The Sexes in Science and History / An inquiry into the dogma of woman's inferiority to man

by Eliza Burt Gamble

In his chapter on “The Origin of Marriage by Capture,” this writer says:

That marriage by capture has not arisen from female modesty, is, I think, evident, not only because we have no reason to suppose that such a feeling prevails especially among the lower races of man; but also, firstly, because it cannot explain the mock resistance of the relatives; and, secondly, because the very question to be solved is why it became so generally the custom to win the female not by persuasion but by force.[146]

That female modesty may not account for marriage by capture will scarcely be disputed; it is not impossible, however, that disgust, or aversion, on the part of women, may, in a measure, serve to explain it.

Sir John Lubbock should bear in mind that “choice” in the matter of pairing was an early prerogative of the female; that true affection, a character differing widely from the sex instinct developed in the male was necessary before she could be induced to accept the attentions of the male. While the women among primitive peoples abhorred strangers or foreigners, it may scarcely be said of them that they were too modest to accept them as suitors. Evidently, modesty is not the term to be employed in this connection.

In seeking a reason to explain why force rather than persuasion was used in the consummation of early marriages, we have to remember the wide difference existing between the position of free women and that of those who were obliged to accept the ba’al form of marriage. If, as we have reason to believe, as late as the beginning of the second or Middle Status of barbarism, instead of following the father of her children to his house as his slave, a woman remained in a home owned, or at least controlled jointly by herself, her mother, her sisters, and her daughters, it is plain that a state of female independence existed which was incompatible with female subjection. Add to this the fact that a woman’s children belonged exclusively to herself, or to her family, and that all hereditary honours and rights of succession were traced through females, and we have a set of circumstances which would seem sufficient to explain why force was necessary to bring women into the marital relation.

That the capture of women for wives arose because the independence of free women was a bar to the gratification of the lower instincts in man, can, in the presence of all the facts at hand, scarcely be doubted; and that women submitted to the position of wife only when obliged to do so, or when deprived of liberty and dragged from home and friends, is only too apparent. While modesty as a cause for capture may not account for the resistance of the relations, the sacrifice of a daughter may serve to explain even this knotty point. If the capture of a free and independent girl from her mother by a band of marauders from a hostile tribe for purposes of the most degrading slavery, cannot account for the resistance of the mother-in-law, among most of the so-called lower races, then indeed it is difficult to conjecture any provocation or any set of circumstances which can account for it.

This writer’s assertion that it is “contrary to all experience that female delicacy diminishes with civilization,” proves conclusively that he regards the slight degree of reserve which he is pleased to accredit to women in modern times, as a result of civilization—a civilization, too, which he evidently considers as wholly the result of masculine achievement; in other words, he doubtless thinks that the degree of self-respect observed among women at the present time is the result not of the innate tendencies in the female constitution, but of masculine tuition and training, an assumption which, when viewed by the light which in recent years has been thrown upon the development of the two diverging sex columns, is as absurd as it is arrogant and false. Some time will doubtless elapse before Sir John Lubbock and the class of writers which he represents will be willing to admit that civilization has been possible only because of the checks to the animal nature of the male, which are the natural result of the maternal instinct.

With a system, however, under which for six thousand years every womanly instinct has been smothered, and under which female activity has been utilized in the service of the strong sex instinct developed in males, the outward expression of female delicacy has doubtless diminished; and, in their weakened mental and physical condition, women, dependent not only for all the luxuries but the necessities of life as well, upon pleasing the men, have doubtless given them, blinded as they have become by the conditions of their own peculiar development, some reason for believing that within the female as within the male, passion has been the ruling characteristic.

Sir John Lubbock, as well as other writers who have dealt with this subject, should bear in mind the fact that female delicacy is a subject which can be satisfactorily discussed only in relation to free and independent women; hence the degree of its manifestation at any time during the past six thousand years may bear little testimony concerning the natural tendencies of women, or the condition of society under a system where female influence was in the ascendency.

To those individuals whose minds are not clouded by prejudice, the fact will doubtless be apparent, that the valuable information which has been presented by three of the foremost writers on the subject of the early relations of the sexes and the origin of marriage, instead of serving as evidence to substantiate the fallacious theories which they have propounded, is found to lie in a direct line with the facts and principles which have been put forward by scientists in the theory of natural development.