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It pleased him to talk, and he spoke fluently in a voice that was musical. He touched a hundred subjects; he developed a theory of matriarchy. Men loved to steal; women were naturally receivers. They adored property; their minds ran on possession; they were domestic materialists. We talked of socialism, of Bully Hayes, of Royat, of Rudyard Kipling.
Ibid., Intro., p. xiv. Ibid., Intro., p. xv. We may note in passing, the greater affectability of woman’s nature, which would seem always to have had a tendency to expression in religio-erotic manifestations. But to build up a theory of matriarchy on this foundation is strangely wide of the facts. Bachofen adduces the spirituality of women as the cause of their power.
And the conqueror became a master, and the slave an instrument of production. It was the men who were lucky enough to be first to enslave the enemy, to acquire more precious metals and larger flocks, who evolved the state, to protect them against the commune, or the mass, in their ownership of private property. At the death of the father his own children were disinherited, in the matriarchy.
I have discussed it so fully, not only because of the interest of the subject in proving the errors in the earlier theories of matriarchy, but because of the insight the conditions of the primordial group give us into the origin of the maternal family.
During the time of earth worship, the social organization of the tribe was such that the mother was the dominating influence in social structure. Descent was matrilinear, and a society known as matriarchy existed, as contrasted to the later patriarchy. The mother was the leading figure in social as well as in family life.
We have found women the organisers of the households, the guardians of the household stores, and the distributors of food, under a social organisation that may be termed “a communal matriarchy.” More important than all else, we have noted the remarkable freedom of women in the sexual relationships; in courtship they are permitted to take the active part; in marriage their position is one of such power that, sometimes, they are able to impose the form of the marriage; in divorce they enjoy equal, and even superior, rights of separation; moreover, they are always the owners and controllers of the children.
I am thus turned back to examine the opposing theory to matriarchy, which founds the family on the patriarchal authority of the father. Nor is this all. What we must expect a true theory to do is to show conditions that are applicable not only to special cases, but in their main features to mankind in general.
In these particulars my opinion differs from all other writers who have sought to establish a theory of matriarchy. I venture to claim that the position of the mother-age has been strengthened, and, as I hope, built up on surer foundations. Let us cast a brief glance backward over the way that we have travelled.
At this time in Greece, patriarchy had driven out the last vestiges of matriarchy, female deities had lost their followers to a great extent, and the devotion was paid to male gods and heroes. This change seems to have produced a certain contempt for women.
If anything, they had more status than any males except the n'Cor'naya, the Honored Ones who'd passed the Ordeal. They were responsible for both religion and clan life, things which were far more important to the Traiti than humans had guessed. The clans, not warfare, were the center of Traiti culture. And yet, even with females running those two vital areas, it wasn't a matriarchy.
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