Woman in Political Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

I have already observed that modern science is disposed to seek the origin of most of the Western civilisations in the ferment of tribes that filled the south-western offshoot of Asia some thousands of years before Christ, and that these tribes held very varying attitudes in regard to their women. The Hebrews probably represent one of these Semitic tribes in the north of the region between Babylonia and Palestine. From the southern desert, or the steppe-region leading to the desert, they invade Palestine, assimilate its civilisation, and evolve into the monarchy with which we are so familiar. It seems that the Hebrews came of one of those Bedouin tribes that kept their women in close subjection, and the later Judaic law preserved the tradition of the time when a boy meant a new spear to the tribe, and a girl only a future breeder of men. The wife was virtually the property of her husband, and could not inherit. He could divorce her when he willed, and had a right to her unconditional obedience. Few Hebrew women broke through this rigid system of subordination and left their names in the growing literature.

In the course of time the Hebrew sacred books, with a few additions, became the absolute authority of life and conduct in Europe, and the Judaic ideal came into collision with the later Roman ideal. I have shown elsewhere that all the Christian leaders in the Latin Empire—Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose—insisted sternly on the subjection of woman, denounced her as the agent of humanity’s downfall, and gave only too serious ground for a revival of the old contempt for her. When these abler leaders had passed away and the age of mediocrity set in, we find bishops seriously doubting whether woman has a soul, refusing her the sacrament on the same terms as men, and rejecting her testimony in a court of justice. From the Gospels certainly no support can be derived for this contemptuous attitude, but it was one of the points of the Old Testament that had not been expressly repealed, and the harsh and dominating language of St. Paul fully supported it. It would be idle to question the extent of the influence that St. Paul and the Old Testament and the great Fathers of the Church had on the young nations that were now settling down in Europe. Professor Karl Pearson has suggested that the northern tribes embraced Christianity precisely because it taught the subjection of women. We must, at all events, acknowledge that it displaced the old traditions with a lamentable theory of woman’s inferiority.

During the “age of iron” (fifth to tenth century), therefore, the cause of woman was lost, and Europe entered upon the second phase of the subordination of woman, from which it is only emerging to-day. The life of the Middle Ages is so vast and varied a subject that different writers will, according to their prepossessions, give the most contradictory pictures of it. For most thoughtful women it will be enough to reflect that the position won by the women of Rome was obviously lost, or they would not again be laboriously assailing the barriers raised about their lives fifteen centuries later; and most of the recent women-writers—Mrs. Cady Stanton, Mrs. Gage, Mdlle. Chauvin, etc.—are very emphatic on the point. But I will try to sum up the changes in a few broad statements.

Socially, woman became once more absolutely subject to her husband. In the new marriage ceremony she pledged herself to blind obedience to his orders; and both Church and State gave him the power to flog her when he thought fit, and for a long time gave him the power to sell or dismiss her. In courts of justice she was put on a level with the despised Jew or the ancient slave; though there were courts—in Switzerland, for instance—that would generously accept the testimony of two women as being equal to that of one man. Prostitution and concubinage spread as they had never done before. Clerical bodies and municipalities owned brothels in many places, and not even Corinth or Athens at their worst had made so open a parade of women of that class. The newly-wed wives of the serfs were the property of the feudal lord for a few days. In the better class the women could own no property, as a rule were closely confined to the house, and were generally cut off completely from such culture as there was. To political influence they had no pretension. High-placed women won the irregular and dangerous power they have done in all ages, but otherwise they were more effectually shut out of public life than ever. Anglo-Saxon England offered a fine exception in this respect. Women, whether abbesses or widows, could rule their lands, and even succeed to hereditary administrative offices. But the coming of the Normans reduced the English woman to the general level of economic and political dependence.

All that can be set in relief against this dark picture is that women might obtain power and culture as abbesses of the larger convents, that at certain periods noble lay-women acquired learning, and that until about the thirteenth century women entered largely into the industries of the towns. But the number of women who stand out in the chronicles before the Renaissance for either learning or influence is extremely small, and serves only to deepen the general gloom of their situation. A St. Bridget or St. Hildegard, a Matilda or a Heloise, is but one figure advancing into the light out of obscure millions of down-trodden women. And the great share of women in the early medieval industries did not alter materially their position of subordination. The independent woman had too many dangers to face—the universal violence and license, the brutalities of the ducking-stool and scold’s bridle, the appalling fate of the “witch”—to encourage rebellion against the received ideal. Generally speaking, woman sank in the Middle Ages to a position lower than she had ever before occupied in a civilised community.^[10]

At some date in the remote future, when the story of woman’s disabilities is ended the world over, the historian will probably regard that millennium as the darkest age for woman in the whole long story. A curious hesitation seems to have come over the fates. Up to this point the main stream of human development had flowed steadily towards Europe. The dying civilisations of Asia and Africa had made way for Greece, and Greece had turned the stream into Italy, to be spread from there in fertile flood over half the soil of Europe. Then civilisation almost disappeared in Europe, and for a time it looked as though the line of development would be taken up by some other race. Either unknown or very dimly known to Europe there were civilisations growing far out on the frontiers of its world that could very well outstrip it, as it floundered in the morass of the Middle Ages; and we may glance shortly at the position of woman in those distant races before we come to the awakening of Europe.

