo tribe (where the bride is usually purchased and lives with the husband), that if poverty compels the bridegroom to serve for his wife, he becomes the slave of her father, “until by his work he has redeemed his bride.”[125] An interesting case occurs in some Californian tribes where the husband has to live with the wife and work, until he has paid to her kindred the full price for her and her child. So far has custom advanced in favour of father-right that the children of a wife not paid for are regarded as bastards and held in contempt.[126]
Wherever we find the payment of a bride-price, in whatever form, there is sure indication of the decay of mother-right: woman has become property. Among the Bassa Komo of Nigeria marriage is usually effected by an exchange of sisters or other female relatives. The men may marry as many wives as they have women to give to other men. In this tribe the women look after the children, but the boys, when four years old, go to live and work with the fathers.[127] The husbands of the Bambala tribe (inhabiting the Congo states between the rivers Inzia and Kwilu) have to abstain from visiting their wives for a year after the birth of each child, but they are allowed to return to her on the payment to her father of two goats.[128] Among the Bassanga on the south-west of Lake Moeru the children of the wife belong to the mother’s kin, but the children of slaves are the property of the father.
The right of a father to his children was established only by contract. Even where the wife had been given up by her kindred and allowed to live with her husband, we find that the children may be claimed by her family. Thus among the Makolo the price paid on marriage might merely cover the right to have the wife, and in this case the children belonged to the wife’s family. It might, however, cover a certain right to the children if that had been contracted for, but never such a right as separated them wholly from the mother’s family. To effect this it was necessary that a further price should be paid at the father’s death. This sum once paid, her family had “given her up” and her children were entirely severed from them.[129] The legal acknowledgment of fatherhood in all cases had to be paid for.
There are many customs pointing to this new father-force asserting itself, and pushing aside the mother-power. In Africa, among the Bavili the mother has the right to pawn her child, but she must first consult the father, so that he may have a chance of giving her goods to save the pledging.[130] This is very plainly a step towards father-right. There is no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. Similar conditions prevail among the Alladians of the Ivory Coast, but here the mother cannot pledge her children without the consent of her brother or other male head of the family. The father has the right to ransom the child.[131] An even stronger example of the property value of children is furnished by the custom found among many tribes, by which the father has to make a present to the wife’s family when a child dies: this is called “buying the child.”[132] A similar custom prevails among the Maori people of New Zealand; when a child dies, or even meets with an accident, the mother’s relations, headed by her brothers, turn out in force against the father. He must defend himself until wounded. Blood once drawn, the combat ceases; but the attacking party plunders his house and appropriates the husband’s property, and finally sits down to a feast provided by him.[133]
These cases, with the inferences they suggest, show that the power a husband and father possessed over his wife and her children was gained through purchase. And it is not the fact of the husband’s power, however great it might be, that is so important, but the fact that by the change in the form of marriage the wife and her children were cut off from the woman’s clan-kindred, whose duty to protect them was now withdrawn. Here, then, was the reason of the change from mother-right to father-right. The monopolist desire of the husband to possess for himself the woman and her children (perhaps the deepest rooted of all the instincts) reasserted itself. But the regaining of this individual possession by man was due, not to male strength, but to purchase. I must insist upon this. As soon as women became sexually marketable their freedom was doomed.
There are many interesting cases of transition in which the children belong sometimes to the mother and sometimes to the father. Again I can give one or two examples only. In the island of Mangia the parents at the birth of the child arranged between themselves whether it should be dedicated to the father’s god or to the mother’s. The dedication took place forthwith, and finally determined which parent had the ownership of the child.[134] Among the Haidis, children belong to the clan of the mother, but in exceptional cases when the clan of the father is reduced in numbers, the new-born child may be given to the father’s sister to suckle. It is then spoken of as belonging to the paternal aunt and is counted to its father’s clan.[135] It is also possible to transfer a child to the father by giving it one of the names common to his clan. There are many curious customs practised by certain tribes, wavering between mother and father descent. In Samoa religion decides the question. At the birth of a child the totem of each parent is prayed to in turn (usually, though not always, starting with that of the father) and whichever totem happens to be invoked at the moment of birth is the child’s totem for life and decides whether he or she belongs to the clan of the mother or the father.[136] Equally curious was the custom of the Liburni, where the children were all brought up together until they were five years old. They were then collected and examined in order to trace their likeness to the men and they were assigned to their fathers accordingly. Whoever received a boy from his mother in this way regarded him as his son.[137] Similarly with the Arabs, where one woman was the wife of several men, the custom was either for the woman to decide to which of them the child was to belong, or the child was assigned by an expert to one of the joint husbands to be regarded as his own.[138]
These facts throw a strong light on the bond between the father and the child, which was a legal bond, not dependent, as it is with us, upon blood relationship. Fatherhood really arose out of the ownership of purchase. And for this reason the father’s right came to extend to all the children of the wife. It does not appear that the husband makes any distinction between his wife’s children, even if they were begotten by other men. Chastity is not regarded as a virtue, and in those cases where unfaithfulness in a wife is punished, it is always because the woman, who has passed from the protection of her kindred, acts without her husband’s permission. Interchange of wives is common, while it is one of the duties of hospitality to offer a wife to a stranger guest. Husbands sometimes, indeed, seek other men for their wives, believing they will obtain sons who will excel all others. Thus of the Arabs we are told, there is one form of marriage according to which a man says to his wife, “Send a message to such a one and beg him to have intercourse with you.” The husband acts in this way in order that his offspring may be noble.[139] When a Hindu marries, all the children previously born from his wife become his own; in Pakpatan, even when a woman has forsaken her husband for ten years, the children she brings forth are divided between her and her lover.[140] Similarly in Madagascar, when a woman is divorced, any children she afterwards bears belong to her husband.[141] Campbell tells us of children born out of wedlock in the Limboo tribe that the father may obtain possession of the boys by purchase and by naming them, but the girls belong to the mother.[142]
I am very certain that it was through property considerations and for no moral causes that the stringency of the moral code was tightened for women. It seems to me of very great importance that women should grasp firmly this truth: the virtue of chastity owes its origin to property. Our minds fall so readily under the spell of such ideas as chastity and purity. There is a mass of real superstition on this question—a belief in a kind of magic in chastity. But, indeed, continence had at first no connection with morals. The sense of ownership has been the seed-plot of our moral code. To it we are indebted for the first germs of the sexual inhibitions which, sanctified, by religion and supported by custom, have, under the unreasoned idealism of the common mind, filled life with cruelties and jealous exclusions, with suicides, and murders, and secret shames.[143]
This brings me to summarise the point we have reached. Father-right was dependent on purchase-possession and had nothing to do with actual fatherhood. The payment of a bride-price, the giving of a sister in exchange, as also marriage with a slave, gained for the husband the control over his wife and ownership of the children. I could bring forward much more evidence in proof of this fact that property, and not kinship, was the basis of fatherhood, did the limits of my space allow me to do so; such cases are common in all parts of the world where the transitional stage has been reached. The maternal clan, with its strong social cohesion is then broken up by the growing power of individual interests pushing aside the old customs, and bringing about the restoration of the family. I believe that the causes by which the father gained his position as the dominant partner in marriage must be clear to every one from the examples I have given. Fatherhood established in the first stage of the family on jealous authority, now, after a period of more or less complete obscuration, rises again as the dominant force in marriage. The father has bought back his position as patriarch. On the other hand the mother has lost her freedom that came with the protection of her kindred, under the social organisation of the clan. Looking back through the lengthening record, we find that another step has been taken in the history of the family. This time is it a step forward, or a step backward? This is a question I shall not try to answer, for, indeed, I am not sure.