EUROPEAN WOMEN AND THE SALIC LAW
Several years ago a woman of wealth and social prominence in Kentucky, after pondering some time on the inferior position of women in the United States, wrote a book. In this volume the United States was compared most unfavorably with the countries of Europe, where the dignity and importance of women received some measure of recognition. Women, this author protested, enjoy a larger measure of political power in England than in America. In England and throughout Europe their social power is greater. If a man becomes lord mayor of an English city his wife becomes lady mayoress, and she shares all her husband's official honors. On the Continent women are often made honorary colonels of regiments, and take part with the men in military reviews. Women frequently hold high offices at court, acting as chamberlains, constables, and the like. The writer closed her last chapter with the announcement that she meant henceforth to make her home in England, where women had more than once occupied the throne as absolute monarch and constitutional ruler.
It is true that in some particulars American women do seem to be at a disadvantage with European women. With what looks like a higher regard for women's intelligence, England has bestowed upon them every measure of suffrage except the Parliamentary franchise. In England, throughout the Middle Ages, and even down to the present century, women held the office of sheriff of the county, clerk of the crown, high constable, chamberlain, and even champion at a coronation,—the champion being a picturesque figure who rides into the hall and flings his glove to the nobles, in defense of the king's crown.
In the royal pageants of European history behold the powerful figures of Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth, Mary of Scotland, Christina of Sweden, rulers in fact as well as in name; to say nothing of the long line of women regents in whose hands the state intrusted its affairs, during the minority of its kings. In the United States a woman candidate for mayor of a small town would be considered a joke.
These and other inconsistencies have puzzled many ardent upholders of American chivalry. In order to understand the position of women in the United States it is necessary to make a brief survey of the laws under which European women are governed, and the social theory on which their apparent advantages are based.
In the first place, the statement that in European countries a woman may succeed to the throne must be qualified. In three countries only, England, Spain, and Portugal, are women counted in the line of succession on terms approaching equality with men. In these three countries when a monarch dies leaving no sons his eldest daughter becomes the sovereign. If the ruling monarch die, leaving no children at all, the oldest daughter—failing sons—of the man who was in his lifetime in direct line of succession is given preference to male heirs more remote. Thus Queen Victoria succeeded William IV, she being the only child of the late king's deceased brother and heir, the Duke of Kent.
Similar laws govern the succession in Portugal and Spain, although dispute on this point has more than once caused civil war in Spain.
In Holland, Greece, Russia, Austria, and a few German states a woman may succeed to the throne, provided every single male heir to the crown is dead. Queen Wilhelmina became sovereign in Holland only because the House of Orange was extinct in the male line, and Holland lost, on account of the accession of Wilhelmina, the rich and important Duchy of Luxemburg.
Luxemburg, in common with the rest of Europe, except the countries described, lives under what is known as the Salic Law, according to which a woman may not, in any circumstances, become sovereign.
A word about this Salic Law is necessary, because the tradition of it permeates the whole atmosphere in which the women of Europe live, move, and have their legal and social being.