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CHAPTER II

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES

The world furnishes many examples of the rise and decline of civilizations before our era. Their art and literature often show social institutions comparing favorably with those of modern times. Almost without exception their decline can be traced to the invasion of people of less culture but greater warlike propensities. The institutions of these warlike peoples are the ones which survived, and upon which rest our modern institutions.

As we have seen the primitive society, militancy favors a greater differentiation of sex status and of work than industrialism. In the primarily industrial nations, men's and women's work often overlap, and although we can recognize a sex division of work, the line constantly shifts to the economic advantage of women. In a militant society, the women of the higher classes are often shown a deference unknown in the lower classes, but this deference is not shown them as a sex alone, but because of their relation to those who stand highest in the state. Where the women of the higher classes enjoy rights and privileges other than those reserved to them by the state, they are bestowed upon the individual alone, and not upon the sex in general. They have their basis in family ties making the family a unit in its economic interests, as well as in its social and political interests. No matter how conservative men may be in their attitude toward the political, social, and industrial equality of men and women, their prejudices do not weigh against family interests, or apply to the females of their own families.

Militant types of society have not recognized the political rights of women as women. But for all that their women have often played important roles in history by virtue of the power coming to them through some male relative who was more anx

ious to delegate his power to them than to see it pass to strangers, or to men of remoter blood relationship.

In the early, less militant societies we see that certain rights of women were recognized. In Egypt "the husband appears to have entered the house of his wives rather than the wives to have entered his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the Greeks were deceived by it. They affirmed that the women were supreme in Egypt; the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her, and entered into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands.""

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Hobhouse says, "It is very possible that the preservation of relics of mother-right was among the forces tending to the better condition of women in Egypt. These were augmented toward the close of the independent history of Egypt by the rise of free contract and the important part taken by women in the industrial and commercial life. In these relations and in social intercourse generally it is allowed on all hands that 1 their position was remarkably free."""

In Babylonia there were times when women held a position of independence and authority. "The wife could act apart from her husband, could enter into partnership, could trade 1 with her money and conduct lawsuits in her own name.'

Sayce says further, "Women, as well as men, enjoyed ahe advantages of education. This evidence from the Babylonian contract-tablets, in which we find women appearing, as well as men, as plaintiffs or defendants in suits, as partners in commercial transactions, and as signing, when need arose, their names. There was none of that jealous exclusion of women in ancient Babylonia which characterizes the East of today, and it is probable that boys and girls pursued their studies at the same school."3

Among the Greeks of the Homeric age, women held a position of respect and dignity but in the age of Pericles "little pains were taken with their education. Before their marriage, they managed their households and seldom left their dwellings." 4

1 Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 53.

2 Hobhouse, Evolution of Morals, 1, p. 189.

Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians.

Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 199,

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In spite of paternal authority so firmly established by custom all through early history we find individual women. conspicuous by virtue of their cleverness, intelligence or charm. giving them power in affairs of state. When Rome was at its height, there were men solicitors acting in behalf of women in litigation and in the management of their property. In fact, "the mass of capital which was collected in the hands of women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the testamentary nomination of women as heirs, and even sought by highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of those collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament. ''5

The Roman family was absolutely controlled by the father. His jurisdiction extended not only to the women and children of his household but to his grown sons after they had established a household of their own. "

The attitude of the law toward a class of men is a fair criterion of their status; but this is not true of the women. Since they do not constitute a distinct class or industrial stratum, law is more apt to reflect their status as determined by tradition and custom, than to determine their status.

Mommson says, "Wife and child did not exist merely for the house-father's sake in the sense in which property exists only for the proprietor, or in which the subjects of an absolute state exist only for the king; they were the objects indeed of a legal right on his part, but they had at the same time capacities of right of their own; they were not things but persons. Their rights were dormant in respect of exercise, simply because the unity of the household demanded that it should be governed by a single representative.””

Long before legislation took a more enlightened attitude to

5 Mommsen, History of Rome, II, p. 484. "Mommsen, History of Rome, I, p. 91.

"The grown up son might establish a separate household or, as the Romans expressed it, maintain his own cattle (perculium) assigned to him by his father; but in law all that the son acquired, whether by his own labour or by gift from a stranger, whether in his father's household or in his own, remained the father's property."

7 Mommsen, History of Rome, I, p. 93.

ward the legal and political rights of women, the old laws relating to women had become antiquated. "Even in public matters women already began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought, 'to rule the rulers of the world.'

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Irrespective of the legal and social status of women, early history shows practically the same division of work between the sexes as in primitive times. If there is any apparent difference, it is in a greater diversity of household tasks for women, and the narrowing of the limits of their out-of-door tasks. Men continue to make inroads upon the increasing industrial work of women without changing the nature of it in any of its essentials.

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In Rome within the house woman was not servant but mistress." Exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking which according to Roman ideas belonged to the menials, the Roman housewife devoted herself in the main to the superintendence of her maid servants, and to the accompanying labours of the distaff, which was to woman what the plow was to man. 9

The characteristic work of the Roman women of the wellto-do classes was practically that of the well-to-do classes of all early civilizations. The work, however, of the wives of the peor was in marked contrast. The Ligurian women "laboured, like the men, at the hardest work, and hired themselves out for the harvest in the neighboring countries.''

History throws little light upon the conditions of the laboring people in early civilization. Although they were the foundation on which society rested, they were considered of no consequence in the development of the state excepting in their capacity as warriors. Hence, our knowledge of the manners and customs of the people must be gleaned from data regarding the well-to-do classes.

Under feudalism, status was well defined and the individual counted for little in the social regime. The position of the lord was based upon military prowess, and he took little or no direct

8 Mommsen, History of Rome, II, p. 484-5. Mommsen, History of Rome, I, p. 89.

10 Duruy, History of Rome, I. Sec. 1, pp. 54-55.

part in the industrial occupations of the people. The laborer was his property, and the lord in return agreed to protect him. Guizot says, "There was nothing morally common between the holder of the fief and his serfs. They formed part of his estate; they were his property; and under this word property are comprised, not only all the rights which we delegate to the public. magistrate to exercise in the name of the state, but likewise all those which we possess over private property; the right of making laws, of levying taxes, of inflicting punishment, as well as that of disposing of them or selling them."'11

The serf was in no wise a part of the feudal lord's family nor did the women of his class expérience any of the male chivalry which we are accustomed to associate with this period.

The status of the women of the serfs was little better than that of slaves. The difference between the status of men and women of this class was probably no greater than that between the lord and his wife, but the difference was emphasized in that there. was a greater range of abuse on the part of the social superior toward the social inferior where women were concerned.

In the house of the lord "the chief, however violent, and brutal his outdoor exercises, must habitually return into the bosom of his family. He there finds his wife and children, and scarcely any but them; they alone are his constant companions; they alone are interested in all that concerns him. It could not but happen in such circumstances, that domestic life must have acquired a vast influence, nor is there any lack of proofs that it did so.'

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The predominance which domestic life acquired among the upper classes during feudal times did much toward elevating the women of these classes to social equality with men.

Although during this period there exists among the people a great difference in the kind of work performed by men and the work performed by women in the higher classes, nevertheless the position of the wife was one of respect, and often one of authority. When the lord was away from home on warlike expeditions the wife assumed at times her lord's duties.13

11 Guizot, History of Civilization, I, pp. 92–93.

12 Guizot, History of Civilization, VI, p. 91.

13 Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, p. 264-5.

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