Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/805

 SEX IN PRIMITIVE MORALITY 78$

But here we find the male standpoint carried over and applied to the reproductive process, and the regulation of sex practices transpiring on the basis of force. In the earliest period of society, under the maternal system, the woman had her own will more with her person ; but with the formulation of a system of control, based on male activities, the person of woman was made a point in the application of the male standpoint. "The wife, like any other of the husband's goods and chattels, might be sold or lent."' "Even when divorced she was by no means free, as the tribe exercised its jurisdiction in the woman's affairs and the disposal of her person."^ Forsyth reports of the Gonds that " infidelity in the married state is ... . said to be very rare; and, when it does occur, is one of the few occasions when the stolid aborigine is roused to the extremity of passion, fre- quently revenging himself on the guilty pair by cutting off his wife's nose and knocking out the brains of her paramour with his ax." 3 The sacrifice of wives in Africa, India, Fiji, Madagascar, and elsewhere, upon the death of husbands, shows how com- pletely the person of the female had been made a part of the male activity. Where this practice obtained, the failure of the widow to acquiesce in the habit was highly immoral. Williams says of the strangling of widows by the Fijians : " It has been said that most of the women thus destroyed are sacrificed at their own instance. There is truth in this statement, but unless other facts are taken into account it produces an untruthful impression. Many are importunate to be killed, because they know that life would henceforth be to them prolonged insult,

neglect, and want If the friends of the woman are not

the most clamorous for her death, their indifference is construed into disrespect either for her late husband or his friends."^ Child marriages are another instance of the success of the male in gainmg control of the person of the female and of regulating her conduct from his own standpoint. Girls were married or

■ BoNWiCK, Daily Life of the Tasmanians, p. 75.

' /bid., p. 74.

i Highlands of Central India, p. I4q.


 * T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, p. 201.