C. Gasquoine Hartley

“ I would again assert my strong belief that in the religious conception of a people we find the true thoughts and the customs of the period in which they originated. A patriarchal people could not have given expression to a creation myth in which the female idea prevailed, and the mother, and not the father, was dominant. For men have ever fashioned the gods in their own human image, endowing them with their thoughts and actions. The sharp change in the view of woman’s part in the relationship of the sexes is clearly symbolised in these creation myths. ”

“ The richest woman in the village looks with pride on her taro patch, and although she has female followers enough to allow her merely to superintend the work without taking part in it, she nevertheless prefers to lay aside her fine apron, and to betake herself to the field, merely clad in a small apron that barely hides her nakedness, with a little mat on her back to protect her from the burning heat of the sun, and with a shade of banana leaves for her eyes. ”

“ The process of growth, from being gradual and imperceptible, becomes violent and conscious.
There can be little doubt that what is called the “Woman’s Movement,” with its disintegrating influences on social opinion and practice, is bringing vast and momentous changes in women’s attitude towards the universe and towards themselves. A great motive and an enlarging ideal, a quickening of the woman’s spirit, a stirring dream of a new order—these are what we have gained. ”

“ I would point back in proof to these examples of the maternal family, foremost among whose privileges is this equality of partnership in marriage. Here you have before you, solved by these primitive peoples, some of the most urgent questions that yet have to be faced by us to-day. To hear of peoples who live gladly, and without those problems that are rotting away our civilisation, brings a new courage to those of us, who sometimes grow hopeless at our own needless wastage of love and life. ”

“ The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate feverish expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in women’s outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force when they have refound their emancipation. To this end women must gain economic security, and the freedom for the full expression of their womanhood. The ultimate goal I conceive—at least I hope—is the right to be women, not the right to become like men. There can be no gain for women except this. ”

“ It might appear as if I supported Bachofen’s supposition that, under a system of maternal descent women possessed supreme rule in the family and in the clan: this is a dream only of visionaries. I declare here that I consider the theory of the so-called matriarchate at once false and injurious: false, because it can lead to nothing; and injurious, because, while it cannot be supported by facts, it overthrows what can be proved [98] by the evidence that is open to all investigators. Nothing will be gained by exaggeration and by claiming over much for women. ”

“ The insuperable difficulty to its acceptance arises, in the first place, from the fact that we can know nothing at all of the spiritual condition of the human beings among whom mother-kin was held first to have been practised. But we must go further than this in our doubt. Can we accept for any period a spiritual superiority in the character of woman over man? To me, at least, it is clear that a knowledge of the two sexes among all races both primitive and civilised—yes, and among ourselves, is sufficient to discredit such a supposition. ”

“ Now I have summarised briefly what seem to me the probable conditions of the women’s daily life in these earliest groups. I have attempted to show how the sexual jealousy, which acted for the destruction of the mutually hostile male members, would necessitate for the women conditions in many ways favourable; conditions of union in which lay the beginnings of peace and order. What we have to fix in our thoughts is the significant fact of the sociability of the women’s lives in contrast with the solitude of the jealous sire, watchfully resenting the intrusion of all other males. ”

“ Whoever reflects soberly on the past history of women will not be surprised at their present movement towards emancipation. Women are reclaiming a position that is theirs by natural right—a position which once they held. It may be all very well for those who accept the authority and headship of the man as the foundation of the family and of society, to be filled with bewildered fear at what seems to them to be a quite new assertion of rights on the part of the mothers of the race. ”

“ In our contemporary society there is a deep-lying dissatisfaction with existing conditions, a yearning and restless need for change. We stand in the first rush of a great movement. It is the day of experiments, when again the old customs are in struggle with the new. We are questioning where before we have accepted, and are seeking out new ways in which mankind will go—will go because it must. ”

“ To postulate a conscious movement towards progress organised by women is surely absurd. Human nature does not start on any new line of conduct voluntarily, rather it is forced into it in connection with the conditions of life. Just as savage man was driven into unsocial conduct, so, as I shall try to show, savage woman was led by the same conditions acting in an opposite direction, into social conduct. ”

