Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 28

by Walter Matthew Gallichan

CHAPTER XXVIII

WESTERN POLYGYNY

The religion, laws, and customs of the West forbid plural marriage. Monogamy is the only recognised and permissible state of wedlock in the greater part of Europe, and in all the advanced civilisations of the American continent. Mormon polygamy is practised in spite of the law of the United States. There is no other conventional form of polygamous union in the highly-civilised Western societies.

As we have seen in our survey of Eastern polygamy, there is always a general tendency towards monogamy, and single marriage is the custom of the great majority of Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Hindus, Burmese, and Persians. Among the Christian Latin, Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races, where permanent monogamous marriage is the only religious and legally-sanctioned union, there is a bias on the part of a large number of the population towards polygynous practices.

Polygamy is severely interdicted, and in most communities punished; but the sexual association of men with more than one woman, or plurality, has never been wholly suppressed by religion or law.^[1]

The restless and inconstant passions of men and women break the conventional fetters, and the phenomena of pseudo-polygamy and pseudo-polyandry are manifest in every civilised state. This fact demonstrates that, deeply-rooted in the breasts of a vast number of Western people, dwells a powerful desire for variety in love. The Church has striven by suasion, and by threats and penances, to suppress this vagrant human impulse.

Nothing could be plainer than the Christian teaching upon the sin of unchastity. Apostles, Fathers, Bishops, and Popes have denounced inconstancy in the state of wedlock. Cruel punishments have been inflicted upon the unchaste and the adulterous, from social ostracism to death itself. But a host of men and women rebel against the mandate of indissoluble religious and licit marriage, and defy the law of the Church and the public opinion of the orthodox.

There is no doubt that the earlier Christian teachers were much perplexed by the errant desires of their converts and disciples. Polygamy had a strong hold upon the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and the Eastern alien proselytes. It was impossible to extirpate so ancient a practice in a few years. The polygamy of David and Solomon could always be quoted as sanctioned by Jehovah. Most of the accredited Hebrew lawmakers and pious scribes had permitted plural marriage and concubinage. Rachel did not prevent Jacob's association with the handmaidens Bilhah and Zilpah, an instance of the Eastern solicitude for the begetting of sons.

Esau had three wives. Gideon had "any wives" and "three score and ten sons." In the time of Moses, women taken in warfare became the wives, concubines, or slaves of their captors.

Maimon, the Jewish historian, states that a man might possess as many wives as he could afford to maintain. So general, therefore, was the custom of polygamy that the early Christians were confronted with a very formidable social problem. As a matter of fact, plural marriage, even though it was considered an offence, was not wholly abolished for many centuries after the time of St. Paul. Its occurrence was regular in most parts of Europe. In the Sixth Century, according to the tribunal of Narbonne, a man married to several women was compelled to do penance, but this enactment did not suppress the system of plurality of wives.

Luther, when approached by Philip of Hesse-Cassel, gave a hearing to his plea for permission to marry a second wife while cohabiting with the first. A council was called, and they decided that, as the Gospels do not distinctly command monogamous marriage, and that as more than one wife was allowed in the days of the Patriarchs of Israel, the plea should be granted.

In the Hellenic and Roman civilisations there were instances of plural marriage. Polygamy was, however, very rare among the Greeks, and some writers have ascribed to this fact the comparatively high status of women in ancient Greece. Certainly the Greeks had forsaken plurality in marriage at a period when the custom flourished among the Jews. The Romans also enforced monogamy, and in the early days of Rome divorce was unknown.

Sir Henry Maine is of the opinion that Roman women enjoyed far greater liberty than the women of the Hebrew race, and that the canon law of the Church brought about numerous sexual inequalities.

Until 1060 A.D. there was no authoritative mandate of the Church against polygamy.^[2] Even after this prohibition there were instances of polygamic marriage and of concubinage in Christian communities.

The restraints upon the sex-passion among the Greeks and Romans had their reaction in the orgies associated with sacred festivals. These carnivals became licentious, and fell into disrepute in the period of decadence in both nations. Out of the orgy arose that other form of reaction known in all advanced nations as prostitution. When we speak in England of "secret" polygamy we misuse a term signifying sanctioned plural conjugality. There is no legal polygamy in Great Britain, but there is, biologically speaking, a constant practice of polygyny. The polygynous man may be described as one who is not content with one mate at a time. He is not constant in his desires.

"The social evil" flourishes chiefly where there is the strictest insistence on permanent monogamic marriage. We, as monogamists, are bound to accept this too-evident fact. Before English religious reformers attempted to dispel the creeds and the customs of India, there was practically no bartering of the sexes in the form which we know only too well. Quite involuntarily, the missionaries have, by the condemnation of Eastern practice in marriage and extra-matrimonial association, fostered an evil that was previously unknown. This is especially the case in Burma.

The European literature treating upon prostitution is very comprehensive, and it is not necessary for me to refer at length to the subject. But it is most important that we should recognise the extreme facility offered for the indulgence of men's tendency to variety by the provision of a huge class of outcast women in monogamous countries.

The institution was condemned by Mahommed. It was banned in ancient Persia, India, and Burma. The Persian "Zendavesta" denounced the practice in the plainest terms. For the origin of modern systematic, commercial "white slavery" we must look to the West. Condemned by religion, by most social reformers, and often inhibited by law, the courtesan still thrives among all the Western races.

The species of polygyny in the West approaching more closely to the permissible polygamic marriage of the East is the intimacy of married men with mistresses or lovers. Such association is of a more constant character than that of the ephemeral traffic with the demi-mondaine.

"The double establishment," "the left-handed marriage," the "morganatic marriage" are terms applied to the cohabitation that we incorrectly label as Western "polygamy." There is actually very little hindrance in all parts of Europe and America to the indulgence of men's polygynous propensity. The responsibility is far less here in England than in Mohammedan countries. Although religious ethics clearly forbid such plural intimacies, it is well known that society condones the men who engage in them, while the woman is generally condemned.

It is true that all men—if the testimony of the subjects themselves is to be accepted—are not naturally inclined to plurality in sex partnerships. There is no reason to question the admissions of a large number of men that their instincts are wholly monogamous. These are the natural, the typical, monogamic lovers. I have interrogated very many of my sex on this subject. The bulk have replied that the impulse for variety in sexual relations has assailed them from time to time, and even after marriage of esteem and affection; but the dictates of conscience, the counsels of discretion, the inconveniences of clandestine intrigues, or other considerations have restrained them.

A fairly large proportion of men confess freely that, from the ethical and the social points of view, lifelong fidelity to one woman is a lofty ideal. But nature, they add, has not shaped them for the restraints of monogamic wedlock. They admit that they can love more than one woman at the same time, and that they give way to their polygynous obsessions.

Statistics in such social phenomena are, of course, quite impossible. Western polygyny is mostly secret. But any man who has observed life in his own country and abroad knows how extremely prevalent is the practice of irregularity, or, as Professor Iwan Bloch terms it, "wild love."^[3] William Cobbett noted the tendency of most men to rebel secretly against the limitaions of conjugality.^[4] The dramas of the Elizabethan age and the novels of the Eighteenth Century teem with allusions to men's wandering fancy in love.

 

The Puritans strove to suppress all forms of extramarital association of the sexes by the punishment of imprisonment for convicted offenders. Adultery on the part of a wife incurred the capital sentence.

There is little need to insist upon the frequency of legal marriage with super-added "free love." Every medical man of fairly wide experience knows perfectly well that many persons of both sexes exhibit the polygynous instinct. We may grant that monogamy is the highest and best form of sex-union; but what are we to say of that pseudo-monogamy which is so common in all the Western lands?

In a sermon, preached in New York on the subject of marriage, the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst said: "I do not know how many unfaithful wives and husbands there are in this city, but I calculate there might be a quarter of a million. I would not at any rate of premium issue an insurance policy for more than five years on any couple's conjugal felicity, unless on the contingency of offspring."

A number of pressmen interviewed the preacher, and to them he remarked, "I have not made the statement without careful observation. The subject for months has had my careful scrutiny, and I have found the condition of affairs to be absolutely damnable."

In Russia, Tolstoy said that "out of a hundred men there is hardly one who has not been married before, and out of fifty hardly one who has not made up his mind to deceive his wife."

Other writers have referred to the prevalence of "wild love" in Russia.

Max Nordau, from his observations of German life, asserted that men are "naturally polygamous," and endorsed the well-known dictum of Schopenhauer.

In France the proportion of marriages between bachelors from eighteen to forty years and women of fifty and beyond that age is ten times greater than in England.^[5] Such unions are the result of the dower system—that turning of marriage into a "matter of arithmetic," which so often excludes love from the transaction. These marriages of young men, and men in their prime, to elderly women foster the custom of maintaining "amies" or mistresses. The frequency of irregular attachments in France is attributable in a large degree to the commercialisation of marriage. Union in wedlock for love alone is comparatively rare among the French.

It may be asked whether the powerful psychic and physical attraction, which is the source of the highest form of love between the sexes, is usually perceptible in average marriage in the West. Most men and women unite in wedlock for a number of reasons besides passion; and in this fact lies the cause of numerous cases of post-marital love affairs. The marriage of convenience, the decorous, cool-blooded alliance of two prudent persons, who affect to despise mere sentiment and passion, may prove tolerably successful.

But often there comes an hour when one or the other experiences that profound and all-powerful emotion that is associated with a romantic love. Our divorce court cases give abundant proof that mercenary marriage, and unions entered into without absorbing affection on both sides, frequently end in tragedy.

Romain Rolland says truly: "The majority of men have not vitality enough to give themselves wholly to any passion. They spare themselves and save their force with cowardly prudence."

Ill-assorted marriages from which there is no reputable method of escape are a prolific source of Western polygyny. Most happily-married men are quite content under monogamy, in spite of the variability of male desire. But an enormous number of men, and of women also, live in continual secret revolt against single marriage.

It is dangerous to blind ourselves in this matter. Neither sanctioned polygamy, nor sanctioned monogamy, are adapted to the emotional and passional needs of the whole body of men and women of a race or a nation. There are discontented women, and probably men, in the polygamous societies; but there is probably more dissatisfaction among both sexes living under indissoluble monogamic marriage.

Polygyny is very ancient, and was always widespread in the West, though the moralists, theological and secular, have consistently condemned it for centuries. Among the kings of England, Henry VIII. and Charles II. exhibited strong polygynous instincts. T. H. Jesse, "Memoirs of the Court of England," writes that George I. "had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio." Thackeray in "The Four Georges," refers frequently to the royal mistresses. Monarchs and nobles throughout the whole of Europe, and in all ages, have imitated Eastern polygamy by the maintenance of court mistresses and paramours. This precedent made plural love a fashionable and popular custom among the affluent. Schopenhauer boldly affirmed that we, all of us, for some time at least, live in polygamy; and historians refer frequently to polygynous practices.

Referring to Western polygyny, and comparing it to Eastern polygamy, Alison writes: "In none of these respects, perhaps, is it (polygamy) so powerful an instrument of corruption as the female profligacy and promiscuous concubinage, which, comparatively cheap in its acquisition, and therefore pervading all ranks, is felt as so consuming an evil in all the great cities of Western Europe."

Tacitus alludes to the polygyny of the ancient Germans. The practice was known fairly widely in Russia, Norway, and Sweden in early times, and it still exists. Long after the conversion of Europe to Christianity the maintenance of concubines was a common custom. Hallam notes concubinage in parts of Europe; and that it was not entirely confined to the laity is proved by Lea in his instructive "History of Sacerdotal Celibacy."

It has been the unwritten law of most Western countries that sovereigns and princes shall be allowed to indulge in polygyny. Anyone only superficially acquainted with the histories of the courts of Europe can point to a number of instances.

When polygamy is interdicted men endeavour to mitigate the restrictions of monogamous marriage by sex intimacy with two or more women, one being the recognised and lawful wife. The irksomeness of monogamy drives a certain number of men to plural sexual associations. Westermarck admits that polygyny is often the result of legal monogamy. A number of writers have declared that prostitution is inseparable from the system of monogamous marriage. Do we not find that in the countries where polygamy is allowed by religion and law monogamy is the general rule, and that the bartering of sex-love by courtesans is uncommon? The courtesan of the polygamous nations finds her chief support from the foreigner of monogamous nations. It is, therefore, not the sanction that promotes invariably the frequency of the practice of polygyny.

Human nature is perverse. Men of the West invented single marriage, but they have in large numbers always rebelled secretly against its inhibitions and limitations. Theological morality declared that men and women must marry for life, or abstain entirely from any kind of sexual union. And the severity of the ordinance of wedlock has defeated its end.

Roman Catholic absolutism in matrimonial matters rendered divorce impossible. Once married, always married, and for good or ill. Protestantism recognised that such a decree was arbitrary, and legal separation and divorce were provided for by the law. Slowly, but inevitably, the links of the chain of wedlock have been loosened, and the new divorce measures show a wider appreciation of human needs. The enforced fettering of the unfortunately married will be one day regarded as a relic of a barbarous age. Until then indissoluble marriage will continue to be one of the sources of polygyny in Europe and America.

Another cause of polygyny, especially in Great Britain, is to be sought in the preponderance of women in the population. The surplus of marriageable women who remain single is often overstated. Nevertheless, there is an immense army of compulsory celibate women. Certain city areas are inhabited chiefly by unmarried women. Such a phenomenon utterly bewilders the intelligent Eastern visitor. He asks, reasonably enough, how we reconcile the boast of our advanced and humane civilisation with the fact that tens of thousands of our women are deprived of the primary rights of love, marriage, and the reproduction of offspring.

This multitude of spinsters might be cited as evidence that polygyny is not common in England. Unfortunately, it proves nothing of the kind. What it proves is that marriage is becoming less popular among both sexes; that the number of men is disproportionate to the number of women, and that men find a substitute for matrimony in polygyny, and more especially in prostitution.

Dr. Johnson, in spite of his stern piety, recognised fully that inconstancy is a common masculine failing. He had no clemency for the unfaithfulness of wives. When Boswell told the Doctor that a friend, in an argument with a lady, had declared that conjugal infidelity was "by no means so bad in the husband as in the wife," Johnson said: "Your friend was in the right, sir," adding, "Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands."

Many men and women of genius have displayed an aptitude for polygyny, but probably not in a greater degree than less gifted persons. The amours of the ordinary man are not recorded, as in the case of the man of genius. Moore, in his "Life of Byron," states that all the greatest artists and poets have been "either strangers or rebels to domestic ties." If constant susceptibility to love is a mark of the polygynous impulse, as it would seem to be, then poets from Ovid to Byron and Burns undoubtedly instance that impulse.

Musicians are notably prone to inconstancy in love, as their biographers show.^[6] All creative artists are intensely attuned to the sense of beauty, and this hypersensitiveness, coupled with the virility that so often accompanies strong intellectual power, induces amorous preoccupation. Goethe, Heine, and Schiller were born amorists. Rousseau was fickle. It is hardly necessary to add to the list of great men who have manifested the capacity for loving several women in succession, and not infrequently more than one at the same time.

The masculine bias for plural love must not, however, be over-estimated. There are, without question, men of the Western races to whom the bare idea of cohabitation, or casual sexual association, with more than one woman is supremely repugnant. Where monogamy is slowly taking the place of polygamy, we notice that men seek a compensation by forming a succession of single unions. This is the case among the Arabs, Moors, and Malays of to-day. Such a substitute for polygamous marriage is not repellent to a number of Europeans, and as a practice it is commoner than association with more than one woman at the same time. The latter form of irregularity is especially odious to a fair proportion of Western men, who may be classed biologically as monogamic by instinct.

Convention and public opinion, though often lax in the case of man's variability, are still a deterrent influence. Religion also serves as a restraint upon minds swayed by beliefs and theological precepts. Often, no doubt, the innately polygynous man is hindered from indulging his propensity by reasoned ethical and social considerations.

Nevertheless, it is useless to pretend that the practices of unrecognised polygyny and "wild love" are purely Eastern, or confined entirely to primitive races. As George Meredith said, most Englishmen have not yet "rounded Cape Turk." Chastity is apparent, but to what degree is it actual?

Lucy Garnett, in "The Women of Turkey," is explicit in her comparison of our sexual morality and that of the Turks:—

"Monogamy has in Christendom been a conventional fiction rather than a social fact. And Christianity, having denied to women all rights in sexual relations except under the sanction of indissoluble monogamous marriage, the social evil has in no civilisation whatever been so hideous in its degradation and misery as in Christendom."

1. In Rome Arcadius prohibited plural marriage A.D. 393. Charles V. made it a capital offence. By a statute of James I., 1603, polygamy was rendered a felony. Concubinage was still recognized by law in the Sixteenth Century in Ireland. King Diarmid had two legitimate wives and two concubines.
2. "The Religion of Women," Joseph MacCabe.
3. "Sexual Life of our Times."
4. "Advice to Young Men."
5. Letourneau. Op. cit.
6. Beethoven declared that one of his loves, which lasted seven months, was unusual for its duration.