Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
Thus, the difficulty of establishing a claim for mother-right and mother-power does not rest in any paucity of proof but rather in its superabundance. It would be superfluous for me to dwell on the difficulties of such an inquiry. The subject is immensely complicated and wide-reaching, so that I must keep strictly to the path set before me.
Even tribes who have passed from the clan organisation to the patriarchal family preserve numerous traces of mother-right. Thus, the choice of her lover often remains with the girl; again, divorce is easy at the wish either of the woman or the man. Such freedom in love is clearly inconsistent with the patriarchal authority of the husband.
Here is a picture of labour that may well make women pause to think. I propose in this chapter to examine, as fully as I can, the traces that mother-right customs have left among some of the great races of antiquity, as also in the early records of western civilisations.
Das Mutterrecht, pp. 18-19. The italics in the passage are mine, for they bear directly on what I shall afterwards have to prove: that mother-right was not the first stage in the history of the human family; that its existence is not inconsistent with the patriarchal theory.
Throughout all Australia, Melanesia, and Papuasis on the east, and America on the west, the mother-right prevailed among primitive peoples. Children followed the mother, took their name from her, and inherited property through her.
It will be my aim to give a quite simple, and even commonplace, explanation of the rise of mother-descent and mother-right in place of the spiritual hypothesis of Bachofen. The History of Human Marriage, p. 105. It will be well, however, to examine further Bachofen’s own theory. It is his opinion that the first Amazonian revolt and period of women’s rule was followed by a second movement
The theory of mother-right has been subjected to so much criticism that a re-examination of the position is very necessary. To show its prevalence, to establish some leading points in its history, to make out its connection with the patriarchal family, and to trace the transition by which one system passed into the other, appear to me to be matters primarily important.
Bachofen would have us believe that the mother-right of the ancient world, was due to a revolt of women against the degraded condition of promiscuity, which previously had been universal among mankind, a condition in which men had a community of wives, and openly lived together like gregarious animals. Das Mutterrecht, Intro., p. xxiv. and p. 10.
In bringing forward any theory of mother-right, it thus becomes necessary to show the causes that have led to this reversal in opinion. To do this, the first step will be to examine, with considerable detail, the evidence for the matriarchal theory as it is given by its two great supporters. Now, an interesting point arises, if we compare the view of Bachofen with that held by McLennan.
It is seldom, indeed, that the question has been considered of sufficient importance to receive accurate attention. Not infrequently conflicting accounts are given by different authorities, and even by the same writer. Westermarck, “The Position of Women in Early Civilisations,” Sociological Papers, 1904. I wish it to be understood that mother-right does not necessarily imply mother-rule.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking