Woman in Political Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

From this primitive level of comparative equality the Chinese, as they developed their civilisation, passed to a social order in which woman held a very subordinate place. The symbolic representation of capture is so common in Mongolian marriages that one cannot help suspecting that an early capturing of wives may have led to subordination; though one must remember that the symbol occurs in tribes in which woman has great liberty and influence. Whatever the causes may have been, we find woman in a position of abject dependence as soon as literature throws any direct light on Chinese civilisation. It seems to me that the oldest Chinese poetry in the King point to a less unjust régime; but we get our first complete knowledge of the social order in the Confucian literature, and there woman is almost, if not quite, as subject as she is to-day. The girl was only too apt to be sold or exposed in infancy by the poor—a practice on which the moralists always frowned, but which the authorities allow even to-day; though there are now generally public hospitals to receive exposed children. The Chinese girl usually marries at about her twentieth year, and, as virginity is essential (except among the poor), she is carefully guarded under the parental roof. At marriage she passes under the power of a husband, whom she must obey in all things. She brings no dowry, inherits no property, and has no right of divorce. The law even discriminates most unjustly between the sexes in its scale of punishments. She has a very slight education—only a few women having, by some domestic accident, figured in the literary chronicles—and not the least knowledge of public affairs. We may well regret that the great moralists of China did not denounce these inequalities. Six centuries before Christ agnostic moralists like Kung-fu-tse obtained a predominant influence in cultivated China, and the ideals of the nation are still moulded by their teaching. But Kung-fu-tse only commanded woman to obey, and his influence, so beneficial to character generally in China, has done nothing for woman. The progressive spirit died in China, and there has never been since the further advance in culture that was needed to awaken a rebellion of the subject women.

To the east of China, during our Middle Ages, lived a younger and smaller civilisation that has made itself known throughout the modern world. Japan is only partly Mongolian in origin; there seems to be a strain of blood from the southern islands in the nation’s frame. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the cause of woman has run an entirely different course in Japan, and that the later excessive subordination of women was due to Chinese influence. It seems that the more primitive Asiatic feeling of respect for woman was carried on into the early Japanese civilisation. She had no more share in public life generally than elsewhere, but a considerable number of the nobler or more cultivated women stand out in the chronicles. The golden age of native Japanese civilisation and letters corresponds with the worst age of Europe (about 800 to 1200 of the Christian era). The chief English writer on the subject, Mr. Astor, tells us that during that period “a very large and important part of the best literature Japan has produced was written by women.” There are also distinguished women-Mikados and feudal princesses in the early story of Japan.

In the later Middle Ages Chinese culture began to play the reactionary part (in regard to woman) in Japan that Greek culture had done in Italy. The teaching of Kung-fu-tse and the great humanitarian moralists was warmly welcomed by the educated Japanese, and gradually became, as it still is, the sole religion of the class. How finely it shaped the character of Japan on most points—making its way down to nearly every class of the nation through the Samurai—the whole world now knows; but, as I said, it failed entirely to do justice to woman, and so led to the comparatively few blemishes of Japanese life. Woman was to be confined to the home, and that narrow and ill-advised ideal cast its invariable shadow—a great growth of prostitution. Japan had its geishas as Greece had its hetæræ; and the situation was worse in the sense that poor parents of good character made money (from twenty to forty pounds) by sending their daughters to the joshiwara for a few years. On the other hand, of course, no shame was attached to the profession, and the more gifted members sometimes made distinguished marriages and were received at court.

With the recent opening of Japan to modern culture the Chinese ideal is being discredited and the abuses it engendered are being suppressed. Women are receiving ample and rational education; a man is forbidden (since 1875) to sell his wife or daughter; the joshiwaras are being thrust out of sight; and the Western spirit is slowly entering the minds of the women. Japan is plainly falling under the action of the general law. With the growth of higher culture the inequalities of the sexes are found to be artificial, mischievous, and unjust, and the position of woman improves. The main principles of the bushido are not likely to be lost in the growth of Japan, but they are now held in a living and progressive sense. What Kung-fu-tse laid down as the duties of woman may or may not have been right and expedient 2,500 years ago. To-day they have an unmistakable aspect of masculine dictation and despotism. However, it is the culture of the West that has opened the new era in Japan and China and India, and we return to Europe to see how woman fared in what proved, after all, to be the chief theatre of the evolution of civilisation.

CHAPTER VII.
RENAISSANCE AND REVOLUTION

From the broad survey of the world during the Middle Age of the Christian era, which I have made in the last chapter, we pass to the modern phase of woman’s evolution. The trite old proverb, that “the darkest hour is that before the dawn,” is, in this application, a singular and literal truth. From the comparative elevation of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisation, the cause of woman had sunk gradually, with occasional rebounds, to the lowest point it ever touched within the limits of civilisation. Half-a-dozen distinct civilisations lay over the world, cut off from each other by oceans that scorned their frail vessels, or by impassable deserts or mountain-chains; and in all of them the position of woman was one of great and unjust subordination.

At first glance it may seem that the facts are not consistent with the idea of a steady evolution of woman’s position. It must be borne in mind, however, that I merely affirm a development of woman’s political position in close relation to the development of culture, and then the situation offers little difficulty. The civilisations of North and South America, in which woman’s position was relatively better than in Europe, were not suffered to develop fully their native resources. The civilisation of India was constricted in lethal bonds that arrested all growth of culture; nor would it be difficult to show that the position into which its women were forced was largely responsible for the degeneration. China, too, had made the mistake of stereotyping its moral and social standards, though these were much higher, and was content to maintain, instead of developing, its culture. Japan, fascinated by the high moral idealism of China, too readily contracted its formalism and conservatism.

The spirit of progress was to breathe its inspiration first over the surface of Europe, whence it would in time pass over the rest of the earth. From the end of the Middle Ages culture slowly ascended once more to its ancient height, and with its progress the position of woman steadily improved.

It is well known that the re-awakening of Europe was due to a revival of Greek culture; but it is not so often recognised that the inspiration came at two periods, in two different forms. The first period was when the light of the Arabian civilisation in Spain sent its reflection over the Pyrenees and impelled the theological schools of Europe to a broader activity. By the twelfth century there was a ferment of scholastic life in many parts of Europe; but it was a barren employment of the intelligence, isolated at once from inanimate nature and from the social and political life. Architecture and sculpture had been kept alive from Roman days, because the Church had use for them. Natural science was dead—had not outlived its infancy—and social or political science had no place under a theocracy.

Christian scholars were, therefore, greatly stimulated by the broader culture of the Arabs, which their more adventurous members went south to study or learned from the intermediate Jews; and Christian nobles, whose halls and persons still retained much of the coarseness and dirtiness of their ancestry, were quickened by the refined luxury of the Moors and the “Paynims.” By the twelfth century Arabian Spain was deeply influencing Europe, and the advance in the thirteenth century plainly shows the great indebtedness to them. It is as obvious in Thomas Aquinas and Dante as it is in Pope Silvester or Roger Bacon. And there is no dispute that the progressive principles in Arabian civilisation were due to the Greek culture that had made its way to the new nation through Syria.