The Second Sex (19 page)

One of the problems arising from societies based on agnation is the fate of inheritance in the absence of any male descendants. The Greeks had instituted the custom of
epiklerate:
the female heir had to marry her oldest relative in the paternal family (
genos);
thus the property her father bequeathed to her would be transmitted to children belonging to the same group, and the estate remained the property of the paternal
genos;
the
epikleros
was not a female heir but only a machine to procreate a male heir; this custom placed her entirely at man’s mercy as she was automatically handed over to the firstborn of her family’s men, who most often turned out to be an old man.

Since the cause of women’s oppression is found in the resolve to perpetuate the family and keep the patrimony intact, if she escapes the family, she escapes this total dependence as well; if society rejects the family by denying private property, woman’s condition improves considerably. Sparta, where community property prevailed, was the only city-state where the woman was treated almost as the equal of man. Girls were brought up like boys; the wife was not confined to her husband’s household; he was only allowed furtive nocturnal visits; and his wife belonged to him so loosely that another man could claim a union with her in the name of eugenics: the very notion of adultery disappears when inheritance disappears; as all the children belonged to the city as a whole, women were not jealously enslaved to a master: or it can be explained inversely, that possessing neither personal wealth nor individual ancestry, the citizen does not possess a woman either. Women underwent the burdens of maternity as men did war: but except for this civic duty, no restraints were put on their freedom.

Along with the free women just discussed and slaves living within the
genos
—unconditionally owned by the family head—are the prostitutes found in Greece. Primitive people were familiar with hospitality prostitution, turning over a woman to a guest passing through, which undoubtedly had mystical explanations; and with sacred prostitution, intended for the common good by releasing the mysterious forces of fertility. These customs existed in classical antiquity. Herodotus reports that in the fifth century
B.c.
, every woman in Babylon had to give herself once in her life to a stranger in the temple of Mylitta for a coin she contributed to the temple’s coffers; she then returned home to live in chastity. Religious prostitution has continued to our day among Egyptian almahs and Indian
bayadères
, who make up respectable castes of musicians and dancers. But most often, in Egypt, India, and western Asia, sacred prostitution slipped into legal prostitution, the priestly class finding this trade profitable. There were venal prostitutes even among the Hebrews. In Greece, especially along the coast or on the islands where many foreigners stopped off, temples of “young girls hospitable to strangers,” as Pindar called them, could be found: the money they earned was intended for religious establishments, that is, for priests and indirectly for their maintenance. In reality, in a hypocritical way, sailors’ and travelers’ sexual needs—in Corinth and other places—were exploited; and this was already venal prostitution. Solon was the one who turned this into an institution. He bought Asian slaves and shut them up in
dicterions
located in Athens near the temple of Venus, not far from the port, under the management of
pornotropos
in charge of the financial administration of the establishment; each girl received wages, and the net profit went to the state. After that,
kapaileia
, private establishments, were opened: a red Priapus served as their display sign. Soon, in addition to slaves, poor Greek women were taken in as residents. The
dicterions
were considered so necessary that they were recognized as inviolable places of asylum. Nonetheless, courtesans were marked with infamy, they had no social rights, and their children were exempted from providing for them; they had to wear specific outfits made of multicolored cloth decorated with flower bouquets, and their hair was dyed with saffron. Besides the women shut up in
dicterions
, there were free courtesans, who could be placed in three categories:
dicteriads
, much like today’s registered prostitutes;
auletrids
, who were dancers and flute players; and hetaeras, demimondaines who often came from Corinth having had official liaisons with high-ranking Greek men and who played the social role of modern-day “worldly women.” The first ones were found among freed women or lower-class Greek girls; exploited by procurers, they led a pitiful life. The second type succeeded in getting rich thanks to their musical talent: the most famous of all was Lamia, mistress of Ptolemy of Egypt, then of his vanquisher, the king of Macedonia, Demetrius Poliorcetes. As for the last category, many were well-known for sharing in the glory of their lovers. Disposing of themselves and their fortunes freely, intelligent, cultivated, and artistic, they were treated like persons by the men who were captivated by their charms. And because they escaped from their families, because
they lived on the margins of society, they also escaped men: they could seem to be their counterparts, almost their equals. In Aspasia, in Phryne, and in Lais, the superiority of the free woman asserted itself over the virtuous mother of a family.

