We find no difficulty in explaining all these facts. In early civilisation a husband has often extreme rights over his wife. The seducer encroaches upon a right of which he is most jealous, and with regard to which his passions are most easily inflamed. Adultery is regarded as an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an offence against property.[175] It is said in the ‘Laws of Manu’ that “seed must not be sown by any man on that which belongs to another.”[176] How closely the seducer is associated with a thief is illustrated by the fact that among some peoples he is punished as such, having his hands, or one of them, cut off.[177] Yet even among savages the offence is something more than a mere infringement of the right of ownership. The Kurile Islanders, says Krasheninnikoff, have an extraordinary way of punishing adultery: the husband of the adulteress challenges the adulterer to a combat. The result is generally the death of both the combatants; but it is held to be “as great dishonour to refuse this combat as to refuse an invitation to a duel among the people of Europe.”[178] The passion of jealousy, the feeling of ownership, and the sense of honour, thus combine to make the seducer’s act an offence, and often a heinous offence, in the eyes of custom or law; and for the same reasons as in other offences the magnitude of guilt is here also influenced by the rank of the parties concerned. Modern legislation, on the other hand, does not to the same extent as early law and custom allow a man to give free vent to his angry passion; it regards the dishonour of the aggrieved husband as a matter of too private a character to be publicly avenged; and the faithfulness which a wife owes her husband is no longer connected with any idea of ownership. Moreover, the severity of earlier European laws against adultery was closely connected with Christianity’s abhorrence of all kinds of irregular sexual intercourse; and secular legislation has more and more freed itself from the bondage of religious doctrine.
[175] See, e.g., Casalis, Basutos, p. 225; Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 77; Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 5; Letourneau, L’évolution de la morale, p. 154 sq.
[176] Laws of Manu, ix. 42.
[177] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 130.
[178] Krasheninnikoff, History of Kamschatka, p. 238.
Among some savage peoples it is the seducer only who suffers, whilst the unfaithful wife escapes without punishment.[179] Jealousy, in the first place, turns against the rival, and the seducer is the dishonourer and the thief. But, as a general rule, the unfaithful wife is also looked upon as an offender, and the punishment falls on both. She is discarded, beaten, or ill-treated in some way or other, and not infrequently she is killed. Often, too, she is disfigured by her enraged husband, so that no man may fall in love with her ever after.[180] Indeed, so strong is the idea that a wife belongs exclusively to her husband, that among several peoples she has to die with him;[181] and frequently a widow is prohibited from remarrying either for ever or for a certain period after the husband’s death.[182] In ancient Peru widows generally continued to live single, as “this virtue was much commended in their laws and ordinances.”[183] Nor is it in China considered proper for a woman to contract a second marriage after her husband’s death, and a lady of rank, by doing so, exposes herself to a penalty of eighty blows.[184] “As a faithful minister does not serve two lords, neither may a faithful woman marry a second husband”—this is to the Chinese a principle of life, a maxim generally received as gospel.[185] Among so-called Aryan peoples the ancient custom which ordained sacrifice of widows survived in the prohibitions issued against their marrying a second time.[186] Even now the bare mention of a second marriage for a Hindu woman would be considered the greatest of insults, and, if she married again, “she would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her.”[187] In Greece[188] and Rome[189] a widow’s remarriage was regarded as an insult to her former husband; and so it is still regarded among the Southern Slavs.[190] The early Christians, especially the Montanists and Novatians, strongly disapproved of second marriages by persons of either sex;[191] a second marriage was described by them as a “kind of fornication,”[192] or as a “specious adultery.”[193] It was looked upon as a manifest sign of incontinence, and also as inconsistent with the doctrine that marriage is an emblem of the union of Christ with the Church.[194]
[179] Westermarck, op. cit. p. 122. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 133 (Kandhs). Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 189 sq. Scaramucci and Giglioli, ‘Notizie sui Danakil,’ in Archivio per l’antropologia e la etnologia, xiv. 26.
[180] Westermarck, op. cit. p. 122.
[181] Ibid. p. 125 sq. Supra, [i. 472 sqq.]
[182] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 127 sqq.