Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of SexThomas, William Isaac
Science
Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex
Thomas, William Isaac
Sex; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
Child-marriages are another instance of the success of the male in
gaining control of the person of the female and of regulating her
conduct from his own standpoint. Girls were married or 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.[209]
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 husbands 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 facility, 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.[210]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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