Household Administration, Its Place in the Higher Education of Women. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ the emotional nature of man, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the family owes its origin as a social factor to the Mother, not to the Father. Lippert is convinced “that the idea of an exclusively maternal kinship at one time extended over the whole earth,” and McLennan says, “We shall endeavour to show that the most ancient system in which the idea of 16 blood-relationship was embodied was a system of kinship through the females only.”

      Occupation seems to have been the main factor in determining that the mother rather than the father should be the founder of the family. Agriculture originally appears to have been entirely the woman’s industry, while the men were engaged in hunting or looking after the cattle, and wherever agriculture was the predominant feature of life we find that relationship is traced through the mother; while on the other hand those tribes who were chiefly pastoral had a paternal system of relationship—that is to say, that descent was counted through the males.

Drummond, in his book on the “Ascent of Man,” places the Evolution of Motherhood long before that of Fatherhood. “An early result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain, is the founding through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity—while Man, restless, eager, and hungry, is a wanderer on the Earth, Woman makes a Home!” And according to the same authority we find “that to Man has been assigned the fulfilment of the first great function—the Struggle for Life—Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named, is the chosen instrument for carrying on the Life of Others.” Nature took many æons to make a mother, whose gift to the world was Love and Sympathy; the evolution of the Father came still later. “It was when man’s mind first became capable of making its own provision against 17 the weather and the crops that the possibility of Fatherhood, Motherhood and the Family were realised.” “The Mother-age, with its mother-right customs, was a civilisation, as I have indicated, largely built up by woman’s activity and developed by her skill; it was an age within the small social unit of which there was more community of interest, far more fellowship in labour and partnership in property and sex, than we find in the larger social unit of to-day.”[1]

      In connection with this theory of the “Mother-age” it is interesting to note that the Etruscans traced their descent through the female line, and it was from the Etruscans that the Romans derived nearly all their institutions; thus many of the “initiative forces of civilisation” have come down to us from women.

      It is believed that the patriarchal system—where the man was the head of the family, as amongst the Jews—which succeeded the Mother-age, grew out of the custom of capturing women belonging to other tribes, this being succeeded later on by purchase, and “as soon as the woman ceased to be protected by the force of ideas, as soon, that is to say, as she lost her position as head of the family, her downward path was certain.” But even among primitive people we find that it was an almost universal custom that a woman should be provided with an independent property, “Mitgift,” though as time went on and the patriarchal system became more firmly established, it appears 18 that this Mitgift became the husband’s property, and that every bride was expected to bring a dowry to her husband, whose property she became, thus losing all independence.

However, in Greece the position of woman, during the Heroic times was to a certain extent an independent one, as is clear from the poems of Homer and the treatment of Homeric and Heroic themes by the Athenian dramatists. But one has only to compare the “Nausicäa” of Homer or the “Electra” of the Tragedians with the women of the time of Pericles, to see how much the status of the female sex had deteriorated. The Athenian wife of that time was treated as a mere “Hausfrau,” expected to spend her whole time at home in the managing of the household, while the husband satisfied his intellectual tastes by intercourse with the “Stranger-women” attracted to Athens from other towns. “Thus arose a most unnatural division of functions among the women of those days. The citizen-women had to be mothers and housewives—nothing more; the stranger-women had to discharge the duties of the companions, but remain outside the pale of the privileged and marriageable class.”[2] To this artificial condition of domestic and social life may be partly attributed the downfall of Athens, for it is impossible to divide the functions of woman without serious risk to State and race.

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In ancient Rome the patriarchal system was the prevailing custom. Under the Roman law the husband was the only member of the family possessing legal rights. “The family (familia) in its original and proper meaning is the aggregate of members of a household under a common head; this head was the paterfamilias, the only member of the household who possesses legal rights.”[3] It is true that there were many honoured women under the Roman Republic, such as Cornelia and Portia, the daughter of Cato, but the lot of the majority was not an enviable one. Gradually, however, the tutelage of women became less severe, and Justinian in revising the whole Roman code placed married and family life on an altogether new basis, “the husband lost his absolute control over his wife’s dower, and in case of separation he had to restore it entire.”

      Women had been for so long under such strict tutelage that they were unfit to benefit by these new laws. Doubtless it will be remembered that the corruption of the women of the period is practically unparalleled in history, but it must be also borne in mind that the whole system of Imperial government was so vicious that it was almost impossible for women to escape from the widespread influence of vice and corruption.

      Christianity as a force began to make itself felt while woman was yet in this low moral state, and 20 it is not therefore surprising that to the leaders of Christianity the freedom which women then enjoyed and the easy method of divorce obtainable were in a large measure responsible for the vitiated state of Roman life. In their eyes the only means of producing a more salutary state of affairs was to put a check on what they considered a menace to a Christian society.

It is of interest to notice how the attitude of the Early Fathers towards women differs from that of Our Lord as recorded in the Gospels. There indeed are women highly honoured, and it is to a woman that Christ often gives a message of the highest import. It was to Mary Magdalen that the Risen Lord first appeared and bade her tell the others, and again it was the woman of Samaria who became the instrument of salvation to her people. But to the Early Fathers the ascetic ideal was the predominant one, and in consequence thereof women were treated as the chief source of temptation to man. “Woman was represented as the door of Hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be ashamed of her dress, for it is the memorial of her fall. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of the demon.”[4] In fact a decree of 21 the Council of Auxerre (A.D. 578) forbade women to receive the Eucharist in their naked hands owing to their impurity.

      Unfortunately “the bigotry of the Early Christian teachers gave the first check to the tendency to freer institutions, the next was given by the fall of the Empire.”

      With the influx of the Teutonic tribes we find a new code of ideas and morals, but eventually a compromise was effected between the Germanic and Roman laws. Thus from very early times we find that it was a German custom to provide every bride with a dower, and this is remarked upon by Tacitus. Afterwards the Church adopted this custom, which was strangely enough both Roman and Teutonic in origin.

From the time when the Empire went down in a cataclysm which shook the foundations of the world, until the beginning of the Middle Ages, we hear but little of woman. It was the Sturm and Drang period in the world’s history, in which woman had no real position. The women of the upper classes were of necessity confined either to the castle or the convent, and woman’s sphere was therefore a small one; man demanded СКАЧАТЬ