The Second Sex (18 page)

Once woman is dethroned by the advent of private property, her fate is linked to it for centuries: in large part, her history is intertwined with the history of inheritance. The fundamental importance of this institution becomes clear if we keep in mind that the owner alienated his existence in property; it was more important to him than life itself; it goes beyond the strict limits of a mortal lifetime, it lives on after the body is gone, an earthly and tangible incarnation of the immortal soul; but this continued survival can occur only if property remains in the owner’s hands: it can remain his after death only if it belongs to individuals who are extensions of himself and recognized, who are
his own
. Cultivating paternal lands and worshipping the father’s spirit are one and the same obligation for the heir: to ensure the survival of ancestors on earth and in the underworld. Man will not, therefore, agree to share his property or his children with woman. He will never really be able to go that far, but at a time when patriarchy is powerful, he strips woman of all her rights to hold and transmit property. It seems logical, in fact, to deny her these rights. If it is accepted that a woman’s children do not belong to her, they inevitably have no link with the group the woman comes from. Woman is no longer passed from one clan to another through marriage: she is radically abducted from the group she is born into and annexed to her husband’s; he buys her like a head of cattle or a slave, he imposes his domestic divinities on her: and the children she conceives belong to her spouse’s family. If she could inherit, she would thus wrongly transmit her paternal family’s riches to that of her husband: she is carefully excluded from the succession. But inversely, because she owns nothing, woman is not raised to the dignity of a person; she herself is part of man’s patrimony, first her father’s and then her husband’s. Under a strictly patriarchal regime, a father can condemn to death his male and female children at birth; but in the case of a male child, society most often put limits on this power: a normally constituted newborn male is allowed
to live, whereas the custom of exposure is very widespread for girls; there was massive infanticide among Arabs: as soon as they were born, girls were thrown into ditches. Accepting a female child is an act of generosity on the father’s part; the woman enters such societies only through a kind of grace bestowed on her, and not legitimately like males. In any case, the stain of birth is far more serious for the mother when a girl is born: among Hebrews, Leviticus demands twice as much cleansing as for a newborn boy. In societies where “blood money” exists, only a small sum is required when the victim is of the feminine sex: her value compared with a male’s is like a slave’s with a free man’s. When she is a young girl, the father has total power over her; on her marriage he transmits it entirely to her spouse. Since she is his property like the slave, the beast of burden, or the thing, it is natural for a man to have as many wives as he wishes; only economic reasons put limits on polygamy; the husband can disown his wives at whim, and society barely accords them any guarantees. In return, woman is subjected to rigorous chastity. In spite of the taboos, matriarchal societies allow great freedom of behavior; prenuptial chastity is rarely demanded; and adultery not judged severely. On the contrary, when woman becomes man’s property, he wants a virgin, and he demands total fidelity at the risk of severe penalty; it would be the worst of crimes to risk giving heritage rights to a foreign offspring: this is why the paterfamilias has the right to put a guilty wife to death. As long as private property lasts, conjugal infidelity on the part of a woman is considered a crime of high treason. All codes up to our time have perpetuated inequality in issues concerning adultery, arguing the seriousness of the fault committed by the woman who might bring an illegitimate child into the family. And though the right to take the law into one’s own hands has been abolished since Augustus, the Napoleonic Code still holds out the promise of the jury’s leniency for a husband who avenges himself. When woman belonged to both a patrilineal clan and a conjugal family, she was able to preserve a good amount of freedom, as the two series of bonds overlapped and even conflicted with each other and as each system served to support her against the other: for example, she could often choose the husband of her fancy, since marriage was only a secular event and had no effect on society’s deep structure. But under the patriarchal regime, she was the property of a father who married her off as he saw fit; then attached to her husband’s household, she was no more than his thing and the thing of the family (
genos
) in which she was placed.

