# Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 1

WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF THE HAREM
Among the Western nations there are, no doubt, many unreflective and incurious persons who regard the vast institution of polygamy merely as a part of the faith and practice of the ancient Hebrews, the Hindus, and the Mohammedans of former and modern times. The custom is of far greater antiquity than the older religion of the Jews and the birth of Islam. For the origin of polygamy we must seek among the animal ancestry of mankind.
Many male birds and mammals are instances of that instinct of securing a plurality of sexual companions, which in the view of Voltaire, Schopenhauer, and other philosophers, is the natural impulse of mankind. Leaving for the present, the consideration of Schopenhauer's assumption that every normal man desires more than one wife, let us glance for a moment ​at the sex-relations of the animals nearest to ourselves in the evolutionary chain.
In the Primates, "the lords of the animal world," we find that the Simiæ, or true apes, possess organs and nervous systems very closely resembling those of the human being. They have also human-like desires and appetites. Yet among the monkeys we note that polygamy is not the invariable form of union; for some of the species are rigidly monogamous. And so with birds, which are, generally speaking, excellent examples of fidelity to a single partner after courtship and pairing.
The stag has his group of hinds; but the blackbird is supposed to pair with one hen for life. The hawks are monogamous. There is sufficient evidence that the polygamous instinct is not general among animals. The farmyard cock and the male grouse are polygamists, but these are exceptions among birds.
Although most of the carnivorous animals are monogamous, the lion sometimes secures more than one mate. The sea-lions are extremely polygamous, and so are some of the seals.
Among birds the polygamic instinct is strongly instanced in the ruffs. The polygamous birds are almost invariably addicted to conflict, and the males are usually bigger and more gaily-feathered than the females. Stags, especially among the red-deer, are ​very aggressive towards other males, and sometimes their battles end fatally. A young stag will fight for as many hinds as he can obtain; and the group of females remains his exclusive possession until wrested from him by a more powerful antagonist.
In the marriage customs of mankind we trace, as Goethe said, "the beginning and the end of all culture." The history of civilisation is chiefly the history of the loves of men and women. We must inquire, therefore, into the origin of the widespread polygamy and concubinage, practised from the earliest period of civilisation, as dispassionately as we examine the source of monogamy.
Plurality of wives has been denounced by Schlegel and numerous Western historians and moralists as abominable and unnatural. Are we justified in accepting such condemnation without careful examination of the system? There is not a stable form of sexual morality for all times and all peoples. Sheer biological necessity, quite apart from ethical ideas, has chiefly determined human sexual relationships throughout all the stages of man's development.
Polygamous marriage in ancient communities grew in some instances through a preponderance in the number of women, just as polyandry arose through a preponderance of men in the tribe. This is not the sole and the invariable cause of either kind of marriage, ​but an excess of one sex over the other is, no doubt, a factor. In the Western nations of to-day, where the female population exceeds the male, there is no sanctioned and recognised polygamy. But there is an irregular form of polyandry exampled in the universal practice of prostitution, and more or less open concubinage.
No doubt, the dominant primitive man resembled the gorilla in his desire to possess more than one wife. The craving for variety in sexual unions is probably as deep-rooted in human nature as the desire to subdue enemies and to reap the wealth of conquest. This impulse of sexual variety is checked and thwarted by various means among masses of the people of the West.
Nevertheless, in spite of religious inhibitions, public opinion, psychic refinement in sexual appetite, poverty, and other obstacles to the gratification of polygamous yearnings, there are many instances of the expression of this innate and imperious passion for variety. Christianity and Christian legislation have not succeeded in annihilating the wandering sexual longings of those men and women in whom basic and pristine emotions survive.
"What is the meaning of maintaining monogamy?" wrote James Hinton. "Do you call English life monogamous?"
Our monogamy is constantly varied by polygyny, or ​pseudo-polygamy, lacking the sanctions and responsibilities of Mohammedan plurality. Side by side with monogamic marriage, concubinage has always existed. The system was plainly recognised in the ancient laws of Wales. In the Thirteenth Century, in England, the mistress, "the concubina legitima," was often the companion of the wife. There are, indeed, many facts in early Christian history that show an ecclesiastic recognition of the tendency of men towards variety or polygyny.
Even in Puritan times there was a measure of toleration for those who could not remain continent with one woman; for we find a writer, in 1658, asserting that it may be in "every way consistent with the principles of a man fearing God and loving holiness to have more women than one to his proper use."
