From Mr. Crawley's excellent paper on "Sexual Taboo" I transcribe the following illustrations of this attitude:
In New Caledonia you rarely see men and women talking or sitting together. The women seem perfectly content with the company of their own sex. The men who loiter about with spears in most lazy fashion are seldom seen in the society of the opposite sex.... The Ojebwey, Peter Jones, thus writes of his own people: "I have scarcely ever seen anything like social intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable that the women say little in the presence of the men." The Zulus regard their women with a haughty contempt. If a man were going to the bush to cut firewood with his wives, he and they would take different paths, and neither go nor return in company. If he were going to visit a neighbor and wished his wife to go also, she would follow at a distance. In Senegambia the women live by themselves, rarely with their husbands, and their sex is virtually a clique. In Egypt a man never converses with his wife, and in the tomb they are separated by a wall, though males and females are not usually buried in the same vault.[271]
Amongst the Dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her husband's sphere of action. The Bechuanas never allow their women to touch their cattle; accordingly the men have to plow themselves.... In Guiana no woman may go near the hut where ourali is made. In the Marquesas Islands the use of canoes is prohibited to the female sex by tabu: the breaking of the rule is punished with death. Conversely, amongst the same people tapa-making belongs exclusively to the women: when they are making it for their own headdresses it is tabu for the men to touch it. In Nicaragua all the marketing was done by the women. A man might not enter the market nor even see the proceedings at the risk of a beating.... In Samoa where the manufacture of cloth is allotted solely to the women, it is a degradation for a man to engage in any detail of the process.... An Eskimo thinks it an indignity to row in an umiak, the large boat used by women. The different offices of husband and wife are also clearly distinguished; for example, when he has brought his booty to land it would be a stigma on his character if he so much as drew a seal ashore, and generally it is regarded as scandalous for a man to interfere with what is the work of women. In British Guiana cooking is the province of the women, as elsewhere; on one occasion when the men were compelled perforce to bake some bread they were only persuaded to do so with the utmost difficulty, and were ever after pointed at as old women.[272]
Amongst the Barea, man and wife seldom share the same bed; the reason they give is that the breath of the wife weakens the husband.... The Khyoungthas have a legend of a man who reduced a king and his men to a condition of feebleness by persuading them to dress up as women and perform female duties. When they had thus been rendered effeminate they were attacked and defeated without a blow.... Contempt for female timidity has caused a curious custom amongst the Gallas: they amputate the mammae of the boys soon after birth, believing that no warrior can possibly be brave who possesses them, and that they should belong to women only.... Amongst the Lhoosais when a man is unable to do his work, whether through laziness, cowardice or bodily incapacity, he is dressed in women's clothes and has to associate and work with the women. Amongst the Pomo Indians of California, when a man becomes too infirm for a warrior he is made a menial and assists the squaws.... When the Delawares were denationized by the Iroquois and prohibited from going to war they were according to the Indian notion "made women," and were henceforth to confine themselves to the pursuits appropriate to women.[273]
Women were still further degraded by the development of property and its control by man, together with the habit of treating her as a piece of property, whose value was enhanced if its purity was assured and demonstrable. As a result of this situation, man's chief concern in women became an interest in securing the finest specimens for his own use, in guarding them with jealous care from contact with other men, and in making them, together with the ornaments they wore, signs of his wealth and social standing. The instances below are extreme ones, taken from lower social stages than our own, but they differ only in degree from the chaperonage of modern Europe:
I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here [New Ireland], so I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was about twenty-five feet in length and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance of which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly tabu. Inside the house there were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus tree, sewn quite close together so that no light, and little or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoanut tree and pandanus tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these cages, we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain for at least four or five years without ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief and told him that I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls that I might make them a present of a few beads.... [A girl having been allowed to come out] I then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite dark inside. They are never allowed to come out except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to the cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must remain there until they are young women, when they are taken out and have each a great marriage feast prepared for them. One of them was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and the chief told me that she had been there for five years, but would soon be taken out now. The other two were about eight and ten years old, and they have to stay there for several years longer. I asked if they never died, but they said "No."[274]