When family and private patrimony incontestably remain the bases of society, woman also remains totally alienated. This is what has happened in
the Muslim world. The structure is feudal in that there has never been a state strong enough to unify and dominate the numerous tribes: no power holds in check that of the patriarch chief. The religion that was created when the Arab people were warriors and conquerors professed the utmost disdain toward women. “Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them,” says the Koran; the woman has never held real power or mystic prestige. The bedouin woman works hard, she plows and carries burdens: this is how she sets up a reciprocal bond with her husband; she moves around freely, her face uncovered. The Muslim woman, veiled and shut in, is still today a kind of slave in most levels of society. I recall an underground cave in a troglodyte village in Tunisia where four women were squatting: the old, one-eyed, and toothless wife, her face ravaged, was cooking dough on a small brazier surrounded by acrid smoke; two slightly younger but equally disfigured wives were rocking children in their arms; one was breastfeeding; seated before a weaver’s loom was a young idol, magnificently dressed in silk, gold, and silver, knotting strands of wool. Leaving this gloomy den—realm of immanence, womb, and tomb—in the corridor leading up toward the light, I met the male, dressed in white, sparklingly clean, smiling, sunny. He was returning from the market, where he had bantered about world affairs with other men; he would spend a few hours in this retreat of his own, in the heart of this vast universe to which he belonged and from which he was not separated. For the old withered creatures, for the young bride doomed to the same degeneration, there was no other universe but the murky cave from which they would emerge only at night, silent and veiled.

The Jews of biblical times have more or less the same customs as the Arabs. The patriarchs are polygamous and can renounce their wives almost at whim; at the risk of harsh punishment, the young bride has to be delivered to her spouse as a virgin; in cases of adultery, she is stoned; she is confined to domestic labor, as the image of virtuous women demonstrates: “She seeketh wool and flax … she riseth also while it is yet night … her candle goeth not off at night … she eateth not the bread of idleness.” Even chaste and industrious, she is impure and burdened with taboos; she cannot testify in court. Ecclesiastes treats her with the deepest disgust: “And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands … one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.” When her husband dies, custom and even law require her to marry a brother of the deceased.

This custom called levirate is found among many Oriental peoples. In all regimes where woman is under guardianship, one of the problems is what to do with widows. The most radical solution is to sacrifice them on their husbands’ tombs. But it is not true that even in India the law imposes such holocausts; the Laws of Manu permit a wife to survive a husband; spectacular suicides have never been more than an aristocratic fashion. It is far more frequent for the widow to be handed over to her husband’s heirs. The levirate sometimes takes the form of polyandry; to avoid the ambiguities of widowhood, all the brothers in the family become the husbands of the woman, a custom that serves to preserve the clan against the possible infertility of the husband. According to a text of Caesar’s, in Brittany all the men of one family had a certain number of women in common.

This form of radical patriarchy was not established everywhere. In Babylon, Hammurabi’s Code recognized certain rights of woman: she receives a share of the paternal inheritance, and when she marries, her father provides her with a dowry. In Persia, polygamy is customary; woman is bound to absolute obedience to the husband her father chooses for her as soon as she is nubile; but she is more respected than among most Oriental peoples; incest is not forbidden, and marriage takes place frequently among sisters and brothers; she is in charge of educating the children up to the age of seven for boys and until marriage for girls. Woman can share in her husband’s estate if the son proves himself unworthy; if she is a “privileged wife,” she is entrusted with the guardianship of minor children in the case of her husband’s death and with the business management in the absence of an adult son. The rules of marriage clearly point out the importance posterity has for the head of a family. It is likely that there were five forms of marriage:
¹
(1) The woman married with the consent of her parents; she was then called the “privileged wife”; her children belonged to her husband. (2) When the woman was an only child, her firstborn would be given up to her parents to replace their daughter; then she would become a “privileged wife.” (3) If a man died unmarried, his family would take a woman from outside, give her a dowry, and marry her: she was called an “adopted wife”; half of her children belonged to the deceased and the other half to the living husband. (4) A widow without children who remarried was called a servant wife: she owed half of the children of her second marriage to her deceased husband. (5) The woman who married without the consent of her parents could not inherit from them until the
oldest son, coming of age, would give her to his father as a “privileged wife”; if her husband died before, she was considered a minor and put under guardianship. The status of the adopted wife and the servant wife establishes the right of every man to be survived by descendants who are not necessarily connected by a blood relationship. This confirms what was said above; this relationship was in a way invented by man when he sought to annex for himself—beyond his finite life—immortality in this world and in the underworld.