“ Can we accept mother-right? Are there any reasonable causes to explain the rise of female dominance? Westermarck, in criticising the matriarchal theory, has said: “The inference that ‘kinship through females only’ has everywhere preceded the rise of ‘kinship through males,’ would be warranted only on condition that the cause, or the causes, to which the maternal system is owing, could be proved to have operated universally in the past life of mankind.” ”

“ Without this being done, the family in its complete development was impossible. The survival value of the patriarchal age consists in the additional gain to the children of the father’s to the mother’s care. I do not think this gain will ever be lost. We women need to remember this lest bitterness stains our sense of justice. It may be that progress could not have been accomplished otherwise; that the cost of love’s development has been the enslavement of women. If so, then women will not, in the long account of Nature, have lost in the payment of the price. ”

“ Much confusion has arisen out of the attempts to explain the Australian system; and for long the close totem kinship was supposed to afford evidence of group marriage, by which a man of one clan was held to have sexual rights over all the women in another clan. But further insight into their customs has proved the error of such a view, which arose from a misunderstanding of the terms of relationship used among the tribes. Nowhere is marriage bound by more severe laws; death is the penalty for sexual intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan. ”

“ Certainly savage women do not count their work as any degradation. There is really an equal division of labour between the sexes, though the work of the men is accomplished more fitfully than that of the women. The militant activities of fighting and hunting are essential in primitive life. The women know this, and they do their share—the industrial share, willingly, without question, and without compulsion. It is entirely absurd in this work-connection to regard men as the oppressors of women. Rather the advantage is on the women’s side. ”

“ But it could not carry mankind to that family organisation from which so much was afterwards to develop. It was no more possible for society to be built up on mother-right alone than it is possible for it to remain permanently based on father-right. ”

“ Not only is the mother the head and source and only bond of union of the family, in the most primitive part of the hills, the Synteng country, she is the only owner of real property, and through her alone is inheritance transmitted. The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother’s clan; what he earns goes to his own matriarchal stock, and at his death his bones are deposited in the cromlech of his mother’s kin. ”

“ It is, however, very necessary to remember that monogamy is frequent and indeed usual under the maternal system. We have seen many examples where, with complete freedom of separation held by the wife, lasting and most happy marriages are the rule. When the husband lives with his wife in a dependent position to her family he can do so only in the case of one woman. For this reason polygamy is much less deeply rooted under the conditions in which the communal life is developed than in patriarchal communities. In the complete maternal family it is never common, and is even prohibited. ”

“ Pure maternal love triumphed over the demons of lust and jealousy. A mother succeeded in keeping by her side a male child, and thus, by a strange coincidence, that father and son, who, amongst all mammals, had been the most deadly enemies, were now the first to join hands. So portentous an alliance might well bring the world to their feet. ”

“ In what way was the sexual monopoly of the male ruler first curbed, and afterwards broken down, for only by this being done could peace be gained? However advantageous the habits of the patriarch may have been for himself, they were directly opposed to progress. Jealousy depends on the failure to recognise the rights of others. This sexual egoism, by which one man through his strength and seniority held marital rights over all the females of his group, had to be struck at its roots. In other words, the solitary despot had to learn to tolerate the association of other adult males. ”

“ It would be easy to go on almost indefinitely multiplying examples of the industries of primitive women. There can be no doubt at all that their work is exacting and incessant; it is also inventive in its variety and its ready application to the practical needs of life. If a catalogue of the primitive forms of labour were made, each woman would [204] be found doing at least half-a-dozen things while a man did one. We may accept the statement of Prof. Mason that in the early history of mankind “women were the industrial, elaborative, conservative half of society. ”

“ Under such a domestic arrangement, which really reverses the position of the wife and the husband, mother-right is found; this maternal marriage is, indeed, the true foundation of the woman’s power. Where the marriage system has been changed from the maternal to the paternal form, and the wife is taken from the protection of her own kindred to live in the home of her husband, even when descent is still traced through the mother, the chief authority is almost always in the hands of the father. ”

