The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

"When the parents of the man and the woman meet to settle the price of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. The woman's mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into consideration, with due regard to the feelings of the family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to command for more than two days in the week. After a great deal of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part of the relations of the man to pay more, it is arranged that the marriage shall hold good as is customary among the first families of the tribe, for four days in the week, viz. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and in compliance with old established custom, the marriage rites during the three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may think proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or by enjoying her freedom and independence from all observance of matrimonial obligation."[196]

We have at length concluded our investigation of this first period of organised society, and have ascertained many facts that we can use as a touchstone to try the truth of the various theories that are put forward with regard to woman and her position in the family and in the State. The importance of the mother-age to women is evident. Thus I offer no apology for the length at which I have treated the subject. It has seemed to me after careful revision that no one of the examples given can be omitted. Facts are of so much more importance than opinions if we are to come to the truth.

Without attempting to trace exhaustively the history or even to enumerate the peoples living, or who have lived, under mother-right customs, we have examined many and varied cases of the actual working of this system, with special reference to the position held by women. The examples have been chosen from all parts of the world, so as to prove (what is sometimes denied) that mother-right has not been confined to any one race, that it is not a local custom under special conditions, but that it has been a necessary stage of growth of human societies. My aim has been to illustrate the stages through which society passed from mother-right to father-right. It has not been possible to arrange the evidence in any exact progressive sequence, but I hope the cases given will make clear what I believe to have been the general trend of growth: at first the power in the hands of the women, but this giving way to the slow but steady usurping of the mother's authority by the ever-assertive male.

I shall now conclude this study of the mother-age by attempting to formulate the general truths, which, it seems to me, may be drawn from the examples we have examined.

I. The first effort of primitive society was to establish some form of order, and in that order the women of the group were the more stable and predominant partners in the family relationship.

II. Impelled by the conditions of motherhood to a more settled life than the men of the tribe, women were the first agriculturists, weavers, dyers and dressers of skins, potters, the domesticators of animals, the first architects, and sometimes the primitive doctors—in a word, the inventors and organisers of the peaceful art of life.[197] Primitive women were strong in body[198] and capable in work. The power they enjoyed as well as their manifold activities were a result of their position as mothers, this function being to them a source of strength and not a plea of weakness.

III. Moral ideas, as we understand them, hardly existed. The oldest form of marriage was what is known as "group marriage," which was the union of two tribal groups or clans, the men of one totem group marrying the women of another, and vice versa, but no man or woman having one particular wife or husband.

IV. The individual relationship between the sexes began with the reception of temporary lovers by the woman in her own home. But as society progressed, a relationship thus formed would tend under favourable circumstances to be continued, and, in some cases, perpetuated. The lover thus became the husband, but he was still without property right, with no—or very little—control over the woman, and none over her children, occupying, indeed, the position of a more or less permanent guest in her hut or tent.

V. The social organisation which followed this custom was in most cases—and always, I believe, in their primitive form—favourable to women. Kinship was recognised through the mother, and the continuity of the family thus depending solely on the woman, it followed she was the holder of all property. Her position and that of her children was, by this means, assured, and in the case of a separation it was the man who departed, leaving her in possession. The woman was the head of the household, and in some instances held the position of tribal chief.

VI. This early power of women, arising from the recognition alone of womb-kinship, with the resulting freedom in sexual relationships permitted to women, could not continue. It was no more possible for society to be built up on mother-right alone than it is possible for it to remain permanently based on father-right.