It may be supposed that this man would carry out his purpose when I had left the town, and perhaps with increased severity. But this he would not do. The African is peculiarly superstitious in regard to interruptions. And an interruption so extraordinary in the performance of such an act would be regarded by him as a sign that the act would be attended by misfortune to himself, and he would not repeat it. Nevertheless I thought it well to keep myself carefully informed for some time, so that in case he should act in defiance of superstition he might not be disappointed in his expectation of misfortune.
A man may punish his wife for any misdemeanour or neglect of duty; and many of them bear upon their backs ugly scars and wounds inflicted by the sword of an enraged husband. However abused, it is vain for her to appeal to the town; for it is the town of the husband’s family, and she is the stranger. And, besides, the saying among them is that you must never tell a woman that she is right, lest she despise her husband.
A source of injustice, in the case of polygamy, is the influence of the head-wife; for every man who has several wives recognizes one of them as the favourite, and head over the others. Not that she sits in idleness while the others work; for it is more likely that she is the favourite because she works well and cooks well. But she has every opportunity to tyrannize over the other wives and make their lives a bitter bondage. If they desire anything from the husband there is but little chance of obtaining it unless the head-wife favours the request. In a dispute between two of them the husband’s judgment would depend upon the head-wife. She exercises authority over all his children, even the children of other wives.
Yet, not to leave an exaggerated impression, it must be said that there is much less quarrelling than one would expect between wives of the same husband. The African wife also has far more independence in actual life than their theories allow. She owns the garden, and her husband is dependent upon her for his food. If she runs away she leaves him much the poorer; at least there is always a risk that he will not recover either her or the dowry. And, then, he is mortally afraid of her tongue, her chief resource; and well he may be; for in an outburst of passion it is the tongue of a fiend, and scorches like hell fire. Frequent storms of unrestrained passion give to the face of the woman of middle age a permanent expression of weakness and dissipation. She is the victim of so much oppression and cruel wrong that one would like to depict her as innocent; for it is human nature to attribute virtue to those who suffer. But it most be confessed that the African woman is at least as degraded as the man. He is more cruel; but she is more licentious.
It is exceedingly difficult to learn the attitude of the African woman towards polygamy. Still, I believe it is contrary to her natural instinct. I have known instances of heathen women cursing Christian husbands because they would not marry other wives, and it happens—though infrequently—that women leave their husbands for this reason. But in all such cases I believe that the woman acts upon the impulse of some lower motive and at the expense of her better self. In civilized lands are there not those who marry for wealth or social position, even without love? In Africa, wealth and social position are represented by a plurality of wives. The wife of a monogamist is a “nobody,” and, besides, has an unusual amount of work to do. But I believe that the majority of women in Africa have in them enough of the true woman to hate polygamy. Their fables and folk-lore are full of this hatred.
Certain phases of polygamy one cannot discuss frankly. Children are not weaned until the age of two or three years. During this period of lactation the husband and wife observe absolute continence in regard to each other. But he has other wives and this continence imposes no restraint upon him. And to the woman it is a source of so much unhappiness and jealousy that she frequently refuses to bear children, and resorts to abortion. This practice of abortion, and its relation to polygamy, is curiously overlooked by those who advocate polygamy for Africa. It is doubtless more common in some tribes than in others.
But while polygamy is obnoxious to the woman’s instinct, it is impressed upon her that the instinct is selfish and ought to be suppressed, and that it is right to be willing to share her husband with other wives. It is just at this point that the teaching of Christianity makes so strong an appeal to the African woman; and her response is whole-hearted. It truly “finds” her. I know women in Gaboon who have suffered inexpressible humiliation and grief when their husbands took other wives, and who immediately separated from them and lived their remaining years in widowhood.
The Orungu tribe, immediately south of Gaboon, from whom I often obtained workmen, have a peculiarly large body of stories and legends, which form a kind of commentary on all their customs. The following is an example:
Once upon a time there was a very great king, Ra-Nyambia, who had many sons and daughters, and whose servant was Wind. Now, one of this king’s daughters, Ogula, had an ngalo. The ngalo is a very powerful fetish. Some favoured persons are born with it. It is never acquired by others. Ogula, when she became a “whole” woman, declared that she was not willing to have a husband who would have other wives, but must have one who would be all her own. She waited a long time, but found no man who was fit to be her husband. Then she consulted her ngalo, who told her what to do. One day shortly after this, when her father’s people were going hunting, she said to them: “Find for me a wild goat, and do not kill it, but bring it to me alive.”
So the hunters brought her a wild goat; and when Ogula saw it she said: “It is well.”