Volume II Part 15 (1/2)
Essay on What Christianity Has Done for Women.
At this distance of time, and possessing only the very brief information with which it has pleased Infinite Wisdom to furnish us in the commencing chapters of the book of Genesis, it is impossible to ascertain with precision the nature of that disparity which originally subsisted between the first parents of mankind. The evidence does not seem to be decisive, whether their characteristic differences were merely corporeal or mental, exterior or internal, natural and essential, or accidental. It is questionable whether the superiority of Adam arose out of the revelations he received, and the priority of his existence to his ”fair partner Eve,”
or from an innate pre-eminence which marked him, not only as the head of the inferior creation, but as the appointed lord of the woman. A close examination of the subject, perhaps, would lead us to infer, that an equality subsisted in all those respects which are not strictly cla.s.sed under the epithet _const.i.tutional_; and that the authority which revelation has conceded to the man, results from his present fallen condition.
It is indeed observable, that when G.o.d determined upon the creation of the woman, because it was not deemed good that the man should be alone, she is represented as the intended ”help meet _for_ him;” but this expression is not perhaps to be understood, as referring so much to subserviency as to suitability. The capacity of one being to promote the happiness of another, depends on its adaptation. The virtuous and the vicious, the feeble and the strong, the majestic and the mean, cannot be a.s.sociated together to any advantage, and a general equality appears requisite, to render any being capable of becoming the _help meet_ to a perfect creature. This idea of his new-formed companion pervades the language of Adam, when she was first brought to him by her Almighty Creator: ”This,”
said he, ”is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and _they shall be one flesh_.”
To this it may be added, that subjection to the man is expressly enjoined as a part of the original curse upon the female. This infliction necessarily implies a previous equality in rank and station. There was evidently before, no compet.i.tion, no struggle for dominion, and no sense of inferiority or pre-eminence. The language of Jehovah in denouncing the respective destinies of these transgressors, unquestionably conferred a power or claim upon man, which he did not originally possess, and which was intended as a perpetual memento of the woman having been the first to disobey her Maker. ”Unto the woman” he said, ”I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shall bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and _he shall ride over thee_.”
But, whatever were the original equalities or inequalities of the human race, this, at least, is certain, that the influence of depraved pa.s.sions since the fall, is sufficiently conspicuous in rendering the claims and duties of both s.e.xes more and more ambiguous, and disarranging the harmonies of the first creation. In proportion to the degree in which society is corrupt, power will a.s.sume an authority over weakness, and they who ought to be help meets will become compet.i.tors. Opposition generates dislike, and dislike, when a.s.sociated with power, will produce oppression.
It is in vain to plead the principle of right, to solicit attention to the voice of reason, or to attempt to define the boundaries of influence, when no means exist of enforcing the attention of him who can command obedience. There is no alternative but submission or punishment. Upon this principle, the female s.e.x may be expected to become the sport of human caprice, folly, and guilt. But Christianity tends to rectify the disorders which sin has introduced into the universe, and both in a natural and moral sense, to restore a lost paradise. Like that mighty Spirit, which in the beginning moved upon the surface of the waters, when the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, it corrects the confusion of the moral system, pervades and reorganizes the formless ma.s.s of depraved society, and pacifies the turbulence of human pa.s.sions. With a majesty that overawes, a voice that will be heard, an influence that cannot be resisted, it renews the world, and will eventually diffuse its unsetting glory through every part of the habitual globe.
The subject before us presents a large field of research, and it would well repay the labour to walk with a deliberate step around its s.p.a.cious borders and throughout its ample extent; but we must content ourselves with tracing out some of its princ.i.p.al varieties, and collecting comparatively a few of its productions.
Our plan will require the induction _of facts_, as the necessary basis of argument or ill.u.s.tration; and these refer to the state of women, in countries and during periods in which the religion of the Bible was wholly unknown, as in the nations of Pagan antiquity, in Greece and Rome; in savage, superst.i.tious, and Mahometan regions; and their condition previously to the establishment of Christianity, in patriarchal time and places, or during the Jewish theocracy.
I. The Pagan Nations of Antiquity demand the first consideration.
Our knowledge of the _ancient Egyptians_ is extremely limited, being derived from the Greek writers, whose accounts are often contradictory.
Their testimony, however, is sufficiently precise respecting the prevalence of domestic servitude. The Egyptians were a people remarkable for jealousy, which was carried to such an extreme, that after the death of their wives, they even entertained apprehensions respecting the embalmers. [51] Having decreed it to be indecent in women to go abroad without shoes, they deprived them of the means of wearing them, by threatening with death any one who should make shoes for a woman. They were forbidden music, probably with a view of preventing their possessing so dangerous an attraction as that of an elegant accomplishment.
With regard to the _Celtic nations_, it is true, that the Romans were surprised at the degree of estimation in which these barbarous tribes held their women, and the privileges which they conceded to them; and it must be admitted that certain stern virtues characterized those who were addicted to military achievements, resulting partly from their incessant occupation as warriors, and partly from some indefinite but splendid ideas of fame and glory. Seduction and adultery were vices of rare occurrence; the bridegroom bestowed a dowery upon the bride, consisting of flocks, a horse ready bridled and saddled, a s.h.i.+eld, a lance, and a sword; [52] and they were often stimulated by their presence and excitement in their warlike expeditions. But though generally contented with one wife, the n.o.bles were allowed a plurality, either for _pleasure_ or _show_; the labours of the field, as well as domestic toil, devolved on the women; which, though practised in very ancient times, even by females of the most exalted rank, evidently originated in the general impression of their inferiority in the scale of existence. Their great Odin, or Odinus, excluded from his paradise all who did not by some violent death follow their deceased husbands; and in time they were so degraded, that by an old Saxon law, he that hurt or killed a woman was to pay only half the fine exacted for injuring or killing a man. But the argument in favour of Christianity, as a.s.signing women their _proper place_ in society, is corroborated by observing the extremes of oppression and adulation, to which the Scandinavian nations alternately veered. While polygamy and infanticide prevailed, the practice of raising into heroines, prophetesses, and G.o.ddesses, some of their women, was no less indicative of a very imperfect sense of the true character of the female s.e.x. [53]
The public and domestic life of the _Greeks_ exhibit unquestionable evidences of barbarity in the treatment of women. Homer, and all their subsequent writers, show that they were subjected to those restrictions, which infallibly indicate their being regarded only as the property of men, to be disposed of according to their will. Hence they were bought and sold, made to perform the most menial offices, and exposed to all the miseries and degradation of concubinage. The daughters, even of persons of distinction, were married without any consultation of their wishes, to men whom, frequently, they had never seen, and at the early age of fourteen or fifteen; previous to which period, the Athenian females were kept in a state of as great seclusion as possible. Their study was dress; and slaves, their mothers excepted, were their only companions. The duties of a good wife were, in the opinion of the wisest of the Greeks, comprised in going abroad to expose herself as little as possible to strangers, taking care of what her husband acquired, superintending the younger children, and maintaining a perpetual vigilance over the adult daughters. After marriage, some time elapsed before they ventured to speak to their husbands, or the latter entered into conversation with them. At no time were wives intrusted with any knowledge of their husbands' affairs, much less was their opinion or advice solicited; and they were totally excluded from mixed society. One of the most excellent of the Athenians admitted, there were few friends with whom, he conversed so seldom as with his wife. [54]
Solon, in his laws, is silent with regard to the education of girls, though he gave very precise regulations for that of boys. That legislator imagined that women were not sufficiently secluded, and therefore directed that they should not go abroad in the daytime, except it were in full dress; or at night, but with torches and in a chariot. He prohibited their taking eatables out of the houses of their husbands of more value than an obolus, or carrying a basket more than a cubit in length. [55] The Athenians had previously possessed the power of selling their children and sisters; and even Solon allowed fathers, brothers, and guardians, this right, if their daughters, sisters, and wards, had lost their innocence.
From various enactments, it appears that adultery was extremely common, and female modesty could not be preserved even by legislative restraint.
Most of the Greeks, and even their philosophers, concurred with the Eastern nations in general in a.s.sociating with courtesans; who were, indeed, honoured with the highest distinctions. The Corinthians ascribed their deliverance, and that of the rest of Greece, from the power of Xerxes, to the intercession of the priestess of Venus, and the protection of the G.o.ddess. At all the festivals of Venus, the people applied to the courtesans as the most efficacious intercessors; and Solon deemed it advantageous to Athens, to introduce the wors.h.i.+p of that G.o.ddess, and to const.i.tute them her priestesses. In the age of Pericles, and still more afterward, prost.i.tution, thus yoked with superst.i.tion, and sanctioned by its solemnities, produced the most baneful effects upon public morals.
From idolatrous temples, the great reservoirs of pollution, a thousand streams poured into every condition of life, and rolling over the whole of this cultivated region, deposited the black sediment of impurity upon the once polished surface of society, despoiling its beauty, discolouring its character, and ruining its glory.
The Athenians did not hesitate to take their wives and daughters to visit the notorious Aspasia in the house of Pericles, though she was the teacher of intrigue, and the destroyer of morals. The most celebrated men lived in celibacy, only to secure the better opportunities of practising vice, which however did not conceal her hideous deformity in the shades, but stalked forth at noonday, emblazoned by the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and enriched by treasuries of opulence.
In many respects the Spartans differed from the other Greeks in their treatment of the female s.e.x. The women were as shamefully exposed as those of the other states were secluded; being introduced to all the exercises of the public gymnasium at an early age, no less than the other s.e.x, and taught the most shameless practices. The laws of Lycurgus were in many instances utterly subversive of morality, and too outrageous for citation.
The depravity of the s.e.x was extreme even at an early period, and Xenophon, Plutarch, and Aristotle, impute to this cause the ultimate subversion of the Spartan state.
The _Romans_ differed materially from the Greeks and the oriental nations in one point with regard to their treatment of women; namely, in never keeping them in a state of seclusion from the society of men: but the husbands were very incommunicative: and it seems at least to have been an _understood_, if not a written law, that they should avoid all inquisitiveness, and speak only in the presence of their husbands. In the second Punic war, the Oppian law prohibited the women, from riding in carriages and wearing certain articles of dress; which was, however, afterward repealed. The ancient laws considered children as slaves, and women as children who ought to remain in a state of perpetual tutelage.
According to the laws of Romulus and Numa, a husband's authority over his wife was equal to that of a father over his children, excepting only that he could not sell her. The wife was stated to be in servitude, though she had in name the rights of a Roman citizen. From the moment of her marriage she was looked upon as the daughter of her husband and heir of his property, if he had no children; otherwise she was considered as his sister, and shared an equal portion with the children. Wives had no right to make wills, nor durst they prefer complaints against their husbands; and the power of the latter over them was as unrestricted as that which they possessed over their children: in fact, the husband could even put his wife to death, not only for gross immoralities, but for excess in wine. [56]
Considerable changes took place in the laws after the period of the destruction of Carthage, some of which allowed greater privileges to females; but as divorces became more frequent, crimes multiplied. In the latter periods of the republic women had the princ.i.p.al share in public plots and private a.s.sa.s.sinations, and practised the worst of sins with the most barefaced audacity.
The morals of women are indicative of the state of society in general, and of the estimation in which they are held in particular. If the other s.e.x treat them as slaves, they will become servile and contemptible, a certain degree of self-respect being essential to the preservation of real dignity of character. The way to render human beings of any cla.s.s despicable is to undervalue them; for disesteem will superinduce degeneracy. If this be the case, then the state of women in any age or country is a criterion of public opinion, since the vices of their lives indicate their condition; upon which principle, Greece and Rome exhibit wretched specimens of female degradation.
But there is one circ.u.mstance in the history of the Romans which must not be wholly overlooked. Their conduct was marked by _capriciousness._ Though the usual treatment of their women resembled that of other Pagan nations in barbarity, like some of them, too, they frequently rendered them extraordinary honours. On some occasions they even transferred to their princ.i.p.al slaves the right of chastising their wives; and yet, on others they paid them distinguished deference: as in the case of vestals, and the privileges conceded to them after the negotiation between the Romans and Sabines. Various individual exceptions to a barbarous usage might be adduced; sufficient, however, only to evince the general debas.e.m.e.nt of the female s.e.x, and the total absence of all fixed principles of moral action in unchristianized man.