THE INFLUENCE OF MENSTRUATION ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN.
A question of historical psychology which, so far as I know, has never been fully investigated is the influence of menstruation in constituting the emotional atmosphere through which men habitually view women.[[353]] I do not purpose to deal fully with this question, because it is one which may be more properly dealt with at length by the student of culture and by the historian, rather than from the standpoint of empirical psychology. It is, moreover, a question full of complexities in regard to which it is impossible to speak with certainty. But we here strike on a factor of such importance, such neglected importance, for the proper understanding of the sexual relations of men and women, that it cannot be wholly ignored.
Among the negroes of Surinam a woman must live in solitude during the time of her period; it is dangerous for any man or woman to approach her, and when she sees a person coming near she cries out anxiously: "Mi kay! Mi kay!"—I am unclean! I am unclean! Throughout the world we find traces of the custom of which this is a typical example, but we must not too hastily assume that this custom is evidence of the inferior position occupied by semi-civilized women. It is necessary to take a broad view, not only of the beliefs of semi-civilized man regarding menstruation, but of his general beliefs regarding the supernatural forces of the world.
There is no fragment of folk-lore so familiar to the European world as that which connects woman with the serpent. It is, indeed, one of the foundation stones of Christian theology.[[354]] Yet there is no fragment of folk-lore which remains more obscure. How has it happened that in all parts of the world the snake or his congeners, the lizard and the crocodile, have been credited with some design, sinister or erotic, on women?
Of the wide prevalence of the belief there can be no doubt. Among the Port Lincoln tribe of South Australia a lizard is said to have divided man from woman.[[355]] Among the Chiriguanos of Bolivia, on the appearance of menstruation, old women ran about with sticks to hunt the snake that had wounded the girl. Frazer, who quotes this example from the "Lettres édifiantes et curieuses," also refers to a modern Greek folk-tale, according to which a princess at puberty must not let the sun shine upon her, or she would be turned into a lizard.[[356]] The lizard was a sexual symbol among the Mexicans. In some parts of Brazil at the onset of puberty a girl must not go into the woods for fear of the amorous attacks of snakes, and so it is also among the Macusi Indians of British Guiana, according to Schomburgk. Among the Basutos of South Africa the young girls must dance around the clay image of a snake. In Polynesian mythology the lizard is a very sacred animal, and legends represent women as often giving birth to lizards.[[357]] At a widely remote spot, in Bengal, if you dream of a snake a child will be born to you, reports Sarat Chandra Mitra.[[358]] In the Berlin Museum für Volkerkunde there is a carved wooden figure from New Guinea of a woman into whose vulva a crocodile is inserting its snout, while the same museum contains another figure of a snake-like crocodile crawling out of a woman's vulva, and a third figure shows a small round snake with a small head, and closely resembling a penis, at the mouth of the vagina. All these figures are reproduced by Ploss and Bartels. Even in modern Europe the same ideas prevail. In Portugal, according to Reys, it is believed that during menstruation women are liable to be bitten by lizards, and to guard against this risk they wear drawers during the period. In Germany, again, it was believed, up to the eighteenth century at least, that the hair of a menstruating woman, if buried, would turn into a snake. It may be added that in various parts of the world virgin priestesses are dedicated to a snake-god and are married to the god.[[359]] At Rome, it is interesting to note, the serpent was the symbol of fecundation, and as such often figures at Pompeii as the genius patrisfamilias, the generative power of the family.[[360]] In Rabbinical tradition, also, the serpent is the symbol of sexual desire.
There can be no doubt that—as Ploss and Bartels, from whom some of these examples have been taken, point out—in widely different parts of the world menstruation is believed to have been originally caused by a snake, and that this conception is frequently associated with an erotic and mystic idea.[[361]] How the connection arose Ploss and Bartels are unable to say. It can only be suggested that its shape and appearance, as well as its venomous nature, may have contributed to the mystery everywhere associated with the snake—a mystery itself fortified by the association with women—to build up this world-wide belief regarding the origin of menstruation.
This primitive theory of the origin of menstruation probably brings before us in its earliest shape the special and intimate bond which has ever been held to connect women, by virtue of the menstrual process, with the natural or supernatural powers of the world. Everywhere menstruating women are supposed to be possessed by spirits and charged with mysterious forces. It is at this point that a serious misconception, due to ignorance of primitive religious ideas, has constantly intruded. It is stated that the menstruating woman is "unclean" and possessed by an evil spirit. As a matter of fact, however, the savage rarely discriminates between bad and good spirits. Every spirit may have either a beneficial or malignant influence. An interesting instance of this is given in Colenso's Maori Lexicon as illustrated by the meaning of the Maori word atua.
