Volume I Part 93 (2/2)
It is less than thirty years since the dockets of a court in New York city, the great metropolis of our nation, were sullied by the suit of a husband against parties who had received, ”harbored” and sheltered his wife after she left him, the husband recovering $10,000 damages.
Although England was Christianized in the fourth century, it was not until the tenth that a daughter had a right to reject the husband selected for her by her father;[203] and it was not until this same century that the Christian wife of a Christian husband acquired the right of eating at table with him. For many hundred years the law entered families, binding out to servile labor all unmarried women between the ages of eleven and forty.
For more than a thousand years women in England were legislated for as slaves. They were imprisoned for crimes that, if committed by a man, were punished by simple branding in the hand; and other crimes which he could atone for by a fine, were punished in her case by burning alive. Down to the end of the eighteenth century the punishment of a wife who had murdered her husband was burning[204] alive; while if the husband murdered the wife, his was hanging, ”the same as if he had murdered any stranger.” Her crime was pet.i.t treason, and her punishment was the same as that of the slave who had murdered her master. For woman there existed no ”benefit of clergy,” which in a man who could read, greatly lessened his punishment; this ability to read enabling him to perform certain priestly functions and securing him immunity in crime. The Church having first made woman ineligible to the priesthood, punished her on account of the restrictions of its own making. We who talk of the burning of wives upon the funeral pyres of husbands in India, may well turn our eyes to the records of Christian countries.
Where marriage is wholly or partially under ecclesiastical law, woman's degradation surely follows; but in Catholic and Protestant countries a more decent veil has been thrown over this sacrifice of woman than under some forms of the Greek Church, where the wife is delivered to the husband under this formula: ”Here, wolf, take thy lamb!” and the bridegroom is presented with a whip, giving his bride a few blows as part of the ceremony, and bidding her draw off his boots as a symbol of her subjugation to him. With such an entrance ceremony, it may well be surmised that the marriage relation permits of the most revolting tyranny. In Russia, until recently, the wife who killed her husband while he was chastising her, was buried alive, her head only being left above ground. Many lingered for days before the mercy of death reached them.
Ivan Panim, a Russian exile, now a student in Harvard College, made the following statement in a speech at the Ma.s.sachusetts Woman Suffrage Convention, held in February, 1881:
A short time ago the wife of a well-to-do peasant came to a justice of one of the district courts in Russia and demanded protection from the cruelty of her husband. She proved conclusively by the aid of competent witnesses, that he had bound her naked to a stake during the cold weather, on the street, and asked the pa.s.sers-by to strike her; and whenever they refused, he struck her himself. He fastened her, moreover, to the ground, put heavy stones and weights on her and broke one of her arms. The court declared the husband ”not guilty.” ”It cannot afford,” it said, ”to teach woman to disobey the commands of her husband.”
This is by no means an extreme or isolated case. Few, indeed, become known to the public through the courts or through the press.[205]
Canon law made its greatest encroachments at the period that chivalry was at its height; the outward show of respect and honor to woman keeping pace in its false pretense with the destruction of her legal rights. Woman's moral degradation was at this time so great that a community of women was even proposed, and was sustained by Jean de Meung, the ”Poet of Chivalry,” in his Roman de la Rose. Christine of Pisa, the first strictly literary woman of Western Europe, took up her pen in defense of her s.e.x against the general libidinous spirit of the age, writing in opposition to Meung.
Under Feudalism, under Celibacy, under Chivalry, under the Reformation, under the principles of new sects of the nineteenth century--the Perfectionists and Mormons alike--we find this one idea of woman's inferiority, and her creation as a subject of man's pa.s.sions openly or covertly promulgated.
The Salic law not only denied to women the right to reign, but to the inheritance of houses and lands. One of its famous articles was: ”Salic land shall not fall to women; the inheritance shall devolve exclusively on the males.” The fact of s.e.x not only prohibited woman's inheritance of thrones and of lands, but there were forms in this law by which a man might ”separate himself from his family, getting free from all obligations of relations.h.i.+p and entering upon an entire independence.” History does not tell us to what depths of degradation this disseverance of all family ties reduced the women of his household, who could neither inherit house or land. The formation of the Salic code is still buried in the mists of antiquity; it is, however, variously regarded as having originated in the fourth and in the seventh century, many laws of its code being, like English common law, unwritten, and others showing ”double origin.” But our interest does not so greatly lie in its origin, as in the fact that after the conversion of the Franks to Christianity the law was revised, and all parts deemed inconsistent with this religion were revoked. The restrictions upon woman were retained.
Woman's wrongs under the Reformation, we discover by glancing at different periods. The Cromwellian era exhibited an increase of piety.
Puritanism here had its birth, but brought no element of toleration to woman. Lydia Maria Child, in her ”History of Woman,” says:
Under the Commonwealth society a.s.sumed a new and stern aspect.
Women were in disgrace; it was everywhere reiterated from the pulpit that woman caused man's expulsion from Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of the greatest temptations of Satan. ”Man,” said they, ”is conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity; it was his complacency to woman that caused his first debas.e.m.e.nt; let him not, therefore, glory in his shame; let him not wors.h.i.+p the fountain of his corruption.” Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged; and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible theological discussions of the day.
A writer about this period, said: ”She that knoweth how to compound a pudding is more desirable than she who skillfully compoundeth a poem.”
At the time of the Reformation, Luther at first continued celibate, but thinking ”to vex the Pope,” he suddenly, at the age of forty-two, gave his influence against celibacy by marriage with Catherine Von Bora, a former nun. But although thus becoming an example of priestly marriage under the new order of things, Luther's whole course shows that he did not believe in woman's equality with man. He took with him the old theory of her subordination. It was his maxim that ”no gown or garment worse becomes a woman than that she will be wise.” Although opposing monastic life, the home under the reformation was governed by many of its rules for woman.
_First_. She was to be under obedience to the masculine head of the household.
_Second_. She was to be constantly employed for his benefit.
_Third_. Her society was strictly chosen for her by her master and head.
_Fourth_. This masculine family head was a general father confessor, to whom she was held responsible in thought and deed.
_Fifth_. Neither genius nor talent could free woman from such control, without consent.
Luther, though free from the lasciviousness of the old priesthood, was not monogamic in principle. When applied to by the German Elector, Philip,[206] Landgrave of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, for permission to marry a second wife, while his first, Margaret of Savoy, was still living, Luther called a synod of six of the princ.i.p.al reformers, who in joint consultation decided that as the Bible nowhere condemned polygamy, and as it had been invariably practiced by the highest dignitaries of the Church, the required permission should be granted. History does not tell us that the wife was consulted in the matter. She was held as in general subordination to the powers that be, as well as in special subordination to her husband; but more degrading than all else is the fact that the doctrine of unchast.i.ty for man was brought into the Reformation, as not inconsistent with the principles of the Gospel.[207]
Many Protestant divines have written in favor of polygamy. John Lyser, a Lutheran minister, living in the latter part of the seventeenth century, defended it strongly in a work ent.i.tled ”Polygamia Triumphatrix.” A former general of the Capuchin Order, converted to the Protestant faith, published, in the sixteenth century, a book of ”Dialogues in Favor of Polygamy.” Rev. Mr. Madan, a Protestant divine, in a treatise called ”Thalypthora,” maintained that Paul's injunctions that bishops should be the husbands of one wife, signified that laymen were permitted to marry more than one. The scholarly William Ellery Channing could find no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament.
In his ”Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton,” he says: ”We believe it to be an indisputable fact, that although Christianity was first preached in Asia, which had been from the earliest days the seat of polygamy, the apostles never denounced it as a crime, and never required their converts to put away all wives but one. No express prohibition of polygamy is found in the New Testament.” The legitimate result of such views is seen in Mormonism, the latest Protestant sect, which claims its authority from the Bible as well as from the Book of Mormon. We give the remarks recently made in defence of polygamy by Bishop Lunt of the Mormon Church, to a reporter of _The San Francisco Chronicle_:
G.o.d revealed to Joseph Smith the polygamous system. It is quite true that his widow declared that no such revelation was ever made, but that was because she had lost the spirit. G.o.d commanded the human race to multiply and replenish the earth. Abraham had two wives, and the Almighty honored the second one by a direct communication, Jacob had Leah and Zilpah. David had a plurality of wives, and was a man after G.o.d's own heart. G.o.d gave him Saul's wives, and only condemned his adulteries. Moses, Gideon, and Joshua had each a plurality of wives. Solomon had wives and concubines by hundreds, though we do not believe in the concubine system. We leave that to the Gentiles. Virtue and chast.i.ty wither beneath the monogamic inst.i.tution, which was borrowed from the pagan nations by the early Christians. It was prophesied that in the latter days seven women would lay hold of one man and demand to bear his name, that they might not be held in dishonor. The Protestants and Catholics a.s.sail us with very poor grace when it is remembered that the first pillars of the religion they claim to profess were men like the saints of Utah--polygamists. The fact can not be denied. Polygamy is virtually encouraged and taught by example by the Old Testament. It may appear shocking and blasphemous to Gentiles for us to say so, but we hold that Jesus Christ himself was a polygamist. He was surrounded by women constantly, as the Scriptures attest, and those women were His polygamous wives. The vast disparity between the s.e.xes in all settled communities is another argument in favor of polygamy, to say nothing of the disinclination among young male Gentiles to marrying. The monogamic system condemns millions of women to celibacy. A large proportion of them stray from the path of right, and these unfortunates induce millions of men to forego marriage. As I have said, virtue and chast.i.ty wither under the monogamic system.
There are no illegitimate children in Utah; there are no libertines; there are no brothels, excepting where the presence of Gentiles creates the demand for them. Even then our people do what they can to root out such places. There is a positive advantage in having more than one wife. It is impossible to find a Gentile home, where comforts and plenty prevail, in which there is only one woman. No one woman can manage a household. She must have a.s.sistance. Hence we claim that when a man marries a second wife, he actually benefits the first one, and contributes to her ease, and relieves her of a large burden of care. The duties of the household are divided between the two women, and everything moves on harmoniously and peacefully. The whole thing is a matter of education. A girl reared under the monogamic system may look with abhorrence on ours; our young women do not do so. They expect, when they marry a man, that he will some day take another wife, and they consider it quite natural that he should do so. In wealthy Gentile communities the concubine system largely takes the place of the polygamous system. Any man of intelligence, observation, and travel, knows that such is the case. The fact is ignored by general consent, and little is said about it, and nothing is written about it. It is not regarded as a proper subject of conversation or of publication. How much better to give lonely women a home while they are uncontaminated, and honor them with your name, and perpetually provide for them, and before the world recognize your own offspring! The polygamous system is the only natural one, and the time rapidly approaches when it will be the most conspicuous and beneficent of American inst.i.tutions. It will be the grand characteristic feature of American society. Our women are contented with it--more, they are the most ardent defenders of it to be found in Utah. If the question were put to a vote to-morrow, nine-tenths of the women of Utah would vote to perpetuate polygamy.
The Mormons claim that polygamy is countenanced by the New Testament as well as by the Old. They interpret Paul's teaching in regard to bishops, while commanding them to marry one wife, as also not prohibiting them from marrying more than one; their interpretation of this pa.s.sage slightly varying from that of Rev. Mr. Madan.
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