Woman in Modern Society | Page 7

obvious that this interpretation will depend on the point of view held by
the interpreter.
Hence we must ask in what fundamental beliefs this presentation rests.

These are, first, that life tends to move along certain lines that
constitute the law of human nature. Just as the infant tends first to
wriggle, then creep, then walk, then run and dance, so human nature
tends to move upward from savagery through primitive settled life to
the complex forms of larger settled units. In this progress, material or
economic forces play a large part; but ideas, originally born out of
circumstances, but sometimes borrowed from other people, sometimes
degenerate remnants of past utilities, also play a large part. The
progress we finally make is thus directed by this human tendency, by
material circumstances, and by ideas. Sometimes it keeps pretty closely
to what seems to us to be upward human growth; sometimes it
stagnates; sometimes it gives us perverted products; and sometimes it
destroys itself.
Thus it becomes necessary to trace the past experiences of woman that
we may see with what heritage she faces the future. She is all that she
has felt and thought and done. She started with at least half of the
destiny of the race in her keeping. Handicapped in size and agility, and
periodically weighted down by the burdens of maternity, she still
possessed charms and was mistress of pleasures which made her, for
savage man, the dearest possession next to food; and for civilized man,
the companion, joy and inspiration of his days.
Of woman's position in early savage times we know only what we can
learn from fragmentary prehistoric remains, from the structure of early
languages, from records of travelers and students among savages of
more recent times; or what can be inferred from human nature in
general. Most of this data is difficult to interpret, but it is probable that
woman's position was not much worse than man's. It is a bad beast that
fouls its own food or its own nest; and the female had always the
protection of the male's desire. If she could not entirely control her
body, she could still control her own expressions of affection and desire;
and, without these, mere possession lost much of its charm.
As keeper of the cave, cultivator of the soil, and guardian of the child,
woman, rather than her more foot-loose mate, probably became the
center of the earliest civilization. The jealousy of men formed tribal
rules for her protection; and to these, religion early gave its powerful
sanctions. Thus there came a day when the woman took her mate home
to her tribe and gave her children her own name. Even if the

matriarchal period was not so important as has sometimes been
assumed, woman certainly had large influence over tribal affairs in
early savage life.
With the increase in population, and the consequent disappearance of
game, man was forced to turn his attention to the crude agriculture
which woman had begun to develop. The superior qualities which he
had acquired in war and the chase, enabled him slowly to improve on
these beginnings and to shape a body of custom which made settled
society possible. With man's leadership in the family the patriarchal
form of government developed, and man's power over woman was
sanctioned by custom and law. The woman was stolen, or bought; and
while sexual attraction did not play the continuous part which it plays
in developed society, it must have done much to protect women from
abuse and neglect, at least during the years of girlhood and
child-bearing. It is at this point that our historical records begin.
In the pages of Homer, or of the Old Testament, in Tacitus's
"Germania," or in the writings of Livy, we find woman's position well
defined. True, she stands second to the man, but she is his assistant, not
his slave. She must be courted, and while marriage presents are
exchanged, she is not bought. In times of emergency, she steps to the
front and legislates, judges, or fights. It is possible in the pages of the
Old Testament to find women doing everything which men can do.
Even where the power is not nominally in her own hands, she often, as
in the cases of Penelope or Esther, rules by indirection. Her body and
her offspring are protected; and the Hebrew woman of the Proverbs
shows us a singularly free and secure industrial position.[16] Such was
the condition in primitive Judea, in early Greece, in republican Rome,
or among the Germans who invaded southern Europe in the third and
fourth centuries of our era.
[16] Proverbs xxxi, 10.
Man's jealousy of his woman as a source of pleasure and honor to
himself, and to his family, must have always acted to