WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
Such a disappearance of polygamous marriage would probably be followed by a long period of polygyny. History is wont to repeat itself. When Christianity attacked the ancient practice of Hebrew plural marriage, polygyny lingered for centuries.
Lea, in his "History of Sacerdotal Celibacy," says that the chronicles of Christianity in the Middle Ages are "full of the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy." Prelates used to levy taxes upon priests for keeping concubines.
While polygamy favours male supremacy, and provides for the wandering amative impulses of men, in its Oriental form the practice militates against woman's influence in many of the wider interests of social life. It is the wastage of a highly valuable social force that a large number of women should be segregated and immured in harems. Under polyandry men are content to be shared as husbands, chiefly because the polyandrous wife has never insisted that her spouses shall be kept behind bolt and bar. Polygamous husbands have rarely, if ever, allowed such freedom to their partners.
The harem implies for women seclusion from the world. It is in a sense like the nunnery. The tendency of modern civilisation is towards a freer social intermingling of the two sexes, and this is one of the
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