United States or Gambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The current view, so often asserted, and manifestly inspired by a Puritanical ideal, insists that mother-descent arose through uncertain fatherhood, and was connected with an early period of promiscuous relationships between the two sexes. This view has been proved to be entirely wrong.
The taking of the name of the mother arose as a matter of course, and was adopted simply as being the most convenient custom. It is manifest that mother-descent has no connection with a period of promiscuity. Quite the reverse. All the conditions of mother-right arose out of the earliest movements towards order and regulation in the relationships of the sexes, and were not the result of licence.
Here, then, is certain proof of the favourable influence mother-descent may exercise on the status of women. It is because of this I have brought forward this example of the Targui women. Enough has now been said.
The idea of the father’s relationship to the child is certainly known among the peoples who trace descent through the mother; the system is found frequently where strict monogamy is practised. Again, Mr. McLennan connects polyandry with mother-descent, regarding the custom of plurality of husbands as a development from promiscuity. Here, too, he has been proved to be in error.
In Africa the clan system is firmly established, which explains the prevalence of mother-descent. Women, on the whole, take an important position, and here, as elsewhere, their inheritance of property enables them to maintain their equality with their husbands.
Hartland, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 155-157. This custom prevails, for instance, among the Kharwârs and Parahiya tribes, and is common among the Ghasiyas, and is also practised among the Tipperah of Bengal. The existence of mother-descent among the peoples of Western Asia has been ascertained with regard to some ancient tribes; but I may pass these over, as they offer no points of special interest.
It is also impossible to avoid connecting the primitive tendency to mother-descent, and the emphasis it involved on maternal rather than paternal generative energy, with the tendency to place the goddess rather than the god in the forefront of primitive pantheons, a tendency which cannot possibly fail to reflect honor on the sex to which the supreme deity belongs, and which may be connected with the large part which primitive women often play in the functions of religion.
My aim throughout has been to establish mother-right, not mother-rule. I believe it is only by an extraordinary power of illusion that we can recognise, in the favourable position of women under mother-descent Bachofen’s view of an Amazonian gynæcocracy. But this does not weaken at all my position.
The Status of Woman The Historical Tendency Favoring Moral Equality of Women with Men The Theory of the Matriarchate Mother-Descent Women in Babylonia Egypt Rome The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries The Historical Tendency Favoring Moral Inequality of Woman The Ambiguous Influence of Christianity Influence of Teutonic Custom and Feudalism Chivalry Woman in England The Sale of Wives The Vanishing Subjection of Woman Inaptitude of the Modern Man to Domineer The Growth of Moral Responsibility in Women The Concomitant Development of Economic Independence The Increase of Women Who Work Invasion of the Modern Industrial Field by Women In How Far This Is Socially Justifiable The Sexual Responsibility of Women and Its Consequences The Alleged Moral Inferiority of Women The "Self-Sacrifice" of Women Society Not Concerned with Sexual Relationships Procreation the Sole Sexual Concern of the State The Supreme Importance of Maternity.
For one thing, this particular section on the mother-age in The Truth About Woman, and my belief in the favourable influence of mother-descent on the status of women, has been much questioned.
Word Of The Day