In the as yet unknown continent of America, into which some branch of the Mongolians had pushed before the northern land-bridge broke, two races had, by the Middle Ages, reached the upper stages of barbarism, and were climbing to civilisation. Since it is certain that Mexico and Peru developed quite independently of Europe, and probably independently of each other, their resemblance to medieval Europe is remarkable. They were feudal monarchies, with very powerful bodies of clergy, so that the general conditions were not favourable to woman. Education in Mexico was advanced, but under purely religious control, and vast numbers of the girls passed into the celibate state in the innumerable nunneries, to teach and embroider and capture little nuns in their turn. The girl who married (at from eleven to eighteen years of age) did not choose her partner, and passed from obedience to her father under the equal authority of her husband. She was not treated harshly, and polygamy was very exceptional. But the law imposed unequal punishment on her for unfaithfulness, and she was the greater sufferer by that ghastly evil of the Mexican religion—human sacrifice. In Peru the position of woman was generally better. For the great mass of the population there was little freedom, and the woman had few relative disabilities. She worked in the fields with the men, under a régime of what one might call highly centralised feudalism, and seems to have been respected in the home. All political power was kept in the hands of the Incas, who had immense harems, and who married their sisters even more frequently than had been done in Egypt.

From the little knowledge we have of the position of woman in these native American civilisations, it seems that they were passing through a normal phase of development. The primitive tribes that lived beyond their frontiers, and exist to-day, inform us of an earlier stage, in which the woman was oppressed. On the other hand, there are in the Spanish writers not obscure traces that the moral sense of Mexico and Peru was advancing (especially in regard to human sacrifices), and no doubt the problem of woman’s position would in time have emerged. But the Spanish troops, with their superior weapons, quickly made an end of these interesting western polities, and reduced nearly the whole continent to the condition of a poor imitation of Spanish culture. I need only add that in the more advanced of the Spanish-American republics to-day—Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, etc.—women have begun to take a keen and prominent interest in the culture and public affairs of their country.

When we cross over to the far east of the medieval map of the world, we find three civilisations that we must rank with the Europe of the Middle Ages. Of India little need be said. There is hardly a country in the world where woman is so drastically subordinated, and it is fairly clear that the process of subjection has in this case increased with the advance of the race. The comparatively good position that woman holds in so many of the lower Asiatic tribes suggests that at the beginning of Indian history she had the same respect and influence. Our earliest positive knowledge is in the Vedic poems, which suggest to us an “Aryan” race fighting their way down from the hills to the north-west, and gradually occupying the more fertile plains. A simple pastoral folk, with patriarchal features, they divided the labour equitably between the sexes, and apparently treated their women with respect. Monogamy seems to have been the rule, and such later practices as the burning of widows were quite unknown. With the settlement of the race woman’s position steadily sank. Whether it was that the practice of war brought in subject-wives and polygamy, or that the rise of the Brahmanic priesthood and the caste system altered the old ideal, we certainly perceive a degeneration towards the later contempt of woman. The advent of Buddha gave little help to woman. Though most of the resources of his order came from women, he, like all monastic leaders, if not all ascetics, made no effort to improve her position in what ascetic literature calls “the world.” And when the Brahmanic religion finally prevailed she sank lower than ever, and, amid all the glorious art of ancient India, the practices of polygamy, child-marriage, seclusion, and suttee spread over the land. In this there is no real reversal of the law we formulated. The highest culture of India was purely artistic, and such culture never helps woman. The conscience and intelligence of the nation were stifled in the endless wrappings and cerements of a formal and unprogressive religion.

The development of the other great Asiatic civilisation, the Chinese, was in many ways remarkable. As in India, the drastic subordination of the women does not seem to be merely a heritage from a barbaric past, since the lower Mongolian tribes generally show little tendency to it. Not only the Indo-Chinese tribes I mentioned in an earlier chapter, but the more northern Mongolians, grant their women much liberty and respect. Huc found the women of Tartary very vigorous and independent; and another early traveller, La Pérouse, found one of the most primitive of Mongolian tribes, in the bay of Castries, with a remarkably good character and a very generous and equable treatment of their women. Almost the only one of the lower Mongolian peoples to treat their women harshly are the Thibetans, and in their case the injustice is mainly confined to Lhassa. In that city a woman cannot go out unless she smears her face with a dark, gluey composition. There, however, the influence of monks and priests clearly explains the anomaly.