XI. Adultery in Barbarous Europe.—Among the Tcherkesses, the Visigoths, the Francs, under Charlemagne—Singular penalties of the Middle Ages.
XII. Adultery in the Past and in the Future.
I. Adultery in General.
We will now pass in review some of the principal penalties (the enumeration of all of them would be too long) with which the men of all times and races have attempted to repress adultery. That the human species, and especially the primitive, unpolished human species, is one of the most ferocious of the animal kingdom, stands out strikingly from these investigations; but it is perhaps in regard to adultery that the cruelty and injustice of men are most strongly shown; and by the word “men” here we mean the masculine half of mankind, for generally the only adultery which has been punished has been that of the woman. As for the adultery of the husband, men have been very slow in admitting that it was a wrong of which the wife might complain.
The reason of this revolting partiality is very simple. Diderot makes Orou tell it in his Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville; it is that “the tyranny of man has converted the possession of woman into a property.”[625]
On the whole, our long inquiry has abundantly proved that very generally, in human societies, marriage has been, or is still, a bargain, when not a capture. In all legislations the married woman is more or less openly considered as the property of the husband, and is very often confounded, absolutely confounded, with things possessed. To use her, therefore, without the authority of her owner, is a theft; and human societies have never been tender to thieves. Nearly everywhere theft has been considered a crime much more grave than murder. But adultery is not a common theft. An object, an inert possession, are passive things; their owner may well punish the thief who has taken them, but him only. In adultery, the object of the larceny, the wife, is a sentient and thinking being—that is to say, an accomplice in the attempt on her husband’s property in her own person; moreover, he generally has her in his keeping; he can chastise her freely, and glut his rage on her without any arm being raised for her defence. On the contrary, in letting loose his vengeance the husband will frequently have public opinion and law on his side, when the latter does not take on itself the punishment of the guilty one. But let us listen once more to the eloquent language of facts.
II. Adultery in Melanesia.
In Tasmania and Australia the women were, or are, considered as the property of the men. We have seen that in these countries there is no care for decency or chastity, and that wives are often obtained by brutal rape. Their proprietors also make no scruple of letting them out, lending them, or bartering them; they have the fullest right to use or abuse them. The Tasmanians felt very honoured if a white man borrowed their wives, but they none the less chastised, and very cruelly too, unauthorised infidelities, on the simple ground, as their panegyrist, the Rev. Bonwick, tells us, of their right of ownership.[626] In certain Australian tribes, organised in classes, the women were reputed common to all the individuals of the same class, but all intimate relation with a man of another group was a most grave adultery for both the guilty ones—a social adultery.[627]
In the greater number of New Caledonian tribes the punishment of adultery is left to the care of the injured husband, who kills the thief, if he can, but often contents himself with giving a severe punishment to his wife, sometimes inflicting a sort of scalping. At Kanala, however, adultery has already become a social crime. The man who commits it is led before the chief, judged by the council of elders whom the chief presides over, and executed on the spot.[628] But in one way or another, whether he incurs the social vengeance or that of the offended one—the robbed one, rather—and of his relatives, the New Caledonian who commits adultery risks his life. Sometimes, however, he can get off by paying a fine, after the old German fashion. Often also, in case of adultery committed by a married man, the New Caledonians practise a singular retaliation: the adult men of the village simply violate the wife of the delinquent.[629] The wives of the chiefs being much more sacred than the others, the slightest attempt on the rights of their proprietors risks being cruelly punished. M. Moncelon has seen a man condemned to death merely for having looked at the wife of the chief while she was picking up shells;[630] it was regarded as treason. This ferocity in the repression of adultery is not at all special to Melanesia. With some variations, it is found in all times and in all countries. It is worthy of remark also that even when the adulterous man is punished, it is simply because he has robbed another husband, and not because he has failed in conjugal faith.