These brilliant exceptions aside, the Greek woman is reduced to semi-slavery; she does not even have the freedom to complain: Aspasia and the more passionate Sappho are barely able to make a few grievances heard. In Homer, there are remnants of the heroic period when women had some power: still, the warriors roundly send them off to their chambers. The same scorn is found in Hesiod: “He who confides in a woman confides in a thief.” In the great classical period, woman is resolutely confined to the gynaeceum. “The best woman is she of whom men speak the least,” said Pericles. Plato, who proposed admitting a council of matrons to the Republic’s administration and giving girls a liberal education, is an exception; he provoked Aristophanes’ raillery; to a woman who questions him about public affairs, a husband responds, in
Lysistrata:
“This is none of your business. Shut up, or you’ll be beaten … go back to your weaving.” Aristotle expresses the common point of view in declaring that woman is woman because of a deficiency, that she must live closed up at home and obey man. “The slave is entirely deprived of the freedom to deliberate; woman does have it, but she is weak and powerless,” he states. According to Xenophon, a woman and her spouse are complete strangers to each other: “Are there people you communicate with less than your wife?—There are not many”; all that is required of a woman in
Oeconomicus
is to be an attentive, prudent, economical housewife, busy as a bee, a model of organization. The modest status to which women are reduced does not keep the Greeks from being deeply misogynist. In the seventh century B.c., Archilochus writes biting epigrams against women; Simonides of Amorgos says, “Women are the greatest evil God ever created: if they sometimes seem useful, they soon change into trouble for their masters.” For Hipponax: “There are but two days in life when your wife brings you joy: her wedding day and her funeral.” But it is the Ionians who, in Miletus’s stories, are the most spiteful: for example, the tale of the matron of Ephesus. Mostly women are attacked for being lazy, shrewish, or spendthrift, in fact precisely the absence of the qualities demanded of them. “There are many monsters on the earth and in the sea, but the greatest is still woman,” wrote Menander. “Woman is a pain that never goes away.” When the institution of the dowry brought a certain importance to women, it was her arrogance that was deplored; this is one of Aristophanes’—and notably Menander’s—familiar themes. “I married a witch with a dowry. I took her for her fields and her house, and that, O
Apollo, is the worst of evils!” “Damn him who invented marriage and then the second, the third, the fourth, and the rest who followed them.” “If you are poor and you marry a rich woman, you will be reduced to being both a slave and poor.” The Greek woman was too closely controlled to be attacked for her conduct; and it was not the flesh in her that was vilified. It was more the responsibilities and duties of marriage that weighed on men; this leads to the supposition that in spite of her rigorous conditions, and although she had almost no recognized rights, she must have held an important place in the household and enjoyed some authority; doomed to obedience, she could disobey; she could bombard her husband with tantrums, tears, nagging, and insults; marriage, meant to enslave woman, was a ball and chain for the husband as well. In the character of Xanthippe is embodied all the grievances of the Greek citizen against the shrewish wife and the adversities of conjugal life.

The conflict between family and state defines the history of the Roman woman. The Etruscans constituted a matrilineal filiation society, and it is probable that at the time of the monarchy Rome still practiced exogamy linked to a matriarchal regime: the Latin kings did not transmit power through heredity. What is certain is that after Tarquinius’s death, patriarchy asserts itself: agricultural property and the private estate—thus the family—become society’s nucleus. Woman will be strictly subservient to the patrimony and thus to the family group: laws deprive her of even those guarantees accorded to Greek women; she lives her life in powerlessness and servitude. She is, of course, excluded from public affairs and prohibited from any “masculine office”; she is a perpetual minor in civil life. She is not directly deprived of her paternal inheritance but, through circuitous means, is kept from using it: she is put under the authority of a guardian. “Guardianship was established in the interest of the guardians themselves,” said Gaius, “so that woman—of whom they are the presumptive heirs—could not rob them of their inheritance with a will, nor diminish the inheritance by alienations or debts.” Woman’s first guardian is her father; in his absence, paternal male relatives fulfill that function. When the woman marries, she passes “into the hands” of her husband; there are three types of marriage: the
confarreatio
, where the spouses offer a spelt cake to the Capitoline Jupiter in the presence of the
flamen dialis;
the
coemptio
, a fictitious sale in which the plebeian father “mancipated” his daughter to her husband; and the
usus
, the result of a cohabitation of one year; all three were with
manu
, meaning that the male spouse replaces the father or his male relatives; his wife is considered one of his daughters, and he thenceforth
has complete power over her person and her property. But from the time of the Law of the Twelve Tables, because the Roman woman belonged to both paternal and conjugal clans, conflicts arose, giving rise to her legal emancipation. As a result, the
manu
marriage dispossesses her male agnates. To defend the paternal relatives’ interests,
sine manu
marriage comes into being; in this case, the woman’s property remains under the guardians’ control, and the husband’s rights are only over her person; and even this power is shared with the paterfamilias, who keeps his daughter under his absolute authority. The family court is in charge of settling disputes arising between father and husband: such an institution gives the woman recourse from her father to her husband or from her husband to her father; she is not one individual’s thing. Moreover, although a gens is very powerful—as the existence of this court proves—independent of public courts, the father, as head of the family, is above all a citizen: his authority is unlimited, he rules absolutely over wife and children; but they are not his property; rather, he administers their existence for the public good; the woman, who brings his children into the world and whose domestic duties often extend to agricultural tasks, is very useful to the country and deeply respected. Here is an important fact that recurs throughout history: abstract rights cannot sufficiently define the concrete situation of woman; this situation depends in great part on the economic role she plays; and very often, abstract freedom and concrete powers vary inversely. Legally more enslaved than the Greek woman, the Roman is more deeply integrated in society; at home she sits in the atrium, which is the center of the domicile, rather than being relegated to the gynaeceum; it is she who presides over the slaves’ work; she oversees the children’s education, and her influence on them often extends to an advanced age; she shares her husband’s work and his concerns, she is considered a co-owner of his property; the marriage formula
“Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia”
is not an empty formula;
^*
the matron is called
domina;
she is mistress of the home, associate in religion, not a slave but man’s companion; the tie that unites her to him is so sacred that in five centuries not one divorce is recorded. She is not confined to her quarters: she is present at meals and celebrations, she goes to the theater; men give her right-of-way on the street, consuls and lictors stand aside for her. Legend accords her an eminent role in history: those of the Sabine women, Lucretia, and Virginia are well-known; Coriolanus yields to the supplications of his mother’s and his wife’s pleas; the law of
Licinius consecrating the triumph of Roman democracy is said to have been inspired by his wife; Cornelia forges the soul of the Gracchi. “Everywhere men govern women,” said Cato, “and we who govern all men are governed by our women.”