The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family

by Ch. Letourneau

I. Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America.

We have seen that in the animal kingdom species are sometimes monogamous, sometimes polygamous, but that in general a gregarious life, a life in association, favours polygamy. Now, man is surely the most sociable of animals, therefore he is much inclined to polygamy, like the great anthropoid apes, with whom our primitive ancestors must have had more than one analogy. We have already spoken of the causes which in human societies of the earliest ages disturbed the normal relation of the sexes, or the approximate equilibrium between the number of men and that of women. We have seen how savage life rapidly uses up the men to such a degree that often, in spite of the custom of female infanticide, there is still an excess of women sufficient to impose polygamy. Although primitive morality may not think in the least of blaming the plurality of wives, it yet happens that this polygamy, to which all men aspire in a savage country, is spontaneously restricted; and, as with chimpanzees, and for the same reasons, it becomes, in fact, the privilege of a small number of the strongest and the most feared, the chiefs, the sorcerers, or the priests, when there are any.

In Australia, for example, the adult men take possession of the women of all ages, and in consequence the greater number of young men cannot become proprietors of a woman before the age of about thirty years.[339]

Enforced celibacy is, besides, softened by the complaisance of the men already provided for, the husbands, if we may so call them, who are generous to the other men, and much more jealous of their rights of property than of their conjugal rights. It is easy to have an understanding with them, and, with the aid of a suitable present, to induce them to lend their wives. In New Caledonia the chiefs and rich men only can indulge in the luxury of polygamy, and in this archipelago the plurality of wives has already the character that it nearly always assumes in a primitive country. If the New Caledonians ardently desire to have several wives it is not generally with a sensual aim, for among the Canaks the genetic appetite is little developed; their reasons are of quite another kind. Neither slavery nor domesticity yet exist in New Caledonia. However, agriculture is already practised there, and this requires hard labour, from which the men, especially the chief men, like to exonerate themselves. Now, it is polygamy that furnishes the Canaks with servile labour, which they cannot do without; it exactly replaces slavery. Therefore, every man, of however little importance he may be, procures a number of women in proportion to the extent of the land he has in cultivation, and also to the figure he must make in the world. We shall find this servile polygamy in many other countries, notably among the Fijians, who resemble the New Caledonians, but at Fiji polygamy had already evolved and become complicated. It was accompanied by concubinage. As we shall see later, this is generally the case. Nowhere do we find men passing abruptly from polygamy to monogamy, and long before arriving at the latter, when first custom and then law restrains and regulates the loose polygamy of the earlier ages, the change is only at first effected in the form; a man has a small number of wives, who, with their children, enjoy certain privileges, but by the side of these titular wives he possesses concubines in greater or less number. In this manner everything is reconciled—morality with sensuality, and the family with the interests of property.

This régime was already in force among the Melanesians of the Fiji Isles, where the chiefs, living in great state, acquired in one way or another three or four hundred women, of whom the greater number filled only the position of servants to the master, and at the same time of concubines, who were at the disposition of the warriors or of the guests. The wives whose children inherited were very few in number. They were daughters of chiefs, and their situation, although less degraded than that of the concubines, was still very humble. Not only did they resign themselves without difficulty to polygamy, but they were subjected to a singular duty—that of rearing for their husband a chosen concubine. The fact is curious, and worth the trouble of narrating. “The bride takes with her a young girl who is still a child, but who promises to be beautiful, and who has been carefully selected from the lower class of the people. It is a virgin destined for her husband. She brings her up with the tenderest solicitude, and when the girl is marriageable, the queen, on an appointed day, undresses her, washes her carefully, and even pours perfumed oil on her hair, crowns her with flowers, conducts her thus naked to her husband, presents her to him, and retires in silence.”[340] Excessive as it seems to us, this absolute resignation is quite natural among savages.

In primitive countries the married woman—that is to say, the woman belonging to a man—has herself the conscience of being a thing, a property (it is proved to her often and severely enough), but she does not think of retaliating, especially in what concerns the conjugal relations. Moreover, as her condition is oftenest that of a slave over-burdened with work, not only does she not resent the introduction of other women in the house of the master, but she desires it, for the work will be so much the less for herself. Thus among the Zulus the wife first purchased strives and works with ardour in the hope of furnishing her husband with means to acquire a second wife—a companion in misery over whom, by right of seniority, she will have the upper hand.[341]

In consequence of this the greater number of the men in Kaffirland have two or three wives, and hence a certain scarcity of feminine merchandise in the country; the young men have difficulty in providing for themselves, and many girls are sold from infancy.[342] The same customs prevail with the Hottentots; and both Kaffirs and Hottentots esteem the monogamic preaching of the Christian missionaries as very impertinent, and on this point both men and women are agreed.[343]

Along the whole course of the Zambesi, says Livingstone, the number of wives are the measure of a man’s riches, and the women are the first to find this quite natural.

It is important to observe that in savage societies the woman could not live independently; for her, celibacy is synonymous with desertion, and desertion would mean a speedy death. This is even the reason of the levirate, of which I shall have to speak later.

As for all the negroes of Africa, whatever the degree of their civilisation or savagery, they have not even a suspicion of the monogamic régime. But, in Africa also, sensuality is only one of the secondary causes of the plurality of wives so strongly desired by all the blacks. Their polygamy is chiefly founded on economic motives. At the Gaboon,[344] says Du Chaillu, the supreme ambition of a man is to possess a great number of wives. Nothing is of more value to him, for they cultivate the ground, and their strict duty is to serve him and furnish him with food. The wife is always purchased from her father at a price agreed on, and often from her earliest infancy. In this case she is placed under the care of the husband’s chief wife. The husband-proprietor does not interfere at all with the agricultural labour executed by the wives; he only requires them to supply him with food. If he has bought them, it is merely as a profitable investment. He consequently treats them as slaves, or as domestic animals, and has no scruple in lashing them with a whip for nothing at all, and thus causing ineffaceable scars. “I have seen very few women,” says Du Chaillu, “who had not traces of this kind on their bodies.”