The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/2. Historical Review of the Legal Position of Women
HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE LEGAL POSITION OF WOMEN.
As a rule history considers women only in so far as they occasionally exert an apparent influence upon the history of men. The feminine half of humanity is usually overlooked like a superfluous appendage. The women are weak, they are silent, they patiently suffer, they do not rebel, and that is sufficient to expose them to disregard, to make them historically irresponsible. It would be of great interest to write a history from a radical point of view of the position which women have occupied among the different nations and in different ages in a social, political, and literary respect. I would undertake to do this work if I were sufficiently well read, and if the necessary material were not wanting to me as well as the leisure to make exhaustive use of the latter. I shall therefore content myself with giving from scant notes and recollections a brief survey, in order at least to uphold the leading idea that the position of women, dependent upon the general state of civilization and liberty of a people, can become an entirely just and honorable one only in that distant future in which the subordination of the right of brutal strength to the right of humane thought will have become a reality.
In the historical retrospect, in which we cannot always proceed chronologically, but merely according to the stages of civilization of various nations, we begin with the savage. It will be immaterial for the purpose whether we take examples of the Africa of to-day, or whether we trace the oldest nations of history back to their savage state. Savages are very much alike everywhere, and that all nations have at one time been in the savage state even those do not doubt who believe that man has been placed ready made into the world by a "God," the sum of all wisdom and civilization. To the savage physical strength is synonymous with right, and since the man has by nature more physical strength and aggressive passion than woman, the submission of the latter to the former is self evident. (Among animals nature seems to have equalized this relation somewhat, as the females of some species are larger than the males.) The savage associates the woman with himself because his sexual needs require her, and he controls her because he is the stronger. This control is carried to such an extent that the body of the woman is actually treated as a piece of furniture, and in some places is even guarded against foreign touch by some barbaric tailoring. With most savages the woman, besides being a concubine, is at the same time the slave and beast of burden of the man. Polygamy is likewise in accordance with this state of barbarity; polyandry,[1] on the other hand, is found rarely, — rather as a consequence of the presumption of the stronger, adultery is almost everywhere treated as a crime only on the part of women, while masculine adultery does not exist at all. But in spite of polygamy a selection is to be observed even among savages, a distinction of and temporary union with a single person. Rousseau, it is true, disputes this by maintaining that among Savages every woman had the same value; it can be shown, however, by facts as well as by à priori demonstration that even the rudest savage has an eye and discrimination for superiority and qualities suitable to him in this or that woman, and feels the need of uniting himself more closely with the one he prefers. The analogy of animals also points that way, as there is among many animals an entirely exclusive conjugal relation at least during the breeding period. Why special stress is laid on these facts will become clear in the discussion of marriage.
The savage state is followed by the semi-civilized period, in which man settles down and forms a family life, and in accordance with it the woman plays the part of a member of the family, but of course without any independence whatever. On the contrary, in spite of her position in the family, she is deprived of all liberty, confined in a harem, and jealously watched. She exchanges open slavery for secret slavery; she remains now as before the tool of the man, only according to more definite rules and laws of external etiquette. In the harem the preference of individuals, already apparent among savages, becomes more strongly marked, although here also it does not lead to a real monogamic union. This state of things is, however, specifically oriental. But the degradation of women in the orient was so manifold that their social position cannot be designated by one word. With the Babylonians the marriageable maidens were taken tothe market, examined by the men like any other ware, and bid for. It was also customary in the temple of Mylitta that every woman must extend her favors to strangers for money, which went into the pockets of the priests. Zoroaster abolished polygamy among the Persians after the institution of the harem had reached its highest development. It is well known that polygamy and traffic with women existed also among the Jews. The Mosaic price for a pretty woman was about five dollars. If the man wished to get rid of the woman he threw her out of the house.
In the next stage we find the woman as independent housewife, with more liberty of action, and more highly respected. The Homeric descriptions show this stage in its best light. The woman is no longer under surveillance, as in the harem, where the man visits her when it suits his pleasure and fancy, but she has also free access to the man. She has control of the department of the interior, is the hostess of the house, and does the honors in receiving guests. But in spite of this more favored position, the rights which are granted woman are rooted in the interests and the will of the man, not in a true ethical recognition. The dependence of women was, on the contrary, still so great in this stage that the sons had the power to remarry their mothers to whomsoever they pleased; men could keep concubines as they liked, etc.
