WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
mit suicide, especially if she has no family. This act of self-immolation has been performed in public.
China is the land of fathers. The desire for male offspring is intense, and this desire no doubt gave rise to the concubinate. If the wife bore only daughters, or was sterile, the husband felt impelled to take another woman, a "lesser wife," in the hope that she would bear a son.
This preference for male children, which is of the very essence of the paternal family, seems to militate always and everywhere against the condition of women in the community or the race. China is polygamous chiefly because it is patriarchal, and only in a secondary sense is plurality in mates attributable to men's love of variety and the force of passion.
There are, however, a few signs that point to a lessening of masculine despotism. Young Chinese men come to England to study for the professions. The influence of the West infects them. I have met Chinese students, with the British "university manner" and intonation in speech, who, except for their features, might be taken for English undergraduates. These young men are the nucleus of a New China group. They are well-cultured and have progressive ideals, and the feminist movement in Europe causes them to reflect on the position of the women of China.
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