The aggressive, virile man, who craved plurality of wives, or sexual consorts, was also undoubtedly a lover of the power yielded by possessions. When he stole or purchased women for his harem, he increased his prestige and dignity in the tribe. The passion of acquisitiveness is one of the sources of modern polygamy; and it is frequently this impulse, in England and America, which accounts for the lavish expenditure upon the maintenance of a mistress.
Many men are covetous and greedy by nature. They must own costly things. The complete owner​ship of a beautiful woman, or of more than one woman, affords them intense pleasure, apart from amatory reasons. This lust for the exclusive ownership of several women dominated the masterful barbarian, and was one of the influences in the institution of the primitive harem system.
The typical polygamous man might be described as highly masculine in all his secondary sexual characteristics. He is predominantly male in a love of authority and of ownership. His instinct is for fighting and subjugation. The early polygamous nations were chiefly martial. The men delighted in warfare, extension of territory, and capture of women, slaves, and spoil.
During this militant period, women conducted those peaceful and pastoral industries which are at the basis of civilisation. They tamed and domesticated animals; they wove the garments, prepared and cooked the food, and tended the infants and the sick. The warrior devoted to Mars returned triumphant from battle to reap his reward in the tenderness and caresses of woman.
Wherever maleness predominates in the man, we shall find the polygamous form of marriage among the ancient races as in the primitive communities of to-day, ​When the necessity for fighting and hunting begins to wane, men occupy themselves, more often, with the industries assigned hitherto to the women of the tribe; and certain of the marked male characteristics undergo a change. At this stage the position of women is usually raised, and by gradual stages she often becomes supreme in power, as in the Matriarchal Period.
With a cessation of the dangers of combat and the chase, more men survive in the community; and there is a tendency towards equalisation in the number of males and females. Celibacy being abhorred as contrary to nature, every man demands his right to a wife, and every woman claims a husband.
In cases where the women are more numerous than the men, among existing primitive people, the practice of polygamy is regarded as a natural necessity. The Esquimaux man of the present day, being a fisher and hunter, is continually at contest with the forces of nature, and therefore subject to mortality from accidents. Many Esquimaux fishermen lose their lives by drowning, and in conflict with animals. The widows are not left to languish in celibacy. A man is always willing to take the husbandless woman into his own home, and to adopt her children; an arrangement which is never resented by his first wife.
Polygamy arose naturally in the barbarous times, when it became imperative to capture women for the ​propagation of offspring and the maintenance of the group. If the conquering side bore off a large number of women, each man was able to secure three or four wives.
Among the semi-civilised communities of our time, polygyny is far commoner than polygamy. The secondary wife, or concubine, is found amongst the Fijians, the tribes of the Pacific Coast, in Madagascar, in Uganda, Ashanti, and other parts of Africa.
Polygyny is often confused with polygamy; but the distinction is important. A devout Mohammedan, the husband of not more than four wives, duly legitimatized, is, strictly speaking, a polygamist; but the Chinese mandarin—with a legal wife chosen for him by his parents—who takes concubines or inferior wives into his household, may be called a polygynist.
This form of sex union in its most primitive example occurs when several sisters are married to the same man. An instance of such a marriage is to be found in the story of Jacob and Rachel and Leah.
Wake, in his painstaking survey of early marriage customs, states that, in the oldest form of polygyny, all of a man's wives possessed equal rights. In another form there is a favourite, or principal, wife, or wives, and inferior wives, who are sometimes legal wives, and at others serf-wives or concubines.
An economic cause of polygamy must not be over​looked. When the dominant males of a community realised that the men of another group were willing to barter for women instead of fighting for them, they began to trade in their daughters and other women relatives.
In the uncultured nations that bartered their womenfolk, a woman was regarded merely as an article of exchange or sale. Later, however, the purchased woman secures certain important rights. She is not sold body and soul to her purchaser; and a sum of money is settled upon her for sole personal use.
There exists among the Arabs of the White Nile district a rule giving to the purchased girl full liberty on two days of each week. As a wife she is only at the behest of her lord on four days out of the seven. Upon the other day she may even regard herself as free from married fidelity.
Besides their sexual attraction, several wives were valuable to a man in the hunting and battle days. The Sioux Indian is often assisted by his wives in the pursuit of wild animals for food or skins. Women are regarded as business assets. With their help a man can increase his possessions. The Sioux with but one wife remains poor. The housewife cannot leave the cooking and the care of her family for the chase, whereas the fortunate owner of several wives has companions for his hunting.
​In Australia, according to Howitt, the natives of the interior obtain as many wives as they can afford, not only from passional ardour, but because they are of use to them. A husband can lend his wives for a gift to young men who are unmarried, and by this means he may acquire property.
The property value of women in primitive societies undoubtedly encouraged plurality of wives. A man was esteemed in proportion to the number of women with whom he cohabited.
Wife purchase is not solely the custom of savage people, nor of living Oriental races. It was a practice of the early English and of all the Teutonic people; and the wedding-ring survives as a symbol of a sale-contract.
Havelock Ellis, quoting from the "Annual Register," for 1767, says that an English bricklayer's labourer sold a woman to a fellow workman "for a quarter guinea and a gallon of beer." We may suppose that the vendor subsequently regretted this transaction; for we read that the woman soon after inherited "£200 and some plate, left her by a deceased uncle in Devonshire."
The masculine desire for more than one wife (polygamy) has been more often expressed than the feminine desire for more than one husband (polyandry). On the whole, it is stated by some authorities ​on the marriage customs of mankind, that, of the two systems, polygamy is the better for the race. Polygamy served a racial end in early communities, inasmuch as it enabled the most forceful men to beget the largest number of offspring, and so to perpetuate vigorous qualities. Everywhere plurality of wives has been more the mark of a man's success and power in the community than an expression of male sensuality. The great harem represents a man's dignity and position in society, while its maintenance involves a number of strict legal and social obligations towards wives and concubines.
As we shall see, primitive polygamy arose in many tribes through the labour potentiality of women. The chief with the largest number of wives commanded the largest number of assistants in hunting and industry, and sometimes in warfare. The source of polygamy is not invariably amatory; the system has been often forced upon the community through a scarcity of males. In the fighting and hunting age many men died in combat and the chase. But the preponderance of females has not always been brought about by the high mortality among males. There are races that tend to reproduce more females than males, or more males than females. Whenever the balance of the sexes is disturbed, plurality of mates naturally results.
The chief cause of polygamy in the past was ​economic. Moral reprobation of the practice has often been based on the assumption that polygamous marriage grew solely from the "vices" or the sexual acquisitiveness of men. This is not proved in the case of primitive polygamy. And though there is ample testimony showing that savage races are far less incontinent than highly civilised people, it is rarely that celibacy exists among them. Polygamy provides mates for the superfluous women of the group. Polyandry supplies partners for the redundant men. Celibacy is a state regarded by primitive people as unnatural, or as contrary to moral law, and according to such a conception, avoidance of celibacy must be provided for by an adjustment of the marriage customs.
C. N. Starcke finds in the desire of primitive fathers to own many children one of the chief incentives to polygamous marriage. Naturally, the man with the largest number of wives will possess the most numerous progeny. The savage with a goodly number of children owns a retinue of companions for the chase and of workers in the fields and the home.
The craving for dignity, power and riches is clearly one of the main sources of polygamy and concubinage. It has been reiterated again and again by ill-informed writers that "men's lust" alone is the cause of plural ​marriage. Investigation proves, however, that it is a minor factor, at any rate in polygamy of early ages and among existing primitive tribes.
It is important to note that monogamy has always accompanied polygamy. Obviously, even when women have been redundant, there has not existed a sufficient number to enable each man to possess several wives. Polygamy is the luxury of the prosperous, and it stands for property-ownership. The poor man is bound to practise monogamy. Among some African tribes, the greed of the king and the chiefs, in the acquisition of large harems, actually condemns a part of the male population to celibacy.
"Polygamy," says Starcke, "can never have been the normal condition of a tribe, since it would have involved the existence of twice as many women as men."
It is often assumed that women in polygamic countries are the mere slaves of men, and that they are forced into plural marriage. This is scarcely the truth. Women as well as men have determined the forms of the sexual relationships in communities. Among animals living in polygamy, compulsion on the part of the males is very seldom apparent in their conduct towards the females. The sea lions are a marked exception. But the stag and other polygamous animals, woo and incite rather than impel the hinds ​to join his troop. It has been noticed generally by naturalists and hunters that the females voluntarily attach themselves to the powerful younger males owning several mates.
As there is not a wide difference between the instincts of the animal and that of primitive men, it seems beyond question that the great bulk of the women of the tribe do not disapprove of polygamous marriage. Doubtless there are a few malcontents, but the mass of the women approve the system. There is plenty of evidence in this matter. Dr. Livingstone is by no means the only traveller who has heard primitive women declare that they would not live in a country where a man is only permitted to marry one woman.
* ↑ There are modern exceptions, such as the Iroquois Indians, who are monogamic.
* ↑ "The Primitive Family."