A further development marks the transition of private control of woman to public or political control of her. In this respect the Spartans took the lead with a truly classical despotism. With them every regard for nature, for humanity, for morality, for liberty disappeared before the regard for that State which Lycurgus seems to have called to life in order to show that mankind could furnish an energetic mind with the material for the realization of every extravagance. Women served the Spartans only for the bearing of children, of young Spartans. If children could be brought into the world by a mill or some other kind of machine, the Spartans would have abolished women, and introduced in their place State child factories. According to the purely political or patriotic purpose, which called for merely warlike manhood and coarse republican insensibility, the women received a thoroughly masculine training, and in order to guard them against the danger of effeminating the men and of occupying them too much by their charms, they were trained after their marriage for the manufacture of wool, and treated like factory implements. Woman, as such, did not exist in Sparta; her femininity was rather a fault, and this fault was corrected through barbarity. Marriage proper was unknown to the Spartans. The men could visit the women only for afew minutes; the object was merely to beget children. Weak or old men, by virtue of their right of control over their wives, brought them good breeders, and if any one was especially pleased with a woman he would ask, not her, but her husband, for the permission to beget a "noble child" with her — all this was done for State purposes, which had crowded out every other consideration, and would not allow the question of the existence of an independent inclination on the part of woman to be raised at all.
The Spartans furnish the classic example of that error which sacrifices to the enthusiasm for a political end, the end of all political endeavor, namely humanity, because they neglected to take human nature into their council. As long as the world stands women have been the victims of this error on the one side, and of Sultanic brutality on the other, and it is doubtful whether they have more reason to complain of the Sultans or of the Spartans.
The treatment of women took on a milder and more humane form with the more civilized and more æsthetical Athenians. But a real appreciation of woman was unknown even among that people who adored the ideal of the fair sex in the goddess of love, who had the most humane conception of love among all the nations, whose mythology developed into the most beautiful and most attractive romances of love, and who often depicted in their poetry the feminine excellences with the clearest perception. Also among the Athenians the State was in a certain sense the despot; the State which received especial weight by contrast with foreign foes, was the worldly deity to which everything was sacrificed except its priests, and these priests were, of course, the men, the women were the victims. The Athenians also regarded the State as an end, not as means to an end; they made it an object of religion rather than the mere framework of the body social. This State, this republic, was moreover continually called into question, now by native, now by foreign tyrants. But who was to save the State, in whose hands was placed its safety? In the hands of those whom nature had endowed with the requisite strength, the warlike passion. Who were they? The men! Consequently — women were less able, less privileged, less worthy than men. This sort of logic develops very naturally in practice, even if it is not expressly established, and the "right of the stronger" is the whole secret of it.
True enough, women who distinguished themselves by their intellect or virtue were highly respected. among the Athenians, and the appreciation of the most excellent of men was assured them, But the Aspasias were not numerous, even in Athens, and such exceptions as social life offered did not mitigate the unfavorable position in which the law and public opinion placed woman. Already the classification which was made of them (as partly also of men) can give an idea of how dependent and devoid of rights they were. They consisted, as we know, of three classes, the slaves, the freed women (out of which class the courtesans generally were recruited), and the free born Athenian ladies. It is self-evident that the first two classes occupied a subordinate position also with regard to the last class. But with regard to the men even these free born ladies were semi-slaves. The laws of Solon furnish the best estimate of their position. They acknowledge neither any right nor any inclination on the part of the woman. Fathers, brothers, and guardians could promise their daughters, sisters, and wards to whom they pleased. The relatives of rich heiresses had a legal right to ask them in marriage, in order that the riches might remain in the family. If a man died childless, his nearest relatives were entitled to his property. Women, daughters and sisters, who were discovered in a dishonorable act, could be sold as slaves by their fathers and brothers. Irregularities on the part of men were, by the way, not considered as adultery. Solon says: "Take a single legitimate, free born daughter for your wife, in order to beget children." With this he exhausted his whole conception of marriage and conjugal morality. He might have said: "According to our laws and ideas, the begetting of legitimate children is limited to the marriage relation between the man and the free born woman; aside from this, however, the man can keep as many concubines as he likes. But the woman would have to pay for any outside love affair with her liberty or her life."