“ Under the maternal conditions, nothing is more certain than the equality of women with men in all questions of sexual morality. In proof of this it is necessary only to recall the facts we have noted. We find little or no importance attached to virginity, which in itself indicates the absence of any conception of the woman as property. Thus no bride-price is claimed from the husband, who renders service in proof of his fitness as a lover, not to gain possession of the bride. The girl is frequently the wooer, and, in certain cases, she or her mother imposes the conditions of the marriage. ”

“ I have now to show how far this rejection of promiscuity affects our position with regard to mother-descent and mother-right. It is clearly of vital importance to any theory that its foundations are secure. One foundation—that of promiscuity, on which Bachofen and McLennan, the two upholders of matriarchy, base their hypothesis—has been overthrown. It thus becomes necessary to approach the question from an altogether different position. Mother-right must be explained without any reference to unregulated sexual conduct. ”

“ The woman receives the germ merely as guardian, and when it pleases the gods, she preserves it.” Plato also brings forward this view, and states that the mother contributes nothing to the child’s being. “The mother is to the child what the soil is to the plant; it owes its nourishment to her, but the essence and structure of its nature are derived from the father.” Again the Orestes of Euripides takes up the same theory, when he says to Tyndarus: “My father has begotten me, and thy daughter has given birth to me, as the earth receives the seed that another confides to it.” ”

“ If we can prove that women have exercised unquestioned and direct authority in the past history of human societies, we shall be in a position to answer those who to-day wish to set limits to women’s activities. Then, in the second place, I am compelled to doubt certain conclusions, both of those who accept mother-right, and also of the greater number who now deny its occurrence. ”

“ I should like to wait to point out these resemblances, such, for instance, as the tendency to personify natural objects, the identification of human beings with animals and trees, found so often in the stories, as well as many other things—the belief in magic and the power of wise women. And what I want to make clear is the very early beginning of these folk-tales; they take us back to the social institutions of the mother-age. Thus there is nothing surprising to find that kingdoms and riches are won by hero-lovers, and that daughters carry the inheritance. ”

“ Ancient Attic traditions are filled with recollections of female supremacy. Women in the Homeric legends hold a position and enjoy a freedom wholly at variance with a patriarchal subjection. Not infrequently the husband owes to his wife his rank and his wealth; always the wife possesses a dignified place and much influence. Even the formal elevation of women to positions of authority is not uncommon. “There is nothing,” says Homer, “better and nobler than when husband and wife, being of one mind, rule a household. ”

“ I am very certain, however, of the error in the view which accepts the subordination of women as the common condition among barbarous peoples, whereas there are indications and proofs in all directions of a more or less strong assertiveness on their part, and always in the direction of social unity and sexual regulation. The fact that the maternal system resulted in the limitation of the freedom of the male members of the family is, in my opinion, to be attributed to those powerful female qualities which exercised an immense influence on early societies. ”

“ I am very certain that it was through property considerations and for no moral causes that the stringency of the moral code was tightened for women. It seems to me of very great importance that women should grasp firmly this truth: the virtue of chastity owes its origin to property. Our minds fall so readily under the spell of such ideas as chastity and purity. There is a mass of real [190] superstition on this question—a belief in a kind of magic in chastity. But, indeed, continence had at first no connection with morals. The sense of ownership has been the seed-plot of our moral code. ”

“ There seems to be a common tendency to discredit a system of relationship, which suggests even as a bare possibility the mother, and not the father, being the head of the family. Yet, I believe I can assign some, at least plausible, reasons for believing that descent through women has been a stage, though not, I think, the first stage, in social growth for all branches of the human family. ”

“ What we must expect a true theory to do is to show conditions that are applicable not only to special cases, but in their main features to mankind in general. I have to prove that such conditions arose in the primitive patriarchal family as it advanced towards social aggregation, that would not only make possible, but, as I believe, would necessitate the power of the mothers asserting its force in the group-family. Only when this is done can I hope that a new belief in mother-right may find acceptance. ”

“ Even when the man had contributed an equal share of property on marriage, the wife dictated everything, and the man could undertake nothing without her approval; but if the woman committed an offence, the man was held responsible and suffered the punishment. The women could speak in the assembly; they held property, and if a woman asked anything of a man, he gave it up without a murmur. If a wife was unfaithful, the husband could send her home, keep her property, and kill the adulterer ”