Matrilineage

“ Among many animal species the maternal family exists without there ever having been either clan or gens. As a matter of fact, in humanity as well as in animality, the uterine family establishes itself spontaneously, whenever the male abandons the female and her progeny. This familial type will therefore necessarily appear in every horde where there is no durable pairing of males and females, of men and women. In every ethnic group living in promiscuity, for example, uterine filiation shows itself, and it will be the same under a polyandric régime, unless fictitious paternity is established. ”

“ Some sociologists have pretended that maternal filiation implied for the woman a sort of golden age—a reign of Amazons—during which the woman, as centre of the family, must have been honoured as its chief. All we know of ethnography gives the lie to this hypothesis. In the present day the matriarchate [Pg 106] does not anywhere exist, but maternal kinship does, and we do not find that it involves a milder condition for the woman. This system of filiation necessarily indicates a gross state of society, in which paternity is still uncertain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The reasons for mother-descent have been altogether misunderstood by those who regard it as the earliest phase of the family, and connect the custom with sexual disorder and uncertainty of paternity. In all cases the clan system shows a marked organisation, with a much stronger cohesion than is possible in the restricted family, which is held together by the force of the father. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Children, especially when they are still young, follow the mother when she separates from the father. Matriarchy is quite natural in marriages of short duration, with change of wives, and in polygamy; while, in monogamous nations, it is patriarchy, or denomination after the paternal line, which dominates.
Among nations where the denomination of uncles exists, and where the married woman lives with her family till she has a child, matriarchy results quite naturally from this fact. ”

“ A wife can divorce a 'usband because he is sterile through not his own fault, but if he is sterile because he wants sterility, she must continue to be his wife. You speak well as if to make people to breed it is necessary but to go to whip them, or trick them, into a wedding. Marriage does not imply parenthood. ”

“ If a man have fifty wives the knowledge of the father is as distinct as the knowledge of the mother. It is not destroyed, therefore. The great principle of parentage on the part of the husband, on the part of the father, is preserved. Therefore it is more consistent, more reasonable, first for procreation, and secondly for obtaining a knowledge of parentage, that a man should have a plurality of wives than that a woman should have a plurality of husbands. ”

“ Indeed, so far as it goes, it tends otherwards: the status of the child follows that of the mother, it is true, in all archaic eyot systems; but how rarely, when status differs between the parents, is that of the mother the higher! Just at present, too, with Dr. Westermarck's book before us, need we hypothesise about matriarchy as a theory when matriarchy as a fact is on its trial? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ But though it may be taken as a mark of matrilineal institutions, often associated with matria potestas or its analogue the rule of the mother's brother, that the husband should remove and live with the wife, we are by no means entitled to say that the removal of the wife to the husband implies a different state of things. ”

“ From what has been said it appears, that all children born before matrimony are bastards by our law; and so it is of all children born so long after the death of the husband, that, by the usual course of gestation, they could not be begotten by him. ”

“ Thus Dargun declares that there is a tendency for the uterine system of kinship to give place to the paternal, but never the reverse. [150] Kohler takes the same position. [151] Lippert regards the history of social culture as beginning with the natural relation of mother and [55] child, producing in course of evolution, long before "marriage" arose, the "primitive family" whose principle is mother-right, and which, in turn, under various influences, generally yields to the "old family" (Altfamilie) in its origin based, not on relationship, but on patriarchal power and possession. ”

“ To beget a son is, with them, to liquidate the debt they owe to their ancestors. No one would like to be called childless, as that is equivalent to a frustration of the real object of matrimony. Sometimes, owing to disparity of age between the husband and wife, or owing to defects in the generative organs of the one or the other, or both, a successful insemination is not possible. ”

“ But the children of these men belong to the gens of their mothers, because descent is traced from the mother. The mother is considered the head of the family. Thus the matriarchate was evolved that for a long time constituted the foundation of family relations and inheritance. While the maternal law prevailed, women had a voice and vote in the councils of the gens, they helped to elect the sachems and leaders and to depose them. ”

“ Things grow more complicated when the wife lives amongst her husband's people, and, nevertheless, the system of counting descent favours her side of the family and not his. Does the mere fact that descent is matrilineal tend to imply on the whole that the mother's kin take a more active interest in her, and are more effective in protecting her from hurt, whether undeserved or deserved? It is no easy problem to settle. ”

“ Should the husband be dissolute and have offspring by concubines—which is not very common,—those children are remembered and provided for in the distribution of his property; and, as very often occurs, they are cherished by the wives with nearly as much care as their own children; but illegitimate offspring very seldom marry in the same rank their father held in society. ”

“ Matriarchism.—As we have already said, it is the children who constitute the real phylogenetic and [379] psychological bonds in marriage and the family, bonds which are deeply rooted in human nature. This is so true that among many savage peoples, if not in most, marriage is not considered legal as long as it is sterile. Even among civilized people sterile women are generally regarded as of less value. We may, therefore, regard the article in the Code Napoleon which forbids inquiry into paternity as an unnatural measure, or as a monstrosity of civil law. ”

“ If conception is permitted to take place when either one or both of the parents are in bad health; if the wife is an unwilling mother, and the embryo is developed by her while her whole nature rebels against the admission into the family of a child who is not wanted, the children begotten and born under such circumstances can never be other than sickly, nervous and fretful during their entire childhood, and cross and uncompanionable throughout their whole lives. ”

“ Mucke, Horde und Familie, 108 ff., 114 ff., 174 ff., passim, rejects the use of Mutterrecht and Vaterrecht, and adopts the terms "gynocratic" and "androcratic" family; but these designations had already been employed by other writers, e. g., by Ploss, op. cit., II, 393-96. "Metrocracy" also appears: Westermarck, Human Marriage, 98.
But Dargun's use of Mutterrecht and Vaterrecht to express maternal or paternal kinship, and Matriarchat and Patriarchat to express maternal or paternal power, seems preferable, in order to avoid confusing the two conceptions; see above, chap. i, p. 21. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Moreover, in this process may be discerned the genesis of modern individual marriage under the sanction of the law. But the consequences of wife-capture are not yet exhausted. The presence in the horde of women taken from several neighboring bands leads at once to the formation of clans and to the matriarchate; for the connection of children with the clan is naturally determined by the mother. The development of private property produces still further results. The individual may buy his wife. She becomes his chattel ”

“ Marriage is arranged exclusively by the women. The elder woman of the suitor’s family carries the proposal to the girl’s clan mother. If this is entertained, the question of marriage is discussed at length by the matrons of the two clans. The girl herself is consulted; a jacal is erected for her, and after many deliberations, the bridegroom is provisionally received into the wife’s clan for a year under conditions of the most exacting character. ”

“ But what are we to say of some mothers who, seeing the impotence of their sons-in-law, or that they have the string knotted or some other defect, are procuresses to their own daughters. Thus to win their jointures, they get them to yield to others, and often to become with child by them, to the end they may have offspring to inherit after the death of the father. ”

“ Thus, if asked whether I believe in the endowment of motherhood, I reply, yes, indeed, I believe in the endowment of motherhood by the corresponding fatherhood. If our first principles are sound, we must believe that the mother must be endowed or provided for; there can be no difference of opinion so far. Often, as we have seen, there is no corresponding fatherhood, for the mother may be a widow, or unmarried and unable to find the father. ”

“ Matriarchate is still in force. The woman is still the undisputed mistress of the house and clan. The males have only to provide the clan with food from day to day, by hunting and fishing, and to fight the clan’s battles in its protection. Property and descent go in the female line, and kinship is counted through the mother. ”

“ In such a group the father is the chief or patriarch as long as he lives, and the family [49] is held together by their common subjection to him. As for the children, the daughters as soon as they grow up are added to his wives, while the sons are driven out from the home at the time they reach an age to be dangerous as sexual rivals to their father. The important thing to note is that in each group there would be only one adult polygamous male, with many women of different ages and young children. ”

“ Wives procured according to the first of these methods, although not regarded as slaves, are practically as much so as the others, for like them, at the death of their lord they become nominally, and often really, the wives of his eldest son, except, of course, his own mother, They have, however, the privilege of choosing the next elder son, or of observing ever after a state of celibacy, which but few wo-men would choose, as it is regarded reproachfully. ”

“ If, however, this girl marries and becomes a mother, the incident effect upon her health will most likely weaken her to the extent of bringing to the surface the inherited tendency. Many mothers succumb to just such conditions, where had they remained single until a later period they could have assumed the responsibility of maternity without any evil consequences.
The idea that by an early marriage a woman can train and change the inborn characteristics of her husband is a mistake. Few women can reform a husband after marriage. ”

“ What cannot be disputed is, that always and everywhere peoples who are in process of civilisation have adopted the paternal family, according even excessive powers to the father of the family. What is probable is, that in the majority of cases paternal filiation has succeeded to maternal filiation and to more or less confused familial forms. Is this paternal or even patriarchal family the final term of familial evolution? Has evolution, never as yet arrested in its course, said its last word in regard to marriage and the family? ”