It was also customary for a time, among the Athenians, to lend their wives. Thus even Socrates is said to have lent his Xantippe to Alkibiades, for which, indeed, according to the reports that are current about this lady, he may not have had need of great self-denial.
These, with regard to women, truly barbaric Solonic laws originated for the most part in patriarchal conceptions. According to these, among other things, marriages were allowed inside the family, in case they were sanctioned or ordered by the patriarch; and the power of the head of the family was so great that the father could decide over the life or death of his new-born children, or could deprive them completely of all family rights.
It is of interest to take note here of the view the Greek writers held of women and their position, as well as of marriage. I will, therefore, interpose a few significant passages, not indeed from the poets, but from political and_ philosophical prose writers.
Demosthenes says very briefly and with a true Solonic spirit: "The married woman is an instrument for the procreation of legitimate children and the management of the household." The cynical, statesmanlike disdain to which the greatest orator gives utterance in these words throws a very clear light on the then existing conceptions of the rights and dignity of woman. Demosthenes stands on a level with Diogenes, who called woman a necessary evil.
Thucydides is of the opinion that "those wives deserve the highest praise of whom neither good nor bad is spoken outside of the house" — a domestic plant, so to speak, a vegetating stay-at-home, who will serve her husband as an instrument as well as possible, but is not to concern herself about anything else. This sentiment of Thucydides has often since been echoed, and those who did so have entirely overlooked that they repeated in one word a stupidity and a barbarity.
Xenophon thinks rather humanely of women, but still they appear to him as beings whom men, out of regard or pity, must take into their care. He thus expressed his opinion of their inferiority in his "Symposium": "Zeus has left the women whom he had loved behind him in the class of the mortals, but the men to whom he was devoted he exalted among the gods." Perhaps this proof admits of a refutation by the gallantry that it was no longer necessary to promote lovable women among the gods.
Aristoteles has a higher opinion of woman than Xenophon. He says among other things: "The ruling intelligence is to be attributed to man as the leader. All the other virtues are common to both sexes. Woman is subordinate to man, but still free, and the right to give good counsel (!) cannot be denied her. She furnishes the material which man utilizes."
"Woman is not at all to be regarded as a means for the furtherance of man's selfish ends."
"Husband and wife ought to work together for their support. They go hand in hand, they both accumulate property, their union rests on common benefits and pleasures."
Aristoteles demands that the husband should stake his possessions and his life in the defence of his wife, and should stand by her faithfully and firmly unto death. With regard to chastity he imposes the same obligation on the husband as on the wife.
Most of all, Plato occupied himself with woman. He brings forth much that is contradictory and extravagant. The most important of that which comes under consideration here is condensed in the following, which occasionally gives evidence of so coarse a conception of the sexual relations that it is hard to understand how the poetical Plato could have come by it.
According to him, man and woman share alike in the highest principle, reason, but the powers and capacities under the control of reason are physically as well as psychically weaker in woman, and she is therefore less able to approach perfection, which is the result of the harmony of all forces. (The logic of this proof can perhaps be made plain by the following example. The hawk and the dove are both equally intelligent, but the beak and the claws of the dove are much weaker than those of the hawk. It follows that the dove is less perfect as a dove than the hawk is as a hawk.) It is clear that Plato does not apply the human or feminine standard to the qualities of woman, but the masculine, a senseless presumption which even to-day inspires the judgment of most men. Plato's point of view is shown even still more plainly in the fancy (in the "Phædrus") that men who have led a dissolute life are changed into women after death — a poor compliment to the sex of whom Goethe says: "The eternal womanly draws us on."
In the "Republic," moreover, Plato says: "Women are physically somewhat weaker than men, but they are otherwise equally adapted to all occupations. In order that they may become able to use all their faculties they must receive the same education as boys, join in the common exercises, not modestly cover up their bodies, etc., etc. I demand the same end and aim for women as for men." (It remains only for Plato to declare it to be the end and aim of woman to become a man. Perhaps it is he who has brought about the mistaken view that it is the purpose of the emancipation of woman to deny femininity and to imitate men.) For the rest, women must be entirely common property, no woman can belong to a single individual. (Thus women are the absolute property of the men.) Moreover, no son is allowed to know a particular father. All must dine together publicly and live together. The State — and that is the non plus ultra of brutality — officially brings about the pairing of such persons as it deems the most fit for the procreation of children. When generation has taken place they separate again (a regular institution of stirpiculture). The children are reared by the State without being known by their mothers, so that these sometimes nurse their own, sometimes the children of others in the common nursery. In the "Republic" of Plato there is no private property and no private interest. He is the grandsire of the communists. In another place he advocates different principles.
The above extracts show that even the most excellent writers of the most humane people of history have not attained to an entirely worthy conception, to an entirely free view, and to complete justice with regard to the nature and position of woman. Even Aristotle, who, among all, has laid down the most worthy principles, reaches, as it were, only a constitutional point of view, from which he concedes to woman an "advisory" counsel to governing man and a share in the "property," without even thinking of such a thing as an independent right for her. She is considered everywhere only as the property or appendage of man, nowhere as a sovereign being. They all judge woman only from the standpoint of men, statesmen, Greeks, not as human beings. But woman is the genuine representative of the purely human which must not be modified by State relations and nationalities.
When Greek liberty had vanished, the regard for women and the taste for "adoring" them increased. But this adoration was false, and a product of degenerate conditions. Men had no longer their former importance, consequently women came to be more equal to them; men were now no longer occupied as much with the State, consequently they could devote themselves more to women; men were now deprived of their public calling, consequently they looked for compensation in the domestic world. Thus also as playthings of the courts and favorites of despots, women are offered rich opportunities in monarchies to achieve a false importance through intrigues and in the relation of mistresses. Upon them falls the favor of the despot, and from them glory and favors radiate downwards. Thus the exaltation of women naturally has for its opposite pole the humiliation of men, and these, in such humiliation, as naturally transform their former contempt of women into that extravagant lovecult and senseless gallantry which spread from Alexandria over the Grecian world.
From the Greeks we proceed to the Romans. These treated women in a truly Spartan manner, only with a more glaring stamp of severity and brutality, in accordance with their severe character. In the most flourishing time of the Roman republic woman was little more than the slave of man. [2] She was completely his property; he acquired her through actual purchase or prescription. Whatever she had or earned belonged to him. He could sit in family court over her, and even punish her with death.
Cato, the elder, expresses his respect for the fair sex in these words: "If every head of a family would strive to keep his wife in thorough subjection according to the example of his ancestors, we should have less trouble publicly with the entire sex."
Among the Romans the adulteress could be killed on the spot by her husband; on the part of the man adultery was no crime. Later, however, this was changed. Under Augustus the adultery of the man was punished, as well as that of the woman. It suited the empire in a certain sense to take the side of woman. It may also have been expected that severity toward the degenerate men might prove a means of checking the impending immorality.
Upon the era of the republic followed the era of the emperors and of immorality, perhaps the greatest that ever existed. Men now sought compensation for their lost liberties and for their interrupted political life in all manner of debaucheries, in which the emperors took the lead from sheer ennui. For debaucheries, however, women are necessary, and what is necessary is tolerated. The importance to which women attain in eras of immorality can be as little satisfaction to them as that which they are accustomed to have as playthings of the courts. In the age of the Roman emperors, when men were enervated, the importance of woman naturally had to rise. A number of excellent ladies played important rôles at courts and ruled the nations through debauched despots. But this contained no indemnification for the disability of the sex, and that once there has been a Julie, a Messalina, an Agrippina, a Poppæa, a Faustina, etc., can accrue as little to the satisfaction of the feminine sex as the fact that later times have produced a Catherine, a Pompadour, a DuBarry, a Lola, etc.
