# Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII
THE GUARDIANS OF THE SERAGLIO
A large staff of overseers, nurses, and servants is necessary for the proper conduct of a rich man's harem. The autocrat, and very frequently the tyrant, of the palace is the Chief Eunuch, who directs a number of subordinate eunuchs, and supervises the whole of the servants who attend upon the wives, ikbals, and their lord and master, the pasha.
The profession of eunuch in Egypt is a very old one. Figures of these functionaries appear on the oldest Assyrian and Egyptian monuments. The head eunuch of antiquity was a personage of great influence in the world of the seraglio; and he seems to have been, in some cases, the confidential companion of kings and nobles, as well as the custodian of the concubines.
The royal Chief Eunuch holds an exalted position in the palace. He wears a gorgeous uniform, and is seen constantly at state ceremonies and social assembles. In political affairs he possesses considerable influence. In all the aristocratic harems the Grand Eunuch is feared by the women and the servants, for their lives are practically in his hands.
​An insubordinate or troublesome odalisque may soon find herself singled out for punishment if she offends the Chief Eunuch. It is said that eunuchs of all ranks frequently accept bribes from the women of the harems, and that some become very rich from this source. Every ambitious girl yearns to shine in the palace as an ikbal, and it is within the eunuch's power to assist her in this promotion from the common file to a position of high privilege.
The Chief Eunuch needs to exercise much vigilance in protecting the favourites of the pasha. Jealousy is extremely common in the harems, and all kinds of plots are hatched against the ikbals to bring them into disfavour with their lord. Attempts are sometimes made to poison the favourite of the pasha. Envy engenders all manner of malicious chatter and deliberate slander. The making or the undoing of an ikbal rests largely in the hands of the superior eunuch and those immediately beneath him in rank and influence.
In an affluent pasha's harem the highest caste among the ladies are the Kadens, the beautiful Circassians, who are especially loved by their owner. The Odalisques come next; and these women are the attendants, or maids of honour, on the pasha. The favoured woman of a brief reign is the Ikbal. When she becomes pregnant she is raised to the status of a Kaden. The Oustas are female servants of the house​hold, who wait upon the wives and the ikbals. The Dadas are the nurses of the numerous children. Beneath all these grades are the slaves of lowly birth and of alien race.
Early in the growth of polygamy the powerful man who surrounded himself with women, purchased or captured, discovered that his wives often exhibited errant desires. Men of less influence in the community envied his good fortune in the possession of several women; and they often used means to seduce his wives from their fidelity. Romances of the harem abound in the stories of elopement, intrigue, clandestine assignations, stolen visits to the palace by night, the forcible abduction of ikbals, and the murder of eunuchs and guards by hired bravos and professional stranglers.
A pasha lives, like the mediæval baron of England, in a fortified palace, or castle, with men-at-arms for the protection of his personal property. The armed eunuch came into existence as a necessary defence against the men who coveted the wives of their more fortunate neighbours. It was essential also that the women should be closely watched and kept under lock and key, for the human nature of women is like that of men, subject to variability in love, and apt to revolt against the strictest domestic conventions.
Now, a normal man, placed in guardianship of a ​number of young and charming women, is naturally exposed to very palpable temptation. In a word, he was not considered a safe chaperon and overseer. The risks of his defection from his responsible duties must be reduced as much as possible. He must be deprived of his masculinity.
Boys are dedicated to this profession from birth, and many of them aspire to enter this service. It is said that even to-day young boys of colour are sometimes abducted when the demand for more eunuchs arises. In other cases they are purchased by the Chief Eunuch and handed over to the surgeon.
The effect of emasculation must be noted, for it is of importance in a study of harem life. That the operation fails to achieve its chief purpose is fairly well known. Women of the seraglios have been known to elope with eunuchs and to marry them.
The result upon the secondary sexual characters are several, and very marked. There is a change in structure and appearance. The legs tend to lengthen; and in Cairo eunuchs are often recognised in crowds by their height. It is not true that the emasculated man is always dwarfed in stature. The voice becomes high-pitched and penetrating. From the musical point of view the Italian professional castrati, among singers, possess exceptionally beautiful voices.
Generally speaking, the male characteristics are ​lessened and modified. The guardians of the harem are often dull, inactive, and effeminate in their habits. Some tend to obesity. It is doubtful whether the moral qualities suffer to the extent that is usually believed. But it is stated that many of these neuter men are exceedingly sly, cunning, and perfidious.
It is generally believed that eunuchs are lacking in courage, and that they show certain docile, timorous, and cowardly traits. This has, however, been denied in some instances. The guardians of the harems are reputed to be extremely cruel. This attribute may derive from their changed physical qualities, but it is probably a normal manifestation of Oriental indifference to suffering and the stoicism long inculcated by precept and example.
An Egyptian will flog a servant until he faints. Many are the accounts of Eastern severity and excessive callousness to the pain endured by others. Torture still exists in several parts of the East as a corrective and a penalty for crime.
I know the English wife of an eminent Moor, who related to me her sensations of horror and indignation when she saw her husband cruelly thrash a slave-boy, on the bare back, with a cane until the blood flowed. She could not reconcile this utter indifference in the infliction of suffering upon a helpless servant with her husband's conjugal tenderness and his kindness to his own children.
​The imperturbability that the Oriental often displays in the contemplation of pain, and the commission of acts that appear to us as grossly cruel, is a subject of great psychological interest and importance.
"About the only good and conspicuous virtue that we possess in England," said to me an ex-minister of the Church, "is our kindness and consideration towards animals." In the Mohammedan religion the believer is enjoined to show kindness to brutes and clemency for slaves. Nevertheless, the counsel is frequently, and indeed commonly, set aside when anger is aroused. And apparently much of the cruelty of the East is purposive and carefully devised.
The source of Oriental apathy in relation to pain, and the seeming enjoyment in inflicting physical suffering arises probably from a certain obtuseness of the nerves. When we see the fakirs of Cairo, and elsewhere, walking with bare feet upon bayonet points, and otherwise injuring and mutilating the flesh, as an exhibition of stoicism, we have a marked instance of the Eastern capacity for enduring pain. He who stands torments without an outcry is often unsympathetic at the spectacle of another man's manifest bodily anguish, and may even derive pleasure from witnessing the effect of pain.
Physiologically, the Eastern people show an aptitude for the personal toleration and the infliction of ​suffering. Pain is the common lot; it must be endured by oneself and imposed upon others. Fatalistic doctrines foster the personal endurance of physical and mental travails. That which is must be suffered uncomplainingly.
Cruelty loses its Western connotation in most parts of Africa and Asia. It was the humane, cultured, and artistic Moors who introduced bull-fighting into Spain. To-day, in Northern Africa, and in several parts of Asia, one does not expect to find any conception of kindness to animals as it is practised in many Western societies. In Spain, the Morisco influence has, no doubt, some relation to the callous treatment of horses and other domestic animals. The Spaniard, who treats his wife and children with tender affection, may show a callous disregard for the suffering of his horse or mule.
Probably the women of Egypt expect a certain amount of harshness and physical force on the part of husbands. In variable forms we observe this predilection for the aggressive, forceful man among a vast number of women of the Western civilisations. The role of woman in love is more or less passive, actual or assumed, and in spite of the denials of some of the advanced feminists, many women like to realise masculine superiority in the matter of muscular strength. Some women even court and demand subordination at the hands of the men.
​Marriage by capture, in modern primitive communities, is frequently a mere burlesque of ancient abduction. But the women would not be content if their suitors showed no roughness; and they simulate resistance by scratching, kicking and biting. Among the Bedouins of to-day, the bride is carried away forcibly by the bridegroom and his "best men." The girl resists stoutly, often wounding the young men with stones. It is her full intention to marry her captor, but she must keep up the fashion of resistance. And the more she kicks, bites, and scratches, the more is she esteemed by her friends, and presumably by her husband.
Sometimes an Arab bride will resist her husband after the ceremony, when established in his tent as duly wedded. In such cases, she expects to be beaten, and there is reason to suppose that she likes chastisement.
In the Indian Kama Sutra there are directions for whipping women, and the women, though they raise protests, would be surprised, and probably disappointed, if the husband failed to recognise the time-honoured custom. "A dear one's blows hurt not long." "The Perfumed Garden" of the Arabs contains several allusions to castigation.
Western morality regards such chastisement with reprobation and horror. Let us remember that, in certain very significant directions, the Orientals excel ​us in the art of love, and especially in their desire to charm and please women. The blunt, matter-of-fact British lover—who, though good-natured enough, is often devoid of delicacy and an understanding of women's natures—is not a very successful wooer in the East. Many Hindu women are extremely candid when discussing the difference between the Western men and those of their own race.
Not three hundred years ago we thrashed women publicly in the streets of London. Gentlewomen flogged their maid-servants, apparently with zest; and Judge Jeffreys, in sentencing a woman to be scourged, charged the hangman to ply the whip "till her blood runs down." Even nowadays, in England, women, and especially children, are often beaten with extreme cruelty. As evidence we may inspect the museum of torture instruments formed by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to children.
The infliction of pain upon others is associated with rites of self-mortification, penance, and pious fasting. In all religions that prescribe self-imposed torture we shall find an indifference to pain cultivated as a tradition. And such capacity for enduring painful penances explains, in part, the lack of sensitivity in causing bodily suffering to one's dependents, or to heretics and delinquents.
The severities formerly meted by the eunuchs to offenders in the household were said to be ferocious.