Woman, Church & State. Matilda Joslyn Gage
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her person and her property, woman’s condition became that of an infant. No act of hers was of legal value. If she made a bargain her husband could repudiate it and the person with whom she had contracted was held to have taken part in a fraud. The denial under Common Law of her right to make a contract grew out of the denial of her right of ownership. Not possessing control of her inheritance or of her future actions, she was consequently held unable to make a binding contract.[47] Forbidden the right of acting for herself; deprived of the ownership and control of her own property or earnings, woman had little opportunity to prove her business capacity. Since the time of Aristotle the control of property has been recognized as the basis of social and responsible conditions. The great school of German jurists[48] teach that ownership increases both physical and moral capacity, and that as owner, actual, or possible, man is a more capable and worthy being than he would otherwise be.
Inasmuch as through both the ecclesiastical and civil laws of Christendom, woman was debarred from giving testimony in courts of law; sisters prohibited from sharing a patrimony with brothers; wives deprived of property rights both of inheritance and earnings, it is entirely justifiable to say that even the boasted Common Law, that pride of English speaking peoples, has greatly injured civilization through its destruction of woman’s property rights. Canon or Church laws were enacted upon the principle of protection for men alone and upon these civil laws gradually became wholly based. Herbert Spencer[49] has not failed to recognize this fact in England. No less in law than in religion is woman dealt with as a secondary being, for whom equal religious rights or equal civil rights are not designed. While under the Matriarchate justice and purity prevailed, and the inherent rights of man were preserved, we find an entirely contrary condition under the Patriarchate, that system enacting laws solely with intent to man’s interest regardless alike of mother, sister, wife or daughter. The entire destruction under Canon and civil law, of woman’s property rights, has not alone lessened her responsibility, but has also diminished her self-respect. As in common with a child, or a slave, her business agreements were held as of no binding force, she ultimately came to regard herself as incapable of business transactions. In England until a very recent date, and in the United States until when in 1839, Mississippi first placed the control of her own property in a married woman’s hands (to be followed in 1848, by Pennsylvania, New York, and about the same period by Rhode Island), it was in the husband’s power in every part of christian Europe and America, to repudiate any bargain, sale or gift made by the wife as of no binding legal force, and this, even though she had brought the entire property into the marital firm.[50] Therefore under Christian laws the person with whom the wife made a contract, or to whom she made a gift was held as a criminal, or participant in a fraud. The wife under Canon Law belonged to the husband, and as a sequence to not owning herself she could not own property, and in her condition of servitude could possess no control over either her present or her future actions. Such is Common Law warped and changed by Canon Law.[51]
Property is a delicate test of the condition of a nation. It is a remarkable fact in history that the rights of property have everywhere been recognized before the rights of person. The American Revolution arose from an attack upon property rights and although the Declaration of Independence assumed the rights of person to be primal, this unique foundation for a system of government has not yet fully been admitted in practice, and woman is still denied its advantages and responsibilities. While the property owner unwittingly becomes a hostage for the security of the state itself, it needs governmental recognition of the rights of person, in order to create firm self-reliance and a feeling of strength and freedom. A proper self-respect cannot inhere in any person under governmental control of others. Unless the person so governed constantly maintains a system of rebellion in thought or deed, the soul gradually becomes debased, and the finest principles of human nature suffer a rapid process of disintegration. The integrity of elementary principles disappears, bad citizenship results, the general rights of humanity are ignored, selfish, personal, or family interests taking their place. Good citizenship requires individual personal responsibility in affairs of the state.
That property rather than person still receives recognition in governmental matters, owes its origin to the period when the rights of the common people in both property and person were ignored. The effort of the peasant was chiefly directed to securing property. To his clouded vision, the wealth of the lord created his power, and to a great extent such was the fact. Intuitively he felt that property rights were the basis of the rights of persons. The Church possessed enormous wealth, as did all his oppressors, and the peasant could but see that control of rights of property was a dangerous assault upon their rights of person. The foremost element of all slavery is the denial to the slave of right to the proceeds of his own labor. As soon as a colored slave in the United States, was permitted to hire his time, the door of freedom began to open for him. Thus when Canon Law so influenced Civil and Common Law that it forbade woman’s inheritance and ownership of property, it placed its final touch upon her degradation; she virtually became a slave to her husband. Sir Henry Maine is outspoken in declaring that Christianity has thus deeply injured civilization, an injury from which he asserts there can be no recovery as long as society remains christian. As a man of profound thought he does not fail to see that the prevailing religious sentiment created by the teachings of the church as to woman’s created inferiority and subjection to man, was the cause of that destruction of her property rights. The priests of pagan Rome held juster view regarding woman than did the Christian Church. Before the establishment of Christianity they had conferred the rights of woman to property; daughters inherited equally with sons. To such extent was woman’s rights of property carried that at one period, as has been heretofore stated, the greater part of the real-estate of the empire was in woman’s possession.[52] The slavish condition of woman greatly increased through denial of her rights of inheritance, was more fully established through denial to her of the fruits of her own labor in the marriage relation. Under church law the wife was the husband’s personal slave, all her time was absolutely his. Civil and ecclesiastical law held her as completely under his authority. Her property, her person, her time and services were all at the husband’s disposal. Nor did the Reformation effect a change in this respect. Luther’s ninety Theses nailed against the church door in Wittemberg did not assert woman’s natural or religious equality with man. It was a maxim of his that “no gown or garment worse became a woman than that she will be wise.” The home under the reformation was governed by the laws in force before that period.
First: She was to be under obedience to the masculine head of the household.
Second: She was to be constantly employed for his benefit.
Third: Her society was strictly chosen for her by her master and responsible head.
Fourth: This masculine family head was regarded as a general father-confessor to whom she was held as responsible in word and deed.
Fifth: Neither genius nor talent could free women from such control without his consent.
The Cromwellian period while exhibiting an increase of piety brought no amelioration to woman. The old Church doctrine of her having caused the expulsion of men from Paradise was still proclaimed from the pulpit, and warnings against her extreme sinfulness lost none of their invective strength from the lips of the new gospel. All kinds of learning and accomplishments for her fell under new reprobation and the old teaching as to her iniquities and the necessity for her to feel shame from the fact of her existence took new force after the rise of Melancthon, Huss, and Luther.[53] About this period it was said “she that knoweth how to compound a pudding is more desirable than she who skilfully compoundeth a poem.”[54] Men thought it no shame to devote themselves to the pleasure of the table. Epicures and gluttons abounded, but to women was forbidden a seat at the world’s intellectual board; she who secured learning did so at the peril of her social and religious position. Under no other system of religion has there been such absolute denial of woman’s right to directly approach the divinity; under no other religious system has her debasement been greater.[55]
It cannot be asserted that the religious system teaching restrictive moral and civil laws regarding woman, is of the past. Its still great living influence is shown by the thousands of pilgrims who visited Italy during the Pope’s Jubilee and the presents of incalculable value that by tens of thousands poured into the papal treasury in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the entrance of Pope