The reaction against the extravagancies of immorality and sensual debauchery under the Roman emperors was caused by Christianity, by the religion of the man who was not begotten by any man, was born of a virgin, and is said never to have associated with any woman. A religion which referred mankind from the living world to the dead hereafter, which destroyed the value of earthly things, i.e., of reality, and caused humanity to abandon itself to spiritualistic phantasies and reveries, had to put spirituality in place of sensuality, asceticism in place of voluptuousness, and unnatural restraint in place of dissoluteness. Opposing one extreme to another, Christiantity would make nonsense into sense, and a virtue of the violation of nature. If the Romans were immoral through intemperance, the Christians were immoral through abstinence. As regards women in particular, the era of hypocrisy, of the suppression and false conception of their nature, was already announced in the story of the woman who bore a son without the intervention of a man, and in which the functions of the male sex are transferred to doves and ghosts. Christianity, which the priests have made into a paragon of abnormity and hypocrisy, is a real war-sermon against the recognition of the feminine sex, for that which makes woman truly woman Christianity regards for the most part with disgust. Even though Christ pardoned adulteresses and Magdalens, the story of his origin, his abstinence morality, his promises of heaven, and the consequences of Mosaic barbarism which permeate Christianity (it is disgusting to treat these things at large [3]), have prepared a lot for woman which can only be traced to a suppression of nature, want of sense, and barbarity.
These monstrous teachings, which in the first place caused men to shun woman, logically led to her persecution and maltreatment during the rise of barbarism in the Middle Ages. In the Council of Macon (in the sixth century) a long dispute took place (in spite of Adam's rib) whether women were human beings. This may give an idea of the then prevailing Christian view and humane feeling. Although the humanity of women was thus called into doubt, it came gradually to be recognized in secret with so much zeal, that in spite of Christianity, the immorality of the tenth and eleventh centuries reached a degree far exceeding that of the Roman emperors, perhaps for the very reason that it was characterized alike by the. most disgusting hypocrisy and the most pious vulgarity. However eagerly they were sought for, women were, in Christian delicacy and apprehension, invested with something unclean and unholy; the unfortunate ones were even deprived the pleasure of touching the altar-cloth, and it was imposed upon them as a duty to wear gloves at communion. Because they could not dispense with them, they avenged themselves for the sake of Christianity by degrading them. Husbands were permitted by law to beat their wives and even to inflict wounds on them, provided they did not disable or maim them thereby. The father could chastise his daughter even after her marriage. In the city of Bourbon a husband could with impunity kill his wife if he only swore that he was heartily sorry for it — all this in consequence of the humane ideas which the unnatural doctrine had caused that preached an unnatural universal love of mankind, while it made a crime of the natural love of the sexes. The horrors to which women were subjected in monasteries, priests' brothels, and courts of inquisition we will entirely omit.[4] On the other hand, we shall attach no importance to the fact that at certain periods of the Middle Ages single women acquired distinction as artists, authors, etc. They acquired it, so to speak, merely as a reflex of monastic life. They were regarded as nuns, not as women.
After Christian contempt and abuse of women had reached the extreme, it began in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to retrace its steps to the other extreme, to glorify them and make them objects of idolatry. That brings us to the time of those noble knights who as highway robbers at one moment slew their fellow-men, and the next moment, as sighing paladins, lay on their knees before their lady-love. That these mooncalves even at a later time could be regarded as models of noble manhood by the ladies, is due to those senseless romanticists who have sought for the spirit of poesy in opposition to reason. Otherwise it would have been obvious to every child that a man made up of vulgarity from top to toe, whose only study consisted in riding and killing, was not capable of any truly noble attachment to woman, even if, through the fashionable exaggeration of a coxcombical gallantry, he should have reached such a stage of eccentricity as to allow himself to be despatched out of the world for the sake of his lady-love. How delicate the sentiments of these heroes were in practice is shown by the fact that when they had to absent themselves from home for the purpose of slaying, they would place a solidly wrought lock on the adored body of their "noble lady" in order to facilitate her leading a chaste life.
What the knights were as lovers, the minstrels in many respects were as poets of love. The object in view rarely was to give poetic expression of real sentiments which could bear the test of reason, but as a rule only the versified exaggeration of an artificial emotion, in order to satisfy the prevailing fashion. Thus as gallantry and killing were the stereotyped modes of amusement, so the poetical praise of these arts was also treated as an entertaining handicraft. Women could not find a true recognition and appreciation in an age when men sought their highest honor in throwing each other from the horse, or in other ways breaking each other's necks.
At a later period the position of woman in France especially claims our attention. There, according to the national character, chivalry took on a more spiritual expression and a more graceful form, and from the chivalrous gallantry which inspired the Duke de la Rochefoucault with the verses (on Madame de Longueville):
Pour màriter son coeur,
Pour plaire ses beaux yeux
J'ai fait la guerre aux rois,
Je l'aurais faite aux dieux
love for women passed through various phases of fastidiousness and frivolity till it reached that bright relationship in which the "beautiful" and "strong" minds of the Ninons and their lovers at the time found their greatest happiness. But also this relationship, upon which the reflection of court-life so often cast its splendor, and which can furnish no standard for the average position of women, rarely was an entirely true and satisfactory one, and was moreover confined only to certain circles. Through it a sphere was opened only for social life in which women had to seek compensation for the deprivations of political life, while complete political and social liberty must form, as it were, the atmosphere in which the flower of love unfolds itself.
In the French revolution no definite position could be developed for women. They indeed played a great part in it, just as the French nation possesses the most excellent women, but even in France the theoretical and historical preparations, which could become the foundation for a new position of the weaker sex, were wanting; moreover the revolutionary struggle very soon changed into the history of Napoleonic "heroism" in which the women of course were forced into the background before soldiers and weapons. The soldier has no other position for women than that of whores or daughters of the regiment.
After the Napoleonic period, women as well as men, as we know, spent their days in a condition of vacillation, unconsciousness, prostitution, and philistinism. The position of women can still be designated by three words: they are tolerated, used, and protected so far and so long as men see fit, and must always remain about as far behind them in their demands and their progress as their physical strength remains behind that of the men. Although, after passing through Antiquity and the Middle Ages, time has developed more humane customs and forms, women, in relation to men or in comparison with men, are still without rights in almost every respect; and in a thousand cases where a man may and can emancipate himself, emancipation for woman remains a crime and an impossibility. The history of women up to this time can therefore in reality only be a history of their disqualification, and it need not astonish us that men have refrained from writing it. The greater need of freedom which women themselves are manifesting indicates a step in progress. In no age have there been so many women who have demanded the emancipation of their sex as in ours, and that is the first requisite to the attainment of emancipation. First of all it is necessary to make women generally conscious of the need of emancipation, and to spread clear views not only in regard to existing injustice, but also in regard to the justice that is to be acquired.
The position of women is to-day, as always, closely connected with the entire network of the political, social, economic, and religious conditions. It is therefore necessary to examine the various aims and conditions of the emancipation of women, which the following treatise proposes to do by means of a brief review of prevailing opinions and circumstances. Above all things the general aim and province of the emancipation with regard to the nature and lot of woman must be considered in a few words.
- ↑ It is said to have existed for a time among the ancient Medes, and at the present day is to be found only on the coast of Malabar and at the Himalayas, where it is kept up chiefly on account of the difficulty of supporting children.
- ↑ It was indeed customary at times that the bride had to say upon entering the house of her husband: ubi tu es cajus, ego caja sum (that is, Where you are master I am mistress); but this custom seems to have had merely the force of a gallantry. Its very existence, that is, the necessity for it, seems to indicate a presumption of the very opposite of that which these words would lead us to believe.
- ↑ Whoever reads the Old Testament as a believing Christian, and notes how woman was created from the rib of man, will easily learn to look upon her not only as the supplement, but also as the property, of man. What man would not consider himself as having a claim upon the product of his rib?
- ↑ Marriage was only a necessary evil to Christian priests, and open intercourse of the sexes a horror; thus arose celibacy, the mode of life of monks, etc. Some sought to attain to the loftiest height of the Christian spirit by actually unmanning themselves; other priests, on the other hand, indulged their passions to such an extent that they openly claimed the jus primæ noctis, and enforced it with truly Christian zeal. Marriages which were consecrated in this manner were thought to be especially blessed and continually hovered about by the holy ghost. After some reflection this seems obvious, and it would be indeed astonishing if the holy ghost had only once experienced an inclination to descend to a people who honored him so gratefully.