Matriarchy

“ And further even than this, we have found women the sole possessors of accumulated wealth, and noted that, under the favourable conditions of such a “pecuniary matriarchy,” they are able to obtain a position in learning and the arts excelling that of the men. We have even seen goddesses set above the gods, and women worshipped as deities.
Now I submit to the judgment of my readers—what do these examples of mother-right show, if not that, broadly speaking, women were the dominant force in this stage of the family. No doubt too much importance may be attached to the idea of women ruling. ”

“ Of course, however, should you desire at this inauspicious moment—as you must permit me to term it—to air any of your polyandric experiences—"
"My vote," broke in the Doctor, "is for the polyandric experiences. You've been giving us matriarchy straight from the shoulder for the last hour, Judge. Even the Bishop on polyandry will be good for a change. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was reminded of what I well knew, that the matriarchate and promiscuity with which it is usually connected were not universally accepted by anthropologists; the tendency to-day being to discredit both as being among the early phases of society. ”

“ The essential fact to establish is the prevalence of mother-descent as a probable universal stage in the past history of mankind, and then to show the causes which, by undermining the dominion of the maternal clan, led to the adoption of father-right and the re-establishment of the patriarchal family. ”

“ If descent through the father stands, as it is held to do, for the predominance of man over woman—the husband over the wife, then it is at least surely possible that descent through the mother may in some cases have stood for the predominance of the wife over the husband. ”

“ Such entire absence of polygamy is to be explained, in part, by the maternal marriage, a system which in its origin was closely connected with sexual regulation; nor would plurality of wives be possible in a society in which all the members of both sexes enjoyed equal privileges, and were in a position of absolute equality. Marriages usually take place at an early age. Under the maternal form, the husband living with the wife worked for her family, and commonly gained his footing only through his service. ”

“ The incorporation of the family into the clan arose through the struggle for existence forcing it into association; it was the subordinate position of the husband under such a system which finally made the women the rulers of the household. If we regard the social conditions of the maternal system as the first stage of development, they are as difficult to understand as they become intelligible when we consider it as a later and beneficent phase in the growth of society. ”

“ There is, however, so much similarity in the maternal family, so much correspondence in the marriage forms and social habits prevailing among races widely separated, that the points of difference are little in comparison with those they have in common. My object is not so much to exhaust the subject as to bring into relief the radical differences between the maternal communal clan, with its social life centred around the mothers, and the opposite patriarchal form in which the solitary family is founded on the individual father. ”

“ The facts I have so rapidly enumerated have a very wide bearing; they serve to destroy the accepted foundations on which the claim for mother-right has hitherto been based. The first stage of the family was patriarchal. All the evidence we possess tends to show that tracing descent through the mother was not the primitive custom. Throughout my aim has been to bring into uniformity the opposing theories of the primeval patriarchate and the maternal family. ”

“ Our decision on this question will affect our outlook on the whole question of Woman’s Rights and the relationships of the two sexes. There are civilisations, older and, as I believe, wiser than ours that have accepted the predominant position of the mother as the great central fact on which the family has been established. ”

“ We can also find them shadowed in certain of our marriage rites, and sex habits to-day. Another source of evidence is furnished by the widespread early occurrence of mother-goddesses, who must be connected with a system which places the mother in the forefront of religious thought. Further proof may be gathered from folk stories and heroic legends, whose interest offers rich rewards in suggestions of a time when honour rested with the sex to whom the inheritance belonged. ”

“ Such conditions cannot have failed to domesticate the women, and urged them forward to the work that was still to be done in domesticating man. During the development of the family, we may expect that the patriarch will seek to hold his rights, and that the women will exert their influence more and more in breaking these down ”

“ Next comes the naming of the mother of the race. 'She shall be called woman,' in the ancient form of the word, 'womb-man.' She was man and more than man, because of her maternity. The assertion of the supremacy of the woman in the marriage relation is contained in chapter v., 24: 'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife.' Nothing is said of the headship of man, but he is commanded to make her the head of the household, the home, a rule followed for centuries under the Matriarchate. ”

“ When woman’s rights in regard to Maternity, and to the relation that leads to it, are truly understood and appreciated by man, then, and not before, can marriage become what it was designed to be,—a diadem of beauty, a crown of glory, to the husband and wife, and “the power of God and the wisdom of God” unto salvation to the generations of the future. Husbands! if you would secure the loving respect of your wives, you must reverently regard their protest against an undesired Maternity. ”

“ In other words, let her be the legally acknowledged mistress of her own household, and a co-partner, at least, in the interests and destiny of her own offspring. Let the interests of the maternity be as much respected, at least, as those of the paternity; and thus surround the hallowed place of the wife’s and mother’s sphere of action, with a fortress so strong and invincible, that the single will of a perverted man cannot overthrow it. For home is woman’s proper sphere or orbit, where, in my opinion, God designed she should be the sovereign and supreme ”

“ I would commend their study to all those who are questioning the institution of marriage as it stands to-day on the rights of the patriarchal family system, by which the woman is considered the inferior, and submits herself and is subordinate to the man as the ruler of the family. The issue really rests at its root upon this—is the mother or the father to be regarded as the natural transmitter of property and head of the family. ”

“ For our present purpose, all turns on the distinction between the matripotestal and the patripotestal family. If the man and the woman were left to fight it out alone, the latter, despite the "shrewish sanction" that she possesses in her tongue, must inevitably bow to the principle that might is right. But, as long as marriage is matrilocal—that is to say, allows the wife to remain at home amongst male defenders of her own clan—she can safely lord it over her stranger husband; and there can scarcely be adultery on her part, since she can always obtain divorce by simply saying, Go! ”

“ The rule of the Matriarchate prevails, “inheritance is from mother to daughter and from the uncle to the children of the eldest sister; the household is directed by the mother or the eldest girl; polyandry and polygamy exist side by side or are inextricably mixed. Thus each woman is the wife of several men, each of whom has in turn several wives.” ”

“ Paragraph 3- When the purity of a families lineage has been disputed, which means two people testify that there was i a mamzer or a challal intermingled with them or that they have slaves in their lineage, behold this is a doubtful family. If it is a family of priests no one may marry a women from them until they will check about her up through four generations, totaling eight people: her mother, her maternal grandmother, the mother of her maternal grandfather, the maternal grandmother of her maternal grandfather. ”

“ Mother-right, implying kinship as well as succession to name and property exclusively in the maternal line, becomes fully established. The matriarchate, unlike the simple mother-group, is not a universal phase through which all mankind has run. In some cases the agnatic system or father-right may have followed immediately upon the earlier stage of mother-right. Incident to the matriarchate are the polygynous and polyandrous forms of the family. With these the institution of property grew apace; and so we reach the paternal system, whose triumph is powerfully aided by wife-capture. ”

“ It is a well-known fact of human history and prehistoric record that the Matriarchate, or the mother-rule, preceded the Patriarchate, or the father-rule. "All the social fabrics of the world are built around women. The first stable society was a mother and her child." The reason why the primitive descent of name and property, and the first fixed stake of home life, was the expression of this maternal relationship is obvious. Motherhood was demonstrated by nature before fatherhood was definitely known. ”

“ We have regarded them as fables; they are really survivals of customs and practices once common to all society. Wherever we find a king ruling as the son of a queen, because he is the queen's husband, or because he marries a princess, we have proof of mother-descent. The influence of the mother over her son's marriage, the winning of a bride by a task done by the wooer, the brother-sister marriage so frequent in ancient mythologies, the interference of a wise woman, and the many stories of virgin-births—all are survivals of mother-right customs. ”

“ When she has thus obtained a wife for her husband, she carries her home, puts her to bed with her husband, where, having left her, she feasts with the bride's relations. There the children of the first marriage are produced, and the men of the bride's family put each their hands upon these children's heads, and afterwards take the oath in the usual manner, to live and die with them as their own offspring. ”

“ The fact is obvious that among the orders of life below man but little paternal affection has been developed, and with a more extended knowledge of the past history of the human race comes the assurance that under earlier conditions of society, and in fact, until a comparatively recent time, little notice was taken of the paternal relation—that kinship and all the rights of succession were reckoned through the mother. In other words, motherhood was the primary bond by which society was bound together. ”

“ For that very reason I am sent to you to explain the good and the bad of which matrimony is composed.
AMELIA.
Then I beg first to be acquainted with the good.
MR. ANHALT.
When two sympathetic hearts meet in the marriage state, matrimony may be called a happy life. When such a wedded pair find thorns in their path, each will be eager, for the sake of the other, to tear them from the root. Where they have to mount hills, or wind a labyrinth, the most experienced will lead the way, and be a guide to his companion. ”

“ Add to this the fact that a woman’s children belonged exclusively to herself, or to her family, and that all hereditary honours and rights of succession were traced through females, and we have a set of circumstances which would seem sufficient to explain why force was necessary to bring women into the marital relation. ”

“ In the first place it seems eminently desirable to emphasize more than we have emphasized in the past the ideal of matrimony for every woman up to a certain age, and to bring home to parents that marriage is what they must seek for their daughters and what they must train them for. ”

“ The outside public, the mothers and fathers, that is to say, of other daughters, look upon them vaguely, as mild and colourless beings, destitute alike of character, of desires and of aspirations. And it must be said that daughters themselves, before matrimony absorbs their daughterhood and relieves them of their mothers, seem to be in the main content with the calm and limited existence which their relations and the voice of tradition assign to them. ”

“ She had been taught to consider matrimony as a solemn contract, a holy institution, which she would profane and abuse if she entered into it from any motives contrary to that true and lasting friendship,—that esteem and respect, that high opinion of the worth and merit of the object to whom she was to devote her life, look up to for support and protection, and with whom she might expect to find a return of those tender endearments so necessary to constitute her full and perfect happiness. ”

“ To transport this ancient conception of matrimony into modern society would doubtless not be possible, because it contradicts the great democratic principle of the equality of all before the law, on which our social organisation rests. But considered by itself this ancient conception of matrimony is without a doubt more lofty and more noble, and in particular more favourable to the woman, than the modern one. ”