Return to Contents

Section One - Conjugal Society

Chapter 6

The two systems which alter the relationships of superiority and dutiful subjection between spouses

1399. These teachings enable us to evaluate the two systems which alter the dutiful relationships of superiority and subjection between spouses. One system changes the social superiority of the husband into a seigniorial superiority, and the social subjection of the wife into a kind of servitude. By overemphasising the husband, devaluing the wife and thus introducing what can only be called tyranny into the family, it disavows the element of equality proper to conjugal society (cf. 1236).

1400. The other system neglects the element of inequality and claims that the wife should be equal to the husband in all things. This introduces into the family a kind of democracy or uniformity of franchise.

1401. The first system was the error and plague which beset and slowly destroyed pagan families; the second makes its influence felt and harms Christian families as soon as they deviate from Catholicism.

We shall make a few, brief comments on these systems, both of which are mistaken and overthrow nations. In order to go to the root of the first, we need to see how the principle of servitude perverts all the holy laws regulating the family. Indeed, it renders this society impossible.

1402. The principle of servitude, which declares the bondservant to be a simple means for the satisfaction of the master, is profoundly wicked, as we have seen. It is incompatible with theocratic society, and generates the most foul, harmful and disastrous consequences for domestic and civil society. Here we consider it only in relationship with domestic society.

1403. Keeping before our eyes the notion of marriage as `a full society between man and woman', we see immediately that such a society cannot be brought about between masters and slaves (cf. 1167-1175).

1404. We could also take as the foundation of our argument the imperfect notion of marriage used by those who declare it a `perpetual union between man and woman for the sake of generating children' - a notion which expresses only an effect or at most a duty of marriage, but which shows that the conjugal bond lies horribly injured and perverted by domestic servitude. We shall confine ourselves to this second point.

1405. The effects of domestic servitude can be considered prior to (that is, outside) marriage and during marriage itself. We shall look briefly at both.

1406. First, the origin of concubinage is found in servitude. It is clear that when female bond-servants are purely means or instruments, the master can force them, at will, to have intercourse with him.(219)

1407. Secondly, the true origin of prostitution and of polyandry is also found in servitude. Here, the master can at will oblige the female bond-servant, a mere instrument, to have intercourse with one or more men.(220)

1408. Thirdly, the origin of pederasty itself must be found in servitude. The master can abuse male as well as female bond-servants.(221)

1409. There is nothing more disgusting and shameful if the end of such filth is carnal pleasure. If the intended end of these temporary unions with female bond-servants (forced or unforced), is the procreation of children, it is still totally unlawful because sought outside the perpetual union of the two sexes. Nor does such union constitute marriage. Even when we keep to the more imperfect definition, we see that marriage is not constituted by the sole end of procreation, but requires perpetual union.

1410. Another monstrosity against nature is this: in the case of a bond-servant who copulates with her master outside marriage, the lack of any right as wife leads to her being deprived of her right as mother. Wherever domestic servitude is found, all the most intimate, sacred bonds uniting humanity are broken, sullied and monstrously perverted.

1411. Nevertheless, frequent examples of this disgusting brutality are brought about, allowed and protected by civilised nations. One of innumerable, recent examples may be given here for the sake of arousing indignation amongst the upright, shaming its authors, promoters and protectors, and seeing that justice is done.

Cosnard, a former director of the botanical garden of Baduel and Cayenne, a French colony, had a child named Marie Euphémie by one of his black slave-women. In his will, made in 1833, he gave the daughter freedom, but without making mention of her mother. At his death in 1840, his assets were sold, and an attempt was made to include the mother who at the time was breast-feeding another baby. This was done in order to enrich the daughter and sister, Marie Euphémie, with the price the others would fetch.

The Procurator-Royal, appealing to article 46 of the Code for Blacks,(222) succeeded in having the sale stopped. Far worse than the attempted sale, however, and far more scandalous, was the decision of the royal court of appeal of French Guyana which at its hearing on May 9th, 1842, ordered the auction of the mother and the baby so that the price could be used to increase the dowry of the half-caste, Marie Euphémie [App., no. 10]. At the moment, the affair has been brought before the Supreme Court.(223)

Domestic servitude introduces immorality into families. Immorality in turn disavows all rights and duties between husband and wife, between mother and child. Either slavery ceases, or the domestic bonds, which alone constitute the family in its jural or moral and even natural entity, are swept away.(224)

1412. Even if a master forms a perpetual union with a female bond-servant, and calls this marriage, oppression of the woman will always be the effect of servitude, unless he frees the woman by marrying her as his only wife.(225)

1413. I say that there must be only one free wife because, although it is true that servitude is one cause of polygamy, polygamy itself is a degree of servitude. Where polygamy is practised, the woman is deprived of the right to equality. She has to love exclusively someone who does not love her exclusively; she has to be faithful to someone who does not observe fidelity;(226) the husband cannot have full union with her, although she is required to have full union with him.

1414. To maintain such injustice, which the strong individual exercises over the weak, many other injustices are needed. Hence, the enclosure in seraglios and harems, feet-binding in China, and so on. Injustice not sustained by further injustices collapses of its own accord.

1415. The woman ceaselessly and irremediably injured in this fashion either has to desensitise herself or be prepared for a state of continual confrontation to recuperate her rights, or at least vindicate herself. Both states are immoral, unjust and destructive of domestic happiness.

1416. Polygamy, as we said, does not favour fertility.(227) `Nor is it any more useful to the children. One of its great difficulties is that the father and mother cannot have the same affection for their children. The father cannot love his twenty children with the love the mother has for her two.'(228) Moreover, a man cannot love equally several wives; and his love for the children he generates will be tainted with the same inequality as he has for his wives.

1417. The oppression suffered by women most certainly has several causes. One of the principal is lack of education and ignorance. If human beings lack education, and especially moral education, they act according to the laws of their spontaneity which, damaged by original sin, tends to ever greater disintegration.

Freedom, which is opposed to the spontaneous operation of the will, depends for its vigour on the development and exercise of reason and on the acquisition of education, especially sound, moral education. This principle of deliberate choice, which increases in force as intelligence grows and acquires cognitions free from error, subjects human spontaneity to a moral rule, restrains its natural tendencies and directs it along an upright, useful path.

Only Christianity, however, can provide the superior, truly sufficient forces to dominate the spontaneous tendencies of the human will. Only Christianity strengthens human beings so obviously against evil that experience is able to show what faith teaches: the human will receives a secret, supernatural and extremely efficacious help.

Spontaneity is subject to external causes such as genetic hereditary, climate, the manner of procuring food and attending to needs, and so on. Freedom (which draws its strength from education, especially moral education, and grace) intervenes, hand in hand with the progress of civilisation, to dominate spontaneity and draw it away from the impulses which push human beings towards evil. Where freedom is poorly developed, people are almost wholly abandoned to spontaneity. This is the case with barbarian peoples who lack intellectual development, have few cognitions and possess limited free will; natural spontaneity is almost their sole guide, and the influence of climate, needs and the means of satisfying needs, and so on, is very strong. This fact does not prove that intellectual and moral causes can do little of themselves, but only that these causes are not yet sufficiently applied to the betterment of nations.

This is the reason why these external causes and the inborn corruption of the will, which seconds these causes with spontaneous, natural affection, constantly produce tyranny of man over woman, together with oppression and its accompanying polygamy.(229) Facts proving this assertion can be read in Comte's work which describes the oppression of woman in every one of the five races into which some physiologists divide humankind: the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malayan.(230) This oppression certainly varies in degree, according to the influence of innumerable external circumstances, but it is more or less universal. The human spontaneity which produces it shows very clearly the mark of the primitive fault. Amongst hunter and warrior races, the male is everything. His skill, agility and strength enable him to catch the prey which feeds the family, and conquer the enemies who assail it. It is clear that in these conditions the woman is forgotten, is nothing, is less than a beast of burden.

1418. Disgusted by such inhuman injustices, others go to the opposite extreme. They set out to rescue woman from her abasement and unfortunately concentrate their attention solely on the element of natural equality that she shares with man; they forget to consider the other, unequal element. Their error, like that of their predecessors, has its origin in their neglect and disavowal of a part of the truth. The first error neglects the person of the woman, which is equal to that of the man; the second, mindful of personal dignity, neglects the nature of the woman which, as a complement and help to that of the man, is subordinate.(231)

1419. Those who fall into the second error want the two sexes equal in the family. Against everything maintained by the human race, and against common sense, they claim to introduce democracy into family life, that is, the system of universal franchise.

1420. There is no doubt that families were equal to one another in the state of nature. Consequently, the heads representing families were equally independent in this state. It is also clear that when families met in the persons of their representatives for the sake of settling some disagreement or to unite in society, each head had an equal foundation for a vote.(232) This is a kind of democracy amongst families living together in a state of nature. What remains of it, after the formation of civil society, becomes civil democracy.

1421. But it would be an extraordinary mistake to counsel the transference of this democracy into the very heart of each family. Such an argument would be an abuse of analogy. Although civil society can indeed be a union of independent families, the members of conjugal society are of their nature dependent, as we have shown.

1422. Nevertheless, we have to distinguish the system which seeks to democratise the family from that which attributes political representation to women. A few words on this matter also will not be out of place.

1423. The union between husband and wife is full, according to nature. In the same way, the submission of the wife to the husband is full and universal. The full submission of wife to husband means that he has absolute right to all that the wife can alienate, whether this applies to her as an individual or belongs to her as an individual through the bond of ownership. Absolute right does not, however, exclude relative right. Although, relative to her husband, the wife has only her inalienable rights, she has and can have every kind of right relative to all other jural persons;(233) she is a subject of relative rights.

1424. The nature of relative rights is such that they can be exercised against people to whom they are relative, provided the absolute owner has no objection, or cedes his own right (cf. RI, 1277-1293).

The wife, therefore, can represent the family in three cases:

1. Conjointly with the husband, granted his consent, or as his designated delegate. In other words, the husband can defend the family and deal with family affairs through his wife. In union with her husband, the wife acts as his assistant; with his consent, she acts as part of him; delegated by her husband, she acts as his representative.

2. In the absence of the husband, the functions and rights of head of the house devolve on the wife.(234)

3. On her husband's death, she becomes the natural head of the house, and has naturally the rights of the father of the family.

1425. If civil society is constituted as an aggregation of families which regulate their confederation according to the votes of their heads, the wife can have the following part in political affairs.
In the first case we have mentioned, she can be the counsellor of her husband, if he consults her. She thus operates conjointly with him.

1426. She can vote as proxy for her husband, and deal with family affairs on his behalf when he is unavoidably absent and has no one whom he can more conveniently use as his representative, or when he does not wish to be represented by others (cf. 255-258). This is especially the case in serious matters which, if neglected, could be the cause of grave damage to the family.

1427. Nevertheless, moral duty requires that the husband represent the family in person when there is no obstacle to this. A special reason for this, outside the case of necessity, is that acting as a public representative is repugnant to the natural reserve which is the duty of wives.

1428. In the second and third cases we have mentioned, a woman has the right to represent the family at any time or place, although such a right can be exercised more decently by her through delegation to some upright man, relative or friend of the house whom she chooses as her procurator.

1429. A woman has no right to representation in public meetings, therefore, if she is considered as an individual; but she has this right, jurally speaking, when she acquires the dignity or exercises the office of head of family.

1430. In the same way, a woman as wife has no right of representation in political meetings. This is repugnant to the unity of the head of the house, to the full submission due to her husband, and to the agreement of will that she should have with him. It would be untoward and intolerable if her political opinion were contrary to that of her husband, and husband and wife belonged to opposing political parties as, for instance, could happen if the wife were able to give a separate vote in public debate.

Notes

(219) From the beginning, Christianity proscribed all these abuses. Gradually, this proscription penetrated the civil laws. A Lombard law decreed that if a master violated the wife of his slave, both wife and slave should be freed (bk. 1, tit. 32, §6). This law was good in itself, and highly praised by Montesquieu (bk. 15, c. 12), but opened the eyes of slaves to an unlawful way of acquiring freedom.

(220) Cf. the foul language used by Varro (De Re Rustica, bk. 2, c. 10) to describe intercourse amongst pastoral people to multiply the race. He speaks of them as though they were beasts.

(221) This horrendous vice is found wherever servitude and polygamy have taken root. For the infamous excesses at which such disorder arrived at Constantinople and Algiers, cf. Montesquieu, bk. 16, c. 6.

(222) This article declares that a child under the age of puberty cannot be separated from its mother.

(223) `A colonial, writes M. Comte in his work on legislation (bk. 5, c. 8), does not enfranchise the children born of him and his female slaves; he demands from them the work and submission he requires from others. He sells and exchanges them, or leaves them to his heirs, as he judges convenient. If one of his legitimate children receives them by title of succession, the heir makes no distinction between them and other slaves. A brother thus becomes the owner of his sisters and brothers. He exercises the same tyranny over them; he requires the same work; he flogs them as he flogs the others; he satisfies the same desires in their regard. This multitude of white slaves, who are such a surprise for the European, are almost always the fruit of adultery and incest. The traveller notices the lack of affection between the parents in this colony where one rarely sees two brothers talking together' (Barrow, Nouveau voyage dans la partie méridionale de l'Afrique, t. 1, c. 1, p. 130).

(224) Cf. M. Comte, Traité de législation etc. (bk. 5), where the reader will find an accumulation of constant, universal facts which testify to the most immoral, unnatural consequences springing from slavery in the colonies.

(225) Dionysius of Halicarnassus quotes a law of Numa which forbade a father to sell his son whom he had permitted to marry and made a sharer in the family's religion and goods (bk. 2). This law protecting the wife is an example of legislation vibrant with the religious, upright spirit of the most ancient laws, close to the origins of the human race. Samuel Cocceji maintains for good reasons that fathers never had the right to sell their children, and says that Dionysius, Greek as he was, easily fell into error about Roman affairs (Dissert. Proem., 12, t. 3, c. 4, §2).

(226) Equality in the use of sex and in the observance of continence was strongly proclaimed by the Gospel as soon as it appeared in the world. This helped to raise the condition of women. St. Gregory Nazienzen addresses the husband as follows: `How can you demand that which you do not give?' (Orat. 31). Lactantius wants the husband to be an example of continence to the wife, just as he must teach her, according to Christian principles, all the other virtues: `The wife is to be taught how to behave chastely by the example of continence. It is wicked to require that which you yourself are unable to give' (Inst., bk. 6: 23). St. Jerome, after showing that the laws of the Gospel are more perfect than civil laws, says: `With us, what is unlawful to women is equally unlawful to men; and the same servitude is placed on an equal level' (Ad Oceanum).

(227) Cf. Chardin, Voyage en Perse (Description du gouvernement, c. 12), where he shows that Persian families, which practise polygamy, are not more fertile than French families, where only one wife is allowed.

(228) De l'Esprit des Lois, bk. 16: 6.

(229) This effect and punishment of sin seems to be indicated by God in the words addressed to the woman: `You shall be under your husband's power and he shall rule over you' (Gen 3: 16, [Douai]). The intrinsic end of marriage, perfect union, was weakened and lost through sin. The external end, the desire for children, remained. Hence God's word to the woman after sin: `In sorrow you will bring forth children.' And because this extrinsic end of marriage does not involve the love of friendship (the woman is considered as an instrument), God continues: `You shall be under your husband's power, and he shall have dominion over you.' The perfect union between man and woman is expressed by the single name `Adam', given to both spouses (Gen 5: 1-2). After sin, however, the woman no longer has a common name with her husband; she receives her own name: Eve (Gen 3: 20), which means the mother of the living and expresses very suitably the extrinsic end, the generation of children, still remaining to marriage. Hence virginity in the heavenly paradise; fecundity outside it.

(230) Charles Comte, Traité de législation, ou exposition des lois générales suivant lesquelles les peuples prospèrent, dépérissent ou restent stationnaires (bk. 4).

(231) This error, which establishes an absolute equality between spouses, is more widespread today than one would imagine. According to Zeiller: `The majority of authors dealing with natural Right do not admit any superiority in marriage' (Diritto naturale privato, §161. He cites Schott, Giornale settimanale di giurisprudenza, t. 1, p. 757). The reason for this error is certainly dependent upon an oversight: people do not realise that the superiority of the husband and the subjection of the wife is simply responsible and social; it is in no way seigniorial on the one hand, and servile on the other.

(232) However, it should not be thought that even in such conditions one head of a family did not have greater influence than another in the decisions reached. The power of a family has an indirect influence and makes one vote more decisive than another. This influence is exercised on the spontaneity of the other families who find it to their advantage to go along with the more powerful; this can protect or even harm them. As long as the powerful family makes its influence felt through use of its own rights within their proper sphere, it exercises a legitimate influence which cannot be denied it without injury.

(233) ER, 326-327. I sometimes used the words full, complete, absolute about right to distinguish it from right relative to certain persons. It would have been better to have used constantly only one of these three adjectives, but it is difficult to choose. Perhaps the word absolute expresses the concept better than the other two.

(234) If the husband were to abandon the family morally, that is, by refusing to carry out his duty as head of the house, the wife could, and indeed would have to supply for his defect.

Chapter 07

Home