They [the Azande] are extremely jealous of their womenfolk, whom they do not permit to live in the same village with themselves. The women's village is generally in the bush, about 200 yards or so distant from that of the chief. Women are never seen in an Azande village, the pathway to their own being kept secret from all outsiders. This system while being something like that observed by the Arabs, has the important distinction that the women are not shut up. They are free to come and go and do what they like, except visit the men's village. In common with the entire native population of Central Africa, the custom among the Zande is that the men do no work that is not connected with the chase or the manufacture of implements. All agriculture is carried on by the women.[275]
From the time of engagement until marriage a young lady is required to maintain the strictest seclusion. Whenever friends call upon her parents she is expected to retire to the inner apartments, and in all her actions and words guard her conduct with careful solicitude. She must use a close sedan whenever she visits her relations, and in her intercourse with her brothers and the domestics in the household maintain great reserve. Instead of having any opportunity to form those friendships and acquaintances with her own sex which among ourselves become a source of much pleasure at the time and advantage in after life, the Chinese maiden is confined to the circle of her relations and her immediate neighbors. She has few of the pleasing remembrances and associations that are usually connected with school-day life, nor has she often the ability or opportunity to correspond by letter with girls of her own age. Seclusion at this time of life, and the custom of crippling the feet, combine to confine women in the house almost as much as the strictest laws against their appearing abroad; for in girlhood, as they know only a few persons except relatives, and can make very few acquaintances after marriage their circle of friends contracts rather than enlarges as life goes on. This privacy impels girls to learn as much of the world as they can, and among the rich their curiosity is gratified through maid-servants, match-makers, peddlers, visitors, and others.[276]
The world of white civilization is intellectually rich because it has amassed a rich fund of general ideas, and has organized these into specialized bodies of knowledge, and has also developed a special technique for the presentation of this knowledge and standpoint to the young members of society, and for localizing their attention in special fields of interest. When for any reason a class of society is excluded from this process, as women have been historically, it must necessarily remain ignorant. But, while no one would make any question that women confined as these in New Ireland and China, as shown above, must have an intelligence as restricted as their mode of life, we are apt to lose sight altogether of the fact that chivalry and chaperonage and modern convention are the persistence of the old race habit of contempt for women, and of their intellectual sequestration. Men and women still form two distinct classes and are not in free communication with each other. Not only are women unable and unwilling to be communicated with directly, unconventionally, and truly on many subjects, but men are unwilling to talk to them. I do not have in mind situations involving questions of propriety or delicacy alone, but a certain habit of restraint, originating doubtless in matters relating to sex, extends to all intercourse with women, with the result that they are not really admitted to the intellectual world of men; and there is not only a reluctance on the part of men to admit them, but a reluctance—or, rather, a real inability—on their part to enter. Modesty with reference to personal habits has become so ingrained and habitual, and to do anything freely is so foreign to woman, that even free thought is almost of the nature of an immodesty in her.
In connection also with the adventitious position of woman referred to in another paper,[277] the feminine interests and habits are set so strongly toward dress and personal display that they are not readily diverted. Women may and do protest against the triviality of their lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual ones, and human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuit voluntarily, but is forced into it in connection with the urgency of practical activities. The women who are obliged to work are of the poorer classes, and have not that leisure and opportunity preliminary to any specialized acquirement; while those who have leisure are supported in that position both by money and by precedent and habit, and have no immediate stimulation to lift them out of it. They sometimes entertain ideas of freedom and plan occupational interests, but they have usually become thoroughly habituated to their unfreedom, and continue to feed from the hand.
Custom lies upon them with a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life.
The usual reasoning as to the ability of women also overlooks the fact that many women are larger and stronger than many men, and some of them possessed of tremendous energy, will, wit, endurance, and sagacity. This type appears in all classes of society, but more frequently in the lower classes and among peasants, both because the natural qualities are less glozed over there by aristocratic custom, and because these classes are bred truer to nature. Unfortunately, the attention of the women of these classes is limited to very immediate concerns; but, on the other hand, they present the true qualities of the female type, and few, I believe, will deny that the peasant woman described below would shine in intellectual walks if fate had called her there: