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Title: Matriarchy and Patriarchy Author: Elisée Reclus Date: 1905 Language: en Topics: patriarchy, marriage, family, women, civilization Source: Translated by João Black from https://books.openedition.org/enseditions/5177 Notes: This is an extract of "Familles, Classes, Peuplades" (Families, Classes, Peoples), chapter 5 of Les Ancêtres, which is the first volume of "L'homme et la Terre". Translation by João Black, who intends to translate the rest of Familles, Classes, Peuplades in future.
The motive, that is to say the desire to please, which solicits each
primitive individual to adorn his person, had the union of the sexes as
a natural sanction, and, consequently, was to lead to the constitution
of family groups. But, just as the ornaments varied according to the
environments and the materials available to man, so the social forms
determined by the union between the sexes have singularly changed in
different places and in successive periods. In animals of various
species, we find all modes of union; we also find them in the world of
primitive men, in protohistory and in history itself: promiscuity
without precise rule, practical community [communauté pratique]
according to certain conditions, polygamy and polyandry, hierarchy of
wives and of husbands, levirate, that is, imposed or optional
inheritance of the woman left by an older brother; finally, temporary or
permanent monogamy. However, one is easily led to immediately imagine a
similar way of life for all those primitive men of whom no memory has
remained to us, and who probably resembled the wild [sauvages]
populations of our days, in which we observe a diversity of
institutions. Thus, many sociologists admitted in a general way, but
without any proof, that "the complete promiscuity of men and women, in
the same horde, was the primordial state of our species." But why should
this be so, since, beyond man, in the animal world, we see all forms of
"gamy" appear, and, among these forms, several of them testifying to a
mutual choice of individuals?
The experiments instituted by Darwin, and, since, by Houzeau, Espinas,
Romanes and so many others, put beyond doubt that the "family" really
exists, although under very diverse aspects, in the ancestral groups of
the [age of] animality. We even find, in several species, examples of
this monogamous family with constant and unalterable love that official
moralists consider as having the sole right to the title of "marriage".
However, it is certain that this kind of union is among the least
common, and that the mixing of the sexes, apparently occurring in a
capricious manner, is the most ordinary fact. It therefore seems quite
probable that the same customs prevailed among most of the first men. In
a distinct society, exposed to all dangers on the part of the members,
the animals and the enemy tribes, the collective personality included
all individuals, men, women, children, in such an intimate way that
private property could not be constituted to separate them from each
other: all were equally part of the big family.
As said by Oscar Browning,[1] there was certainly a period of history,
in a large number of countries, where the appropriation of a woman by a
man was considered an affront to society. Just as we have been able to
repeat at all times, in memory of the seizure of the land by a few
individuals, "Property is theft!", so we must have cried out "Marriage
is kidnapping!”. The man who took the woman away from her fellow
citizens to make her his own thing, his personal and private
acquisition, could not be considered other than an abductor, a traitor
to the community.
But, in such matters, the abrupt modifications of customs, the
revolutions, must have been rather numerous. Passion does not adapt to
traditional practices; rushing through, it transforms everything and
ends up creating new institutions. Thus the brothers of the primitive
horde, not daring to seize, on their personal account, a "sister", that
is to say a woman belonging to their tribe, had no scruples to capture
women in foreign tribes; often the lover, hidden in the bush, near the
fountain where the young girl came to draw water, pounced on his prey to
bring her in triumph to the native village, and possess her as sole
master, not as an associate [sociétaire] husband.
It was the beginning of exogamic marriages, first carried out by force,
by abduction, before assuming, by frequent recurrences, a normal
character, accepted by all. Even today, there is no lack of countries
where the kidnappings of young girls and women are carried out with real
violence, without tacit complicity on the part of the victim or the
parents. First, we must take into account the state of war that rages
among so many human groups, in all parts of the world; when all
impulsive passions are exasperated, when the life and liberty of the
fellow human are at the mercy of whoever wants to take them, and the
very arts of capture and murder are regarded as glorious and worthy of
all praise, the perpetrator can feel fully in his rights to appropriate
the captives: Achilles claims Briseis as his own, and, even among the
so-called civilized nations, the soldier, delivered to the ferocious
atavism of his instincts, arrogates to himself any license to rape as
well as to looting.
But, among many primitive peoples who find themselves in a state of
peace, either for a time or in a lasting manner, the practice of
abduction of women remains nonetheless consecrated by custom. Thus, the
Siah-Posh, or "Black-Robed", of the Hindu Kush, were strictly obliged,
by tradition, to take a wife in a tribe different from their own;
slipping near the hut where the coveted girl slept, the lover hurled a
blood-tinged arrow there, ready, if necessary, to truly spill the blood
of those who would stand in his way. This was also the case with the
ancient Germans, who used the word brut-luft ’ (bride race) in the sense
of marriage[2].
Likewise, in the Western Balkans, the Mirdita, or "Bon-Vivant", of
Christian religion and republican manners, formerly used to consider as
a dishonor not to have for wife a daughter taken from the Muslim of the
plain, the hereditary enemy. The latter often valiantly defended his
daughter or sister whom one sought to take away from him; but, knowing
that the abduction of women was for the mountain people the rule of
tradition, a "law of nature", he usually accepted with peace of mind the
accomplished fact, all the more so since, at the time of one of those
truces that interrupt, from time to time, the border wars, he could
count, in an almost certain way, on the payment of a purchase price,
fixed according to custom. In this case, the abduction has become the
middle form between the primitive kidnapping and the simple purchase ―
as it was once practiced among the Circassians of the Caucasus; ― this
is where the more or less complicated ceremonies of money marriage
[mariage d’argent] are derived from, which, by virtue of the conditions
of property, is naturally the rule in the civilized societies of the
European world.
If the real abduction still exists, how much more the traditional rites
that testify to the primitive form of exogamic marriages![3] Examples of
this survival abound in history. In Greece, in India, we remember the
"heroic" marriage, the union practiced according to the so-called
Rakchasa mode; in all parts of the Earth, tribes simulate the primitive
form of kidnapping; the abduction of the Sabine women by the Romans is
reproduced on all sides by games and festivals where swords are still
drawn, where clubs are still brandished, but where blood is no longer
spilled. We can even wonder if, by the effect of a continuous work of
evolution, the groomsmen who, in current marriages, accompany the
fiancés and the fiancées, do not represent, without knowing it, the
armed people who, on both sides, once fought to conquer or keep the prey
of love. But institutions, like peoples, have multiple origins: relics
of hatred and relics of friendship are intertwined in a single drama in
which the actors see nothing but pleasure. At all times, whatever may be
said, mutual attractions must have directly given rise to the union
between man and woman. A chapter of the MahĂŁbhĂŁrata contains the
description of all the legal modes of marriage, eight in number, and
obviously responding to the customs of distinct nations which merged, at
different ages, in the great crucible of Hindustan.
Map 33. Some forms of marriage in India
[]
1. Toda, formerly polygamous marriages and the practice of infanticide.
― 2. Iroula, promiscuity. ― 3. Naïr, complex marriages of which
matriarchy forms the basis. ― 4. Poliyar, polyandry. ― 5. Moplah,
polygamy (Mohammedans). ― 6. Labbaï, polygamy (Mohammedans). ― 7.
Rodiya, exogamic polyandry. ― 8. Veddah, marriage with the younger
sister, endogamic polygamy. ― 9. Jews in Cranganore, strict monogamy. ―
10. Nazarenes in Quilon, religious monogamy. ― 11. Catholics in Goa, St.
Thomas, Pondicherry, etc. ― 12. Protestants in Mangalore and Madura.
Tamil and Sinhalese, marriage by flowers.
The various forms of sexual union, from the regime of promiscuity to
that of free contract by mutual consent, would remain misunderstood if
we forgot that, in marriage, the child is the third term of the family
trinity. It was he [the child, l'enfant] who, in the social whole, had
the most important part of action, he who modeled man in his image.[4]
It gave the first cohesion to the group of individuals of both sexes
living in adventure, just as it later gave to the monogamous family its
raison d'ĂŞtre. Without the preponderant influence of the child, it would
be impossible to explain the period of matriarchy, whose existence was
until recently unknown and which so many documents, recently studied, so
many observational facts, prove to have prevailed for long centuries in
a very large number of peoples. Some authors[5] have even wanted to
establish that all of humanity, in a primitive evolution, would have
gone through this phase: the government of mothers. What makes this
hypothesis more than doubtful is that we do not find the institution of
matriarchy among very inferior primitive peoples, such as the most
backward tribes of Brazil and the Indians of the Californian coast: it
is among tribes having already behind them a long past of civilization
that we must look for the forms of the matriarchal family.[6] The most
barbaric state of society is that during which man dominates, not
because he is the father, but because he is the strongest, because he
brings the largest share of food and distributes the blows, either to
the enemies or to the weak of the horde. Moreover, the children can be
left to the mother, so that she fully retains their burden and
direction, without the father thinking that he has to respect and treat
her as an equal: she is genitrix, wet-nurse, servant, but he remains
absolutely the master.
Map 34. Land of the "Amazons"
[]
According to Coudreau, it was the uaupés women who gave rise to the
legend from which the great river of South America takes its name.
Matriarchy proper, already implying a certain refinement of customs, is
far superior to the ages of brute force and promiscuity, if they ever
existed, as well as to the period of property possessed in common by all
beneficiaries of a family group. Even at the time when the horde dragged
the whole herd of children with them, the latter naturally had to group
behind their genitrix and thus contribute to give her little by little
the direction of the family, which happy circumstances developed into
social and even political power. The father being unknown, or at least
neglected as a being of adventure, the mother gathered around her home
those whom she had breastfed and trained for life. Motherhood thus
developed in the midst of primitive barbarism and gave the first impetus
to future civilization.[7] On the coasts of South America, where family
ties are very loose for most men, and where a semi-promiscuity prevails,
matriarchy is organized naturally.[8]
[]
FIGHT OF THE AMAZONS
Ancient low-relief. — Fragment of a shield
(Louvre Museum)
The central influence of the child on the constitution of matriarchy
remaining beyond doubt, it is certain that the action of the
geographical environment must also have taken some part in this social
evolution. Thus in the countries where the gathering of fruits and the
search for roots were the principal means of finding food, the women,
whom their functions of mothers and wet-nurses already indicated to
occupy the first rank, also had other chances in their favor as
providers of material life. These chances were further enhanced in
regions less threatened by war, where man did not immediately rise to
first place as defender or conqueror.[9] However, it is not certain that
war itself always gave the supremacy to men, for the legend relating to
the Amazons, in the Old World and the New World, is too general not to
admit the fact of an ancient political domination of warring tribes led
by women. Moreover, there is not only the legend: the examples of women
who were true leaders are not lacking in history.
[]
DAHOMEAN AMAZON
From a photograph
But whether or not Amazons existed as distinct political tribes, it is
indisputable that various tribes absolutely recognized the supremacy of
women, and that in others, men, while exercising power, still claimed to
be part of the maternal family. Herodotus, in a famous passage,[10] says
that the Lycians carried the name of the mother instead of that of the
father, and that their condition was regulated according to that of
their genitrix. The Lycian inscriptions, confirming the saying of the
great historian traveler, only mention the names of the mother.[11] To
the examples of matriarchy in antiquity, collected by Bachofen, Mac
Lellan and numerous travelers, facts have been added of the contemporary
world among non-refined populations.
To choose only a typical form of this social state, we can cite the
mountain dwellers of Assam, south of Brahmaputra, the Garos and the
Khasis. Even today, despite the influence of the Hindus and other
populations of the patriarchal type, these tribes are divided into clans
that have retained the name of mahari, that is to say "matries".[12]
Related to the Tibetans, who also have remains of gynocracy, these
peoples still see women as the head of the family. It is the virgin garo
or khasi who offers the young man to take him for her husband; It is
also she who carries out the subduction of the chosen husband,
accompanied by her friends and the servants of the maternal clan.
Divorce belongs to the woman: it is up to her to throw, when she
pleases, five seashells in the air so that the separation is pronounced
and the husband returns to his first matrie, leaving the children to the
dominatrix.
Even when the man has been tolerated throughout his life, he must
divorce on the day of his death: his ashes are returned to the place of
his origin, while the woman is burned with honor in her matrie; later,
the children's urns will be placed beside the maternal urn.[13]
By classifying all the facts relating to the formation of the primitive
family in the various parts of the world, Cunow was able to clearly
demonstrate that there is a close dependence between the formation of
the family and the economic conditions. Thus we have never encountered
frankly matriarchal institutions among pastoral peoples.
Even in the wandering hordes where descent was settled by the maternal
family, as among the Ovaherero of southern Africa, before conquest ―
perhaps even destruction by a colonial army from Europe ― altered their
customs, the woman was far from holding the scepter: she obeyed, because
wealth comes almost entirely from the man’s work. It is he who takes the
beasts out to pasture, who looks after them and protects them against
the enemy, against ferocious animals and marauders; it is he who milks
the cows and manufactures the cheeses; he possesses at the same time
strength and superiority in the economic grouping: the matriarchal
vestiges of the past do not prevent the effective domination of man.
Map 35. Land of the Matriarchy []
But where agriculture becomes the exclusive work of women, where
husbands and sons are almost always occupied outdoors, with hunting,
fishing, war, the situation is absolutely different; here the useful
role par excellence, in the general economy of the tribe, belongs to the
woman. Agriculture provides them with harvests more or less constant in
quantity, while the products brought in by man vary according to
adventures, hazards and weather. Common prosperity depends absolutely on
the good management of mothers, their sense of order, the peace and
concord they bring into the household. The natural affection they get
from the children gathered around them develops into a kind of religion.
No decision can be taken without first consulting them; absolute
providers of the family wealth, they even end up becoming the regulators
of all social and political affairs: the males, although the strongest,
bow to moral sovereignty.
Among the Wyandots of North America,[14] the nation's grand council
consisted of 44 women and 4 men, who were really only the executive
agents of the female will.[15] But in more developed societies, where
agriculture has assumed such relative importance that man almost
completely abandons hunting and fishing to forcefully plow the furrow,
the social pivot changes in the grouping of individuals, and from the
great matriarchal family evolves the great patriarchal family, as we
find it among the ancient Chinese, the Japanese and the Romans (H.
Cunow).
Besides, the word "matriarchy" lends itself to confusion. One may
readily imagine that the authority of the mother over the children
implies domination in the family and at least the equality of the woman
with the father; but these are very different things.
Maternal power does not at all prevent the brutality of the husband:
there is, so to speak, only simplification of work in the government of
the family. Thus, among the Orang Laut, who live on the Malaca
peninsula, the children belong to the mother alone, which is indeed the
regime of matriarchy; nevertheless the wife leads a most unhappy
existence: the husband beats her and does not allow her to eat in his
presence.[16]
[]
THE GREAT COUNCIL OF WOMEN, AMONG THE WYANDOTS
Drawing by George Roux from a photograph
Likewise in BĂ©arn, as well as in Japan, the husband of an heiress,
eldest of the children, will stay with her and receive from her his
name, which is at the same time that of the land and which becomes that
of the whole family: one could conclude from this in the existence of a
true matriarchy, but the husband, whatever his deference to the heiress
who gives him the fortune and the name, remains nonetheless the head,
the undisputed master.[17]
Polyandry is a form of union that naturally derives from matriarchy. In
the union of man and woman, the two elements have a tendency to maintain
their personality anyway and consequently to take the predominance
according to whether one or the other is favored by the environment. Now
the woman, absolute mistress of her children, subordinating the man to
her power and counting alone as will in the family, did not have to
combat a hostile opinion in taking successively, or at once, several
favorites: a queen, she only had to choose. But her heart being
willingly faithful conservator of the first impressions, she usually
acquired, even in full polyandry, the habit of maintaining family
cohesion, taking as common spouses all sons of a same mother. This is
the form of marriage that once prevailed in Tibet ― the land of the Bods
― and among all populations of the same origin.
Polygyny is, in the patriarchy, the institution corresponding to that of
polyandry in the matriarchy. However, the contrast is not always
absolute between the two types of marriages that characterize the
domination of mothers and that of fathers. Thus, the example that
authors like to cite as testimony of the old matriarchy nevertheless
indicates the transition between the two systems: Draupadi, the wife of
the five sons of Pandu, is indeed the "queen", but not the mistress of
the family; although having given herself several husbands, she did not
keep the government of the house, she obeyed. The patriarchal form
therefore mingles, in this particular case, with the matriarchal form.
Another readily cited example is that of the Nairs of the Malayalam or
Malabar coast; but in this case, too, the two regimes became
intertwined. It is true: the nair women, belonging to the ancient
warring and domineering nation, choose and vary their spouses, but they
are bound to take them from among the Brahmins, the invading caste
coming from the north, armed with science and ruse, skilled at governing
while sheltering under the homage paid to an official suzerainty.
The types of these unions vary according to the greater or lesser
influence of the ethnic elements represented, but all offer the
character of a compromise between various institutions and are arranged
in a bizarre and complicated way. Perhaps the most original example of
such marriages is the collective "great union": Brahmin husbands and
Nair women grouping together in societies of several individuals, even
twelve per sex, of which each member, man and woman, is entitled to
other members of the opposite sex.[18] This is neither matriarchy nor
patriarchy, but a dual system of polygamy and polyandry, a savant return
towards promiscuity, but in a strictly regulated form, between
associated owners. It took a whole mixing of theological cunning and
depravity to come up with such combinations. Sociological types are as
intertwined as races.
Patriarchy, which, in various forms, apart from free union, has become
the almost universal type of marriage in modern societies, must, like
matriarchy, have its origins not only in prehistory, but also in
prehumanity. The difference in environments and in evolution has
necessarily given rise to quite numerous differences in detail; however,
we can say, in a very general way, that matriarchy is explained by a
natural fact, "the birth of the child,” and that patriarchy originates
from an act of force, the abduction, the conquest, facts of historical
order.[19]
It was therefore not as a result of a slow evolution, as Mac Lellan
imagines, that patriarchy replaced the first matrimonial forms of the
natural grouping of children, but, on the contrary, this institution
stems from violent causes, from sudden events, and the evolution was
quite distinct, independent, which did not prevent endless combinations
and mixtures between the two types of marriages.
The origin of the first "family" in the patriarchal sense, a family very
different from what we understand today by this word, was exactly the
same as the origin of the State. The victorious leader seizes a country
and all the inhabitants therein: he is a founder of an Empire. Each
warrior belonging to the conquering band has his share of loot, land,
things and men. Anyone who will obey henceforth as a slave or a
concubine is part of the "family", a term which originally designated
the set of goods, movable and immovable, children and servants.[20]
And the pater familias himself, the master of the family, was not
originally considered as the progenitor, but only as the protector of
all the little State which had fallen to him by conquest or by
inheritance: the "father" can become so via a servant or a relative;
until after his death, he acquires legitimate children through the
institution of the "levirate" which obliges the brother to marry his
deceased brother’s wife.
Besides the war, a capital fact in the founding of this first
patriarchal family, the other conditions of the way of life contributed
to the seizure of power by man. In groups living solely from hunting,
the male carries the food to the dwelling, while the female only has to
look after the children at home and take care of the household chores.
It is therefore inevitable that in such a situation the father enjoys
the greatest authority: a god, provider of the flesh and blood, he can
imagine that he has some right to worship from his family. Among nomadic
peoples, the males, being the strongest, have to capture, tame and kill
the cattle; they also take all rights over the weaker women, designated
by nature for the preparation of meals, for the care of the man’s
children and the offspring of the beast. Patriarchy, all other things
being equal, must therefore become particularly worse among these
pastors, especially when they are at the same time warriors and seek to
enslave other populations. Each new batch of captives reacts on the
family of the victor and diminishes the rights of the wife in
proportion.
As a result of the struggle between the two principles, one deriving
from the natural solidarity between the child and the mother, the other
from the violence exerted by male captors, the two types of marriage,
matriarchy and patriarchy, have developed side by side in the series of
ages and according to the vicissitudes of men, taking or losing in
relative force, without ever keeping as an institution the point of
equilibrium, which is the perfect equality of rights between the
individuals, and therefore between the sexes.
However, in Sumatra, the three forms of marriage were clearly
recognized: the jugur, by which the man bought the wife; the ambel-anak,
by which the woman bought the man, and the semando or household of
equals.[21]
Likewise among the Hassaniyeh and the Hamites of the Upper Nile, it is
often recognized to the married woman her share in the products of
culture. In the continuing antagonism of regimes, the patriarchy is, as
history shows us, the one that most often prevailed, given the
difficulties of the struggle for existence, which requires the
employment of force, and the result of the conflicts that occur in the
families themselves.
The interweaving of traditions and ideas shows that everywhere, even
among essentially patriarchal populations, there are still some remains
of the old matriarchy, sometimes very bizarre, as among the Baluba of
Kasai, where women are true slaves, acquired with money, but where they
nevertheless preside as "elders" ["anciennes"] to the blessing of
sowing.[22] Elsewhere, especially in Berber societies, the woman, a
serve herself, nonetheless protects the foreigner, like a divinity.
Likewise, in our Middle Ages, the hand of a woman replaced the touch of
an altar. The traces of it have become so weak in modern societies,
founded on the rights of the husband or the father, that virtue itself,
virtus, was formerly considered as monopoly of the male.[23] And
naturally this exclusive claim to virtue must have engendered all the
evils: ferocious jealousy of the proprietary husband, brutality in the
education of children, burning of widows, the practice and ultimately
the duty of infanticide.
We know what happened to certain regions of the warring India under this
regime. Even in the course of our very recent civilizations, right up to
the "Age of Enlightenment", have we not seen Rajputs or "Sons of Kings",
these types of traditional honor, invariably marrying by way of
kidnapping, letting their mothers burn at the paternal stake, and almost
always killing their daughters, for fear of not being able to marry them
with enough wealth and splendor?
We see, in this case, how much the social grouping formed by the clan,
tribe or nation and consolidated by traditional morality has more
influence than the natural feelings manifested in marriage and in
kinship. These affections, these personal conveniences have to adapt to
conventions dictated by public opinion or are ruthlessly dismissed. The
common will of the group is imposed by dictatorship, and all the more
powerfully as the tradition is of longer origin and less reasoned: "This
is how it has always been done!" There would therefore be a rapid death
of any association for lack of renewal if the vicissitudes of life were
not in charge of modifying the groupings by crossed associations or
violent disruptions.
[…]
[1] Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. VI, 1892, page
97.
[2] Max Müller, Essais de Mythologie comparée, trad. de G. Perrot, page
307.
[3] Mac Lellan, Primitive Marriage.
[4] Guyau, Morale d’Épicure, page 160.
[5] Bachofen, Mutterrecht.
[6] Heinrich Cunow, Bases Ă©conomiques du Matriarcat (Devenir social,
janvier 1898).
[7] Élie Reclus, République française, 23 fév. 1877.
[8] Liard-Courtois, Après le Bagne, p. 117.
[9] Ernst Grosse, Die Anfänge der Kunst, p. 36.
[10] Livre I, 173.
[11] Bachofen, Mutterrecht ; M. Kowalewsky, Tableau des Origines et des
Évolutions de la Famille et de la Propriété.
[12] Matrie in French, being the feminine equivalent of patrie, means
"motherland" in the sense of "homeland". (Translator)
[13] Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal.
[14] Heinrich Cunow, Le Devenir social, avril 1898, pp. 335 Ă 341.
[15] J.W. Powell, Wyandot Government.
[16] Laloy, Anthropologie, t. viii, 1897, p. 110.
[17] Jacques Lourbet, Revue de Morale sociale, 1899. p. 164.
[18] Mac Lellan, Primitive Marriage.
[19] Ludwig Gumplowicz, New deutsche Rundschau, vol. 1, 1895, p. 1143 et
suiv.
[20] Michel Bréal et Anatole Bailly. Dictionnaire étymologique latin.
[21] Lubbock, Origines de la Civilisation.
[22] Garmijn, Bulletin de la Société belge de Géographie, nov. 1905.
[23]
G. de Greef. Le Transformisme social.