Chapter IX: Sex Mores (3)

+407. Burning of widows.+ It appears certain that the primitive Aryans practiced the burning of widows, perhaps by the choice of the widows, and that the custom declined in the Vedic period of India. The burning of widows and the levirate could not exist together.[1291] As Manu[1292] gives rules for the behavior of widows (not name any man but the deceased husband; not remarry), he assumes that they will live. The custom of suttee was strongest in the lower castes.[1293] Akbar, the Mogul emperor, forbade suttee about 1600.[1294] He acted from the Mohammedan standpoint. His ordinance had no effect on the usage. The English put an end to the custom in 1830. This did not affect the native states, where the latest instance reported took place in 1880.[1295] A man who knows India well says that it was no kindness to widows to put a stop to suttee because, if they live on, their existence is so wretched that death would be better. Wilkins[1296] quotes a Hindoo widow's description of the treatment she received, which included physical abuse and moral torture. She was addressed as if she was to blame for the death of her husband. The head of a widow is shaved, although Hindoo women care very much for their hair. She is allowed but one meal a day and must fast frequently. She is shunned as a creature of ill omen. Inasmuch as girls are married at five or six, all this may happen to a child of ten or twelve, if her husband dies, although she never has lived with him. In 1856 the English made a law by which widows might remarry, but the higher classes very rarely allow it. If they do allow it, the groom is forced to marry a tree or a doll of cotton, so that he too may be widowed. The mores resist any change which is urged, although not enforced, by people of other mores. The reforms proposed in the treatment of widows have no footing at all in the experience and the judgment of Hindoos, if we except a few theists in Calcutta, and they have never taken a united and consistent position. Monier-Williams[1297] describes the case of a man who married a widow. He was boycotted so completely that all human fellowship was denied him. He had to go to a distant place and take a position under the government. Among the lower castes of the Bihari Hindoos a widow may marry the younger brother of her deceased husband, to whom her relation is always one of especial intimacy and familiarity.[1298]

+408. Difficulty of reform.+ It appears that the difficulty about the remarriage of widows is due to the fact that it runs counter to fundamental religious ideas. The Hindoo reformers are charged with using forms of wedding ceremony which are inconsistent with facts. Some widows are virgins, but there is not always a father or mother to give them away by the formula of "virgin gift." The women all have a notion, taken from the words of a heroine in the Mahabharata, that a woman can be given but once.[1299] They cling to the literal formula. By the form of first marriage also a woman passes into the kin of her husband for seven births (generations), the limit of degrees of consanguinity. It is irreligious and impossible to change the kin again, because consequences have been entailed which run seven generations into the future.[1300] This is all made to depend, not on the consummation of the marriage, but on the wedding or even betrothal. The census shows that the taboo on the remarriage of widows and the custom of child marriage extend and increase together.[1301] Where husbands are scarce girls are married in childhood in order to secure them, and widows are not allowed to remarry.[1302] By the remarriage of widows rajpoots and rajpoot families lose their rank and precedence.[1303] In Homer the remarriage of men is rare, and only one stepmother is mentioned.[1304] The prejudice against second marriages continued amongst the Greeks, even for men, for whom second marriage was restrained, in some parts of Greece by political disabilities, if the man had children. The reason given was that a man who had so little devotion to his family would have little devotion to his country.[1305] In the classical period widows generally married again. Sometimes the dying husband bequeathed his widow. In later times some widows contracted their own second marriages.[1306] Marcus Aurelius would not take a second wife as a stepmother for his children. He took a concubine. Julian, after the death of his wife, lived in continence.[1307] On Roman tombstones of women the epithet "wife of one husband" was often put as praise.[1308]

