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Chapter Two
Americas Sexual Heritage
CULTURE THEN, THE WAY OF LIFE OF A group, seems to be the key explanatory variable for sexual standards. Before we can profitably examine our culture and sexual standards of today, we must briefly turn to our past, to see how the culture of the past concerning sexual standards is relevant to an understanding of such standards today.
Much of our way of life today in America is derived directly from the European settlers who came over here in the last three and a half centuries. Many fundamental parts of that European culture grew out of the old Hebraic, Greek, and Roman civilizations. There have also been vast changes in our culture in the last few centuries here in America, which are relevant to our present-day premarital standards.
Obviously, I cannot cover the many centuries of written history in any amount of detail in one chapter. I will choose only some of the major parts of that history which bear upon premarital sexual standards in America today. This chapter is not a detailed historical accounting, but rather a selective discussion of some major historical developments that are directly relevant to understanding our premarital sexual standards today.
Written history goes back about fifty centuries. From the perspective of human life, this seems to be a very long time, but in a larger perspective, it is insignificant. Our planet has been in existence several billion years; life, about two billion years; and even man, a very late arrival, has probably been on this planet several million years. Thus, five thousand years is proportionately not very much, but it is all we have in terms of written history. We can go back 1,000,000 years in terms of fossil evidence of human cultures, but the evidence is so scanty that it is most difficult to do more than try to re-create a few physical artifacts. We will probably never know just what customs these early men had, but we can glean some ideas by looking at the available evidence which becomes increasingly clear as we approach the beginning of written history 5,000 years ago.1
Approximately ten thousand years ago, horticulture and agriculture were invented near the Caspian Sea and quickly spread throughout the Middle East. Man finally discovered a way of feeding himself in addition to fishing, hunting, and gathering. The advent of agriculture meant that a more stable existence could be had, that more people could live together and be supported by an existing area. The entire pattern of man's life must have been radically changed by this invention of planting seeds with a primitive "digging stick." The agricultural surpluses afforded men the time to stop and think— to take stock of where they had come and where they were going.
Now we know a great deal about agricultural societies, for most of the world is still agricultural, and much of it only very recently has become industrialized. Therefore, the life of cultures going back about five or even ten thousand years is not too difficult to deal with.2
Let me clarify a few points about historical records. In many cases, the only useful sources are in sculpture and other surviving arts. Often these sources contain pictures of a husband, wife, and child walking together through an estate or inspecting cattle, and this forms the basis for our judgment of the family system. An added difficulty is that even where the customs are clearly delineated, one must use his best judgment in deciding whether these customs were practiced and believed by all the people in the particular society or whether they were just for the upper-class aristocrats. Furthermore, we have only our judgment to determine how well people lived up to these formal customs. Of course, if there are written records giving all the needed information, the situation is greatly alleviated, although one still must be on guard for forgeries and inaccurate historians. As we approach modern times, our written records become more accