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betrothed before birth, at birth, at two weeks, three months, or seven years of age, and variously often to an adult, and their husbands were thus able to take extraordinary precautions against the violation of their chastity. On the other hand, it frequently happens, especially where marriage by purchase is not developed, that the conduct of the girl is not looked after until she is married ; it becomes immoral only when disapproved by her husband. In the Andaman Islands, " after puberty the females have indiscriminate intercourse .... until they are chosen or allotted as wives, when they are required to be faithful to their husbands, whom they serve. ... If any married or single man goes to an unmarried woman, and she declines to have intercourse with him by getting up or going to another part of the circle, he considers himself insulted, and, unless restrained, would kill or wound her."' Under these conditions the rightness or wrongness of the sexual conduct of the wife turned upon the attitude of the husband toward the act. Hence a very general practice that the men prostituted their wives for hire, but punished unapproved intercourse. "The chastity of the women does not appear to be held in much estimation. The husband will, for a trifling present, lend his wife to a stranger, and the loan may be protracted by increasing the value of the present. Yet, strange as it may seem, notwithstanding this facil- ity, any connection of this kind not authorized by the husband is considered highly offensive and quite as disgraceful to his character as the same licentiousness in civilized societies." =
When woman lost the temporary prestige which she had acquired in the maternal system through her greater tendency to associated life, and particularly when her person came more absolutely into the control of man through the system of marriage by purchase, she also accepted and reflected naively the moral standards which were developed for the most part through male activities. Any system of checks and approvals in the group, indeed, which was of advantage to the men would be of advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were safe-
'OwEN, Transactions Ethnological Society, New Series, Vol. II, p. 35- 'Lewis and Clarke, he. cit.. Vol. 1, p. 421-