+409. Widows and remarriage in the Christian church.+ The pagan emperors of Rome encouraged second marriages as they encouraged all marriage, but the Christian emperors of the fourth century took up the ascetic tendency. About 300 the doctrine was, "Every second marriage is essentially adultery."[1309] Augustine, in his tract on "Continence," uttered strong and sound doctrine about self-control and discipline of character. In the tract on the "Benefit of Marriage" he defended marriage, intervening in a controversy between Jerome and Jovinian, in which the former put forth the most extravagant and contradictory assertions about virginity. Augustine's formula is: "Marriage and fornication are not two evils of which the second is worse, but marriage and continence are two goods, of which the second is better." Although this statement is very satisfactory rhetorically, it carries no conclusion as to the rational sense of regulation of the sex passion, or as to the limit within which regulation is beneficial. Augustine laid great stress on 1 Cor. vii. 36. In a tract on "Virginity" he glorified that state according to the taste of the period. In a tract on "Widowhood" (chaps. 13 and 14), he repudiated the extreme doctrine about second and subsequent marriages, but he exhorted widows to continence. The church fathers, like the mediæval theologians, had a way of admitting points in the argument without altering their total position in accordance with the admissions or concessions which they had made. The positions taken by Augustine in these tracts about the sex mores cannot be embraced in an intelligible and consistent statement. "At a period of early, although uncertain, date the rule became firmly and irrevocably established, that no digamus, or husband of a second wife, was admissible to Holy Orders; and although there is no reason for supposing that marriage after taking orders was prohibited to a bachelor, it was strictly forbidden to a widower."[1310] So it came about that, inasmuch as marriage was, in any case, only a concession and a compromise, and in so far a departure from strict rectitude, a second marriage was regarded with disfavor, and any subsequent ones were regarded with reprobation which increased in a high progression. This has remained the view of the Eastern church, in which a fourth marriage is unlawful. The Western church has not kept the early view, and has set no limit to remarriage, but orthodox and popular mores have frowned upon it after the second or, at most, the third. In Arabia, before the time of Mohammed, widows were forced into seclusion and misery for a year, and they became a class of forlorn, almost vagabond, dependents. It was a shame for a man if his mother contracted a second marriage.[1311] In the Middle Ages popular reprobation was manifested by celebrations which were always grotesque and noisy, and sometimes licentious. They were called charivaris. They were enacted in case of the remarriage of widows and sometimes in the case of widowers. They are said to have been a very ancient custom in Provence.[1312] This might mean that opposition to second marriages was due to Manichæan doctrines which were widely held in that region. The customs of popular reprobation were, however, very widespread, and nowadays amongst us the neighbors sometimes express in this way their disapproval of any sex relations which are in any way not in accord with the mores. In the Salic law it was provided that any woman who married a second time must do so at night.[1313] The other laws of the barbarian nations contain evidence of disapproval.[1314] Innocent III ruled, in 1213, that a man did not incur the ecclesiastical disabilities of second marriage, "no matter how many concubines he might have had, either at one time or in succession."[1315] The mediæval _coutumes_ of northern France are indifferent to second marriages.[1316] The ancient German custom approved of the self-immolation of a widow at her husband's death, but did not require it. The remarriage of widows was not approved and the widows did not desire it. This was a consequence of the ancient German notion of marriage, according to which a wife merged her life in that of her husband for time and for eternity.[1317] The usage, however, was softened gradually. The widow got more independence, and more authority over her children and property, over the marriage of her daughters, and at last the right to contract a second marriage after a year of mourning.[1318] In England, in the eleventh century, a widow's dower could not be taken to pay her husband's taxes, although the exchequer showed little pity for anybody else. The reason given is that "it is the price of her virginity."[1319] The later law also exempted a wife's dower from confiscation in the case of any criminal or traitor.[1320] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in France, "a period in which, perhaps, people supported widowhood less willingly than in any other," the actual usages departed from the acknowledged standards of right and propriety.[1321] The same was true in a greater or less degree elsewhere in Europe, and the widowed probably destroyed the prejudice against remarriage by their persistency and courage in violating it. In the American colonies it was by no means rare for a widow or widower to marry again in six or even in three months.

+410. Remarriage and other-worldliness.+ It is evident that the customs in regard to the treatment of widows, second marriages, etc., are largely controlled by other-worldliness. If the other world is thought of as close at hand, and the dead as enjoying a conscious life, with knowledge of all which occurs here, then there is a rational reluctance to form new ties by which the dead may be offended. If the other world and its inhabitants are not so vividly apprehended, the living pursue their own interests, and satisfy their own desires.

+411. Tree marriage.+ In several cases which have been presented, we have seen how the folkways devise means of satisfying interests in spite of existing (inherited) institutions which bear injuriously on interests. A remarkable case of this kind is tree marriage amongst the Brahmins of southern India. The established opinion is that a younger brother ought not to marry before an older one. The latter may be willing. That is immaterial. The device is employed of marrying the older brother to a tree, or (perhaps the idea is) to a spirit which resides in the tree. He is then out of the way and the younger brother may marry.[1322]

+412. The Japanese woman.+ The Japanese woman has been formed in an isolated state, of a militant character, with strong and invariable folkways. "Before this ethical creature, criticism should hold its breath; for there is here no single fault, save the fault of a moral charm unsuited to any world of selfishness and struggle.... How frequently has it been asserted that, as a moral being, the Japanese woman does not seem to belong to the same race as the Japanese man!... Perhaps no such type of woman will appear again in this world for a hundred thousand years: the conditions of industrial civilization will not admit of her existence.... The Japanese woman can be known only in her own country,--the Japanese woman as prepared and perfected by the old-time education for that strange society in which the charm of her moral being,--her delicacy, her supreme unselfishness, her childlike piety and trust, her exquisite tactful perception of all ways and means to make happiness about her,--can be comprehended and valued.... Even if she cannot be called handsome according to western standards, the Japanese woman must be confessed pretty,--pretty like a comely child; and if she be seldom graceful in the occidental sense, she is at least in all her ways incomparably graceful: her every motion, gesture, or expression being, in its own oriental manner, a perfect thing,--an act performed, or a look conferred, in the most easy, the most graceful, the most modest way possible.... The old-fashioned education of her sex was directed to the development of every quality essentially feminine, and to the suppression of the opposite quality. Kindliness, docility, sympathy, tenderness, daintiness,--these and other attributes were cultivated into incomparable blossoming. 'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; do noble things, not dream them, all day long,'--those words of Kingsley really embody the central idea in her training. Of course the being, formed by such training only, must be protected by society; and by the old Japanese society she was protected.... A being working only for others, thinking only for others, happy only in making pleasure for others,--a being incapable of unkindness, incapable of selfishness, incapable of acting contrary to her own inherited sense of right,--and in spite of this softness and gentleness ready, at any moment, to lay down her life, to sacrifice everything at the call of duty: such was the character of the Japanese woman."[1323]

[1129] Campbell, _Differences in the Nervous Organization of Men
and Women_, 29.

[1130] _Ibid._, 43.

[1131] _Ibid._, 34.

[1132] Campbell, _Differences in the Nervous Organization of Men
and Women_, 46.

[1133] _Ibid._, 45.

[1134] _Ibid._, 68.

[1135] _Ibid._, 66.

[1136] _Ibid._, 53 f.

[1137] _Ibid._, 223.

[1138] _Ibid._, 84.

[1139] _Ibid._, 90.

[1140] _Ibid._, 133.

[1141] _West Afr. Studies_, 375.

[1142] _Globus_, LXXXIII, 285.

[1143] Bebel, _Die Frau_, 73.

[1144] _Decret. Gratiani_, II, c. XXXII, qu. iv, c. 7.

[1145] Molmenti, _Venezia nella Vita Privata_, 393.

[1146] For cases see JAI, XXIII, 364.

[1147] _Globus_, LXXXVII, 179 (Caroline Isl.).

[1148] _Globus_, LXXXIII, 312.

[1149] Xenophon, _Lacedæmon_, I, 7, 8; Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 15.

[1150] Pellison, _Roman Life in Pliny's Time_, 100.

[1151] _Third Journey_ (_russ._), 259.

[1152] _Ladak_, 306.

[1153] Molmenti, _Venezia nella Vita Privata_, 386.

[1154] _Madras Gov. Mus._, III, 227.

[1155] Zimmer, _Altind. Leben_, 313; JASB, II, 316, 319; JAI,
XII, 291.

[1156] Lane, _Modern Egyptians_, I, 274, Cf. Snouck-Hurgronje,
_Mekka_, II, 106 ff.

[1157] Hauri, _Islam_, 135.

[1158] _Madras Gov. Mus._, III, 229.

[1159] Rockhill in _U. S. Nat. Mus._, 1893, 677.

[1160] Bishop, _Among the Thibetans_, 92.

[1161] Herod., I, 173.

[1162] Schoemann, _Griech. Alterthümer_, I, 51.

[1163] _Descent of Man_, 590.

[1164] Westermarck, _Marriage_, 130.

[1165] Sarasin, _Veddahs_, 462.

[1166] Schmidt, _Ceylon_, 277.

[1167] _Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde_, XXXV, 215.

[1168] _Soc. Einrichtungen der Pelauer_, 59.

[1169] _Umschau_, VI, 52, after Haeckel, _Aus Insulinde_.

[1170] _Ehe bei den Arabern_, 447.

[1171] Krieger, _Neu Guinea_, 300, 321.

[1172] _London Graphic_, 1902, 534.

[1173] _Cults of the Greek States_, 448.

[1174] Strange, _Hindu Law_, I, 57.

[1175] _Economica_, I, 4.

[1176] _Politics_, VII, 16.
[1177] VII-IX.

[1178] _Epist._, XCIV, 26.

[1179] _Ibid._, XCV, 39.

[1180] _Opera_ (Paris, 1635), VI, 358.

[1181] _Digest_, XLVIII, 13, 5.

[1182] Act IV, scene 8.

[1183] Migne, _Patrol. Latina_, XXII, 691.

[1184] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 346.

[1185] _Od._, I, 433.

[1186] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 347.

[1187] _Ibid._, 135.

[1188] _Globus_, LXXV, 271.

[1189] Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, 159.

[1190] Wellhausen, _Ehe bei den Arabern_, 450.

[1191] _Ibid._, 432.

[1192] Hauri, _Islam_, 124.

[1193] _Ibid._, 131.

[1194] Hauri, _Islam_, 121.

[1195] Cf. Snouck-Hurgronje, _Mekka_, II, 110 ff.

[1196] _Smithson. Rep._, 1895, 673.

[1197] _Od._, XVI, 392; XX, 74; XXI, 162.

[1198] _Iliad_, IX, 341.

[1199] _Od._, VI, 180.

[1200] _Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium libri novem_, IV, 6.

[1201] _Metamor._, VIII.

[1202] Pliny, _Letters_.

[1203] Friedländer, _Sittengesch._, II, 410.

[1204] E.g. _Burnt Njal_, 238.

[1205] Holtzmann, _Ind. Sagen_, I, 253.

[1206] _Ibid._, 256.

[1207] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 33.

[1208] _Ibid._, 45.

[1209] _Globus_, LXXXII, 104, 187-194, 279.

[1210] _Ibid._, 322.

[1211] Strausz, _Die Bulgaren_, 309.

[1212] _Globus_, LXXIX, 155.

[1213] _Madras Gov. Mus._, II, 162.

[1214] _Globus_, LXXXII, 323.

[1215] _Globus_, LXXXII, 321.

[1216] Ralston, _Songs of the Russ. People_, 7.

[1217] _Globus_, LXXVI, 316.

[1218] Ralston, as above, 65.

[1219] _Ztsft. f. vergl. Rechts-wsnsft._, XIV, 180.

[1220] _Ecole d'Anthrop. de Paris_, XIV, 411.

[1221] Schultz, _Höf. Leben_, I, 581, and the whole of Chap. VII;
Scherr, _D.F.W.I._, 220.

[1222] Migne, _Patrol. Lat._, Vol. 210.

[1223] Line 18,580.

[1224] I, 90, 92, 251; III, 103, 104 (in spite of love), 109,
167, 278.

[1225] III, 171.

[1226] I, 150.

[1227] _D. L._, 271, 276, 277.

[1228] Schultz, _D. L._, 259, 271-277.

[1229] Lichtenberger, _Poeme des Nibelungen_, 380.

[1230] _Ibid._, 390.

[1231] _Nibelungen_, line 837.

[1232] Lichtenberger, 368, 375, 391, 400; Uhland, _Dichtung und
Sage_, 315.

[1233] Barthold, _Hansa_, III, 178.

[1234] Schultz, _D. L._, 414.

[1235] Weinhold, _D. F._, II, 209.

[1236] Eicken, _Mittelalt. Weltanschauung_, 467.

[1237] _Hist. de Paris_, 268.

[1238] Schultz, _D. L._, 277.

[1239] _Ibid._, 283; cf. Janssen, VIII, 391.

[1240] Herod., IV, 104.

[1241] See sec. 366.

[1242] See sec. 178.

[1243] Lea, _Sacerd. Celibacy_, 203, note.

[1244] JAI, XXIV, 119.

[1245] _Eur. Morals_, II, 348.

[1246] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 736.

[1247] Plutarch, _Romulus_, 22.

[1248] Plutarch, _Comp. of Numa and Lykurgus_.

[1249] Tacitus, _Annals_, I, 10.

[1250] Plutarch, _Cato_.

[1251] Valer. Maxim., VI, 3, 12.

[1252] _Sat._, VI, 230.

[1253] _Apolog._, 6.

[1254] _Epist._, 2.

[1255] _Epist._, 95; _Consolation to his Mother_, 16.

[1256] Dill, _Nero to M. Aurel._, 87.

[1257] _Ibid._, 188.

[1258] Cook, _Fathers of Jesus_, II, 142.

[1259] Grupp, _Kulturgesch. der Röm. Kaiserzeit_, 113.

[1260] Heusler, _Deut. Privatrecht_, II, 291.

[1261] Reichel, _Canon Law_, I, 343.

[1262] _Mann und Weib_, 32.

[1263] JAI, XVIII, 288.

[1264] _Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci._, 1892, 704.

[1265] Schomburgk, _Brit. Guiana_, I, 122, 164; JAI, XXIV, 205.

[1266] _Peterm. Mittlgen, Erg. heft_, XXV, 9.

[1267] Holm, _Angmagslikerne_, 52; Nelson in _Bur. Eth._, XVIII,
Part i, 292.

[1268] _Borneo_, I, 194.

[1269] _Bijdragen tot T.L. en V.-kunde_, XXXV, 161, 165; Wilken,
_Volkenkunde_, 277.

[1270] IX, 88, 93, 94.

[1271] XI, 59, 171.

[1272] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte der Indo-Arier_, 54, 58.

[1273] Jolly, _Stellung der Frauen bei den allen Indern_, 425.

[1274] Strange, _Hindu Law_, I, 35.

[1275] Gehring, _Süd-Indien_, 78, 80.

[1276] IX, 90.

[1277] _Jo. Soc. Comp. Legisl., N. S._, VIII, 253.

[1278] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte_, 54.

[1279] _Madras Gov. Mus._, II, 162.

[1280] Monier-Williams, _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 354.

[1281] _Pol.-Anth. Rev._, III, 711.

[1282] Winckler, _Gesetze des Hammurabi_, 22.

[1283] Grimm, _Rechts-Alt._, 436.

[1284] Furnival, _Child-marriages_, XXVII, XXXIX, XL.

[1285] Hauri, _Islam_, 131.

[1286] _Modern Egyptians_, I, 268, 466.

[1287] JAI, X, 138.

[1288] Rubruck, _Eastern Parts_, 78.

[1289] Kohler and Peiser, II, 9.

[1290] Holtzmann, _Ind. Sagen_, I, 258.

[1291] Zimmer, _Altind. Leben_, 328-331.

[1292] V, 157, 161-164.

[1293] Jolly, _Stellung der Frauen_, 448.

[1294] _Nineteenth Cent._, XLV, 769.

[1295] Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, 391.

[1296] _Ibid._, 365.

[1297] _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 472.

[1298] JASB, VI, 119.

[1299] Cf. sec. 376.

[1300] JASB, VI, 376.

[1301] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte_, 61.

[1302] JAI, XII, 290.

[1303] _Ethnol. App. Census of India_, 1901, 74-75.

[1304] Keller, _Homeric Society_, 227; _Iliad_, XXII, 477; V,
389.

[1305] Diodorus Siculus, XII, 12.

[1306] Becker-Hermann, _Charikles_, III, 289.

[1307] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 316.

[1308] Friedländer, _Sittengesch._, I, 411.

[1309] Athenagoras, _Apolog._, 28; _Constit. Apost._, III, 2.

[1310] Lea, _Sacerd. Celibacy_, 35.

[1311] Wellhausen, _Ehe bei den Arabern_, 433, 455.

[1312] Jolly, _Seconds Mariages_, 194.

[1313] _Ibid._, 177.

[1314] _Ibid._, 193.

[1315] Lea, _Sacerd. Celib._, 283.

[1316] Jolly, _Seconds Mariages_, 193.

[1317] Tacitus, _Germ._, 19.

[1318] Stammler, _Stellung der Frauen im alten Deutschen Recht_,
37.

[1319] _Dialog. of the Exchequer, B_ 2, XVIII.

[1320] Pike, _Crime in England_, I, 428.

[1321] Jolly, _Seconds Mariages_, 202.

[1322] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte der Indo-Arier_, 59; Hopkins,
_Religions of India_, 541; Kohler, _Urgesch. der Ehe_, 28.

[1323] Hearn, _Japan_, 393 ff.