The importance of recognizing the special sense in which the word "unclean" is used in this connection was clearly pointed out by Robertson Smith in the case of the Semites. "The Hebrew word tame (unclean)," he remarked, "is not the ordinary word for things physically foul; it is a ritual term, and corresponds exactly to the idea of taboo. The ideas 'unclean' and 'holy' seem to us to stand in polar opposition to one another, but it was not so with the Semites. Among the later Jews the Holy Books 'defiled the hands' of the reader as contact with an impure thing did; among Lucian's Syrians the dove was so holy that he who touched it was unclean for a day; and the taboo attaching to the swine was explained by some, and beyond question correctly explained, in the same way. Among the heathen Semites,[[362]] therefore, unclean animals, which it was pollution to eat, were simply holy animals." Robertson Smith here made no reference to menstruation, but he exactly described the primitive attitude toward menstruation. Wellhausen, however, dealing with the early Arabians, expressly mentions that in pre-Islamic days, "clean" and "unclean" were used solely with reference to women in and out of the menstrual state. At a later date Frazer developed this aspect of the conception of taboo, and showed how it occurs among savage races generally. He pointed out that the conceptions of holiness and pollution not having yet been differentiated, women at childbirth and during menstruation are on the same level as divine kings, chiefs, and priests, and must observe the same rules of ceremonial purity. To seclude such persons from the rest of the world, so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall not spread, is the object of the taboo, which Frazer compares to "an electrical insulator to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting, harm by contact with the outer world." After describing the phenomena (especially the prohibition to touch the ground or see the sun) found among various races, Frazer concludes: "The object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times. The general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New Zealand, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. The precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others.... In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question. The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests. The uncleanliness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same supernatural energy, which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or malignant according to its application."[[363]]
More recently this view of the matter has been further extended by the distinguished French sociologist, Durkheim. Investigating the origins of the prohibition of incest, and arguing that it proceeds from the custom of exogamy (or marriage outside the clan), and that this rests on certain ideas about blood, which, again, are traceable to totemism,—a theory which we need not here discuss,—Durkheim is brought face to face with the group of conceptions that now concern us. He insists on the extreme ambiguity found in primitive culture concerning the notion of the divine, and the close connection between aversion and veneration, and points out that it is not only at puberty and each recurrence of the menstrual epoch that women have aroused these emotions, but also at childbirth. "A sentiment of religious horror," he continues, "which can reach such a degree of intensity, which can be called forth by so many circumstances, and reappears regularly every month to last for a week at least, cannot fail to extend its influence beyond the periods to which it was originally confined, and to affect the whole course of life. A being who must be secluded or avoided for weeks, months, or years preserves something of the characteristics to which the isolation was due, even outside those special periods. And, in fact, in these communities, the separation of the sexes is not merely intermittent; it has become chronic. The two elements of the population live separately." Durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood. Not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples. All sorts of precautions must be observed with regard to blood; in it resides a divine principle, or as Romans, Jews, and Arabs believed, life itself. The prohibition to drink wine, the blood of the grape, found among some peoples, is traced to its resemblance to blood, and to its sacrificial employment (as among the ancient Arabians and still in the Christian sacrament) as a substitute for drinking blood. Throughout, blood is generally taboo, and it taboos everything that comes in contact with it. Now woman is chronically "the theatre of bloody manifestations," and therefore she tends to become chronically taboo for the other members of the community. "A more or less conscious anxiety, a certain religious fear, cannot fail to enter into all the relations of her companions with her, and that is why all such relations are reduced to a minimum. Relations of a sexual character are specially excluded. In the first place, such relations are so intimate that they are incompatible with the sort of repulsion which the sexes must experience for each other; the barrier between them does not permit of such a close union. In the second place, the organs of the body here specially concerned are precisely the source of the dreaded manifestations. Thus it is natural that the feelings of aversion inspired by women attain their greatest intensity at this point. Thus it is, also, that of all parts of the feminine organization it is this region which is most severely shut out from commerce." So that, while the primitive emotion is mainly one of veneration, and is allied to that experienced for kings and priests, there is an element of fear in such veneration, and what men fear is to some extent odious to them.[[364]]
These conceptions necessarily mingled at a very early period with men's ideas of sexual intercourse with women and especially with menstruating women. Contact with women, as Crawley shows by abundant illustration, is dangerous. In any case, indeed, the same ideas being transferred to women also, coitus produces weakness, and it prevents the acquisition of supernatural powers. Thus, among the western tribes of Canada, Boas states: "Only a youth who has never touched a woman, or a virgin, both being called te 'e 'its, can become shamans. After having had sexual intercourse men as well as women, become t 'k-e 'el, i.e., weak, incapable of gaining supernatural powers. The faculty cannot be regained by subsequent fasting and abstinence."[[365]] The mysterious effects of sexual intercourse in general are intensified in the case of intercourse with a menstruating woman. Thus the ancient Indian legislator declares that "the wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of a man who approaches a woman covered with menstrual excretions utterly perish."[[366]] It will be seen that these ideas are impartially spread over the most widely separated parts of the globe. They equally affected the Christian Church, and the Penitentials ordained forty or fifty days penance for sexual intercourse during menstruation.