§ 2. Christianity Woman’s Best Friend.[1]
The majority of women still remain true believers. There appear to be numerous reasons, psychological and educational, for their attitude. Woman is more imaginative, more emotional, and more sensitive to external suggestion than man. As to her education, men, even those who have no religious belief whatever, prefer to keep her in ignorance of their views, partly under a vague notion that unbelief would undermine her virtue and lessen her amiability, and partly because they deem her religious influence an essential element in the upbringing of their children. In addition to all this, woman is taught by the Church that Christianity is her best friend. Prominent prelates of the Church proclaim that “the Gospel has given woman the position she holds to-day.”[2] Nothing could very well be more contrary to fact. One can only suppose that these expounders of the truth are speaking according to the dictates of their hearts, and without having really studied the question, or else that they believe their cause is served by deliberately closing their eyes to inconvenient facts. The question is one of supreme importance, as it is chiefly women who are now the mainstay of the Faith.
People with little or no knowledge of those portions of history that specially bear upon the question are easily deceived. The average woman’s ideas concerning the pre-Christian civilisations are decidedly vague. Her ideas may also be further confused by lurid accounts from the pulpit of the licentiousness prevalent among the upper classes during the earlier and also the last years of the Roman Empire; while nothing is told her about the unrestrained licence of the aristocracy during the Middle Ages, and the degraded condition of the masses during, say, the eighteenth century, “when,” says Sir Walter Besant, “for drunkenness, brutality, and ignorance, the Englishman of the baser kind reached the lowest depth ever reached by civilised man.” Clerics who unconsciously mislead their congregations with this argument cannot be aware of those hard facts of history which render it untenable. For their benefit, and for the benefit of their dupes, let us glance at a few of these facts.
The status of women among the “barbarians” is vouched for by the Romans, their enemies, and therefore unexceptionable witnesses. Nothing impressed the Romans more than the equality of the sexes among the northern nations, the man’s reverence for womanhood, the woman’s sympathy with manhood, and the high code of morality that was the natural outcome of this well-balanced state of society.
At a time when the men of the “Chosen People” were insulting and unjust to their women, heathen women enjoyed a position which their Christian, not to mention their Mohammedan, descendants might well envy. “Polygamy only began to disappear among the Jews in the fifth century B.C., and so curious was the influence of the Old Testament on the early Christian Church that several of the Fathers could not bring themselves to condemn it, and it was not officially suppressed by the Church until A.D. 1060. Luther and the Reformers allowed it even later. Yet polygamy was one of the surest signs of a contempt of woman, and it had been rejected by Greeks, Romans, and barbarians long before the Hebrews began to perceive its enormity.”[3]
“The part women played in old Japan,” writes the founder of the first university for women in Japan,[4] “was very remarkable, especially before the arrival of Buddhism and Confucianism. Men and women were almost equal in their social position. There was then no shadow of the barbarous idea that men were everything and women nothing. Women’s power even in politics was great, and history tells us that there were nine women who ascended the throne in olden times. Women in general were not inferior to men physically, mentally, or morally. They were noted for their bravery, and distinguished themselves on the field of battle. In the literary world they were not less noted for their brilliant productions. Their moral conduct was most blameless, and commanded universal respect. Their natural temperament was cheerful and optimistic, and charmed the sterner sex. Such being the attainments and characteristics of women in olden times, we can fairly believe that they were as well educated as men were, although there were not existing any institutions of instruction for women. This was the springtime of Japanese womanhood, when it blossomed undisturbed, and exerted a strong and beneficial influence on the life of old Japan. The introduction of Buddhism and Confucianism, however, began to create great changes in the position of women. And yet so powerful were women in society when these two religions came to Japan that their rapid spread in our country was due to the earnest endeavours of women.” Speaking of the feudal age, he remarks: “The social environment of the age and the prevalence of Buddhism and Confucianism worked hand in hand to bring about the subjection of women.” The analogy between the experiences of the Japanese lady and her European sister is a striking one. (There is an analogy, too, between the conduct of the Buddhist priests and that of the Roman Catholic priests in the Middle Ages, or even in Southern Italy to-day. “The sins of the present generation of priests,” said Count Okuma in the course of an interview, “are many, and the hells about which they preach are prepared for the like of them.”[5] “The majority of the priests are utterly degenerate and hopelessly ignorant.”[6])
Look on these pictures, one of 2000 B.C. and the other of A.D. 1850:—
Picture I.—Two thousand years before the Christian era “woman was more free and more honoured in Egypt than she is in any country of the world to-day. She was the mistress of the house.[7]... She inherited equally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. She could go where she liked, or speak with whom she liked. She was ‘juridically the equal of man,’ says M. Paturet, ‘having the same rights and being treated in the same fashion’; and the same authority observes that it was not as mother, but as woman, as a being equal in dignity, that she was thus honoured. There was polygamy in theory, but the first wife was generally able to exact conditions in her marriage contract which effectually prevented it. The inscriptions show, says Maspéro, that she remained to the end of her life ‘the beloved of her husband and the mistress of the house.’”[8]
Picture II.—In enlightened Boston, about 1850 (under the English Common Law), woman could not hold any property, either inherited or earned. A woman, either married or unmarried, could hold no office of trust or power. She was not recognised as a citizen. The status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the English Common Law her husband was her lord and master. He had the sole custody of her person, and of her children while minors. He could punish her “with a stick no thicker than his thumb,” and she could not complain against him. He was the owner of all her real estate and of her earnings. She had no personal rights, and could hardly call her soul her own. Her husband could steal her children, rob her of her clothing, neglect to support the family: she had no legal redress.[9]
Not until near the middle of the nineteenth century did that movement commence which has radically improved, and will continue to improve, the position of women. And who took the chief, and, in the initial stage, the only, part in this reform movement? Freethinkers. Who were silent when they were not active opponents? The clergy. “It was just those who most radically abandoned Christianity—Owen, Holyoake, and Mill—that were the most logical and ungrudging in their plea for woman. It was the Mary Wollstonecrafts, Harriet Martineaus, Frances Wrights, George Eliots, Helen Taylors, and Annie Besants that distinguished themselves by fearlessness and unselfishness... The clergy never discovered any injustice to woman; and only one in a thousand could see it when it was pointed out.... All honour to the memory of those clergymen who, like Kingsley and Farrar, protested against the injustice to the full extent of their idea of womanhood.... On the Continent there has been the same story of general clerical opposition and general heterodox support.”[10] “Mr. Pinchwife,”[11] too, has undoubtedly had a hand in the subjection of woman; but we are investigating the grounds for the contention that Christianity has laid on woman a burden of gratitude, and that, if Christianity were overthrown, women would sink into unknown depths of degradation. Do the above-stated facts bear out that contention?