In Egypt, woman’s condition was the most favorable. When Goddess Mothers married, they maintained their standing; social and religious unity resides in the couple; woman is an ally, a complement to man. Her magic is so unthreatening that even the fear of incest is overcome, and no differentiation is made between a sister and a spouse.
²
She has the same rights as men, the same legal power; she inherits, and she owns property. This uniquely fortunate situation is in no way haphazard: it stems from the fact that in ancient Egypt the land belonged to the king and the higher castes of priests and warriors; for private individuals, landed property was only usufructuary; the land was inalienable, property transmitted by inheritance had little value, and there was no problem about sharing it. Because of this absence of personal patrimony, woman maintained the dignity of a person. She married whom she wanted, and as a widow she could remarry as she wished. The male practiced polygamy, but although all of his children were legitimate, he had only one real wife, the only one associated with religion and linked to him legally: the others were mere slaves, deprived of all rights. The chief wife did not change status by marrying: she remained mistress of her possessions and was free to engage in contracts. When the pharaoh Bocchoris established private property, woman’s position was too strong to be dislodged; Bocchoris opened the era of contracts, and marriage itself became contractual. There were three types of contracts: one dealt with servile marriage; woman became man’s thing, but she could specify that he would not have a concubine other than her; nonetheless, the legal spouse was considered equal to man, and all their property was held in common; the husband would often agree to pay her a sum of money in the case of divorce. Later, this custom led to a type of contract remarkably favorable to women; the husband agreed to absolve her of her debt. There were serious punishments for adultery, but divorce was fairly open for the two spouses. The presence of contracts soundly restrained polygamy;
women got possession of the wealth and transmitted it to their children, which brought about the creation of a plutocratic class. Ptolemy Philopator decreed that women could no longer alienate their property without marital authorization, which kept them as eternal minors. But even in times when they had a privileged status, unique in the ancient world, they were not socially equal to men; taking part in religion and government, they could have the role of regent, but the pharaoh was male; priests and warriors were males; woman’s role in public life was a secondary one; and in private life, fidelity was required of her without reciprocity.

The customs of the Greeks are very similar to Oriental ones; yet they do not practice polygamy. No one knows exactly why. Maintaining a harem always entails heavy costs: only the ostentatious Solomon, the sultans from
The Thousand and One Nights
, kings, chiefs, or rich property owners could afford the luxury of a vast seraglio; an ordinary man had to be satisfied with three or four women; a peasant rarely possessed more than two. Besides—except in Egypt, where there was no specific landed property—the concern for preserving the patrimony intact led to granting the oldest son special rights on paternal inheritance; from this stemmed a hierarchy among women, the mother of the principal heir invested with dignity far superior to that of his other wives. If the wife herself has property of her own or if she is dowered, she is considered a person by her husband: he is joined to her by both a religious and an exclusive bond. From there on, the custom that only recognizes one wife was undoubtedly established: but the reality was that the Greek citizen continued to be comfortably “polygamous” since he could find the satisfaction of his desires from street prostitutes or gynaeceum servants. “We have hetarias for spiritual pleasures,” says Demosthenes, “concubines (
pallakes
) for sensual pleasure, and wives to give us sons.” The
pallakis
replaced the wife in the master’s bed if she was ill, indisposed, pregnant, or recovering from childbirth; so there was no great difference between a gynaeceum and a harem. In Athens, the wife is shut up in her quarters, held by law under severe constraint, and watched over by special magistrates. She spends her whole life as a minor; she is under the control of her guardian: either her father, or her husband, or her husband’s heir or, by default, the state, represented by public officials; here are her masters, and they use her like merchandise, the guardian’s control extending over both her person and her property; the guardian can transmit her rights as he wishes: the father gives his daughter up for adoption or in marriage; the husband can repudiate his wife and hand her over to another husband. But Greek law assures woman of a dowry used to support her and that must be restored in full to her if the marriage is dissolved;
the law also authorizes the woman to file for divorce in certain rare cases; but these are the only guarantees that society grants. Of course, all inheritance is bequeathed to the male children, and the dowry is considered not acquired property but a kind of duty imposed on the guardian. However, thanks to this dowry custom, the widow no longer passes for a hereditary possession in the hands of her husband’s heirs: she returns to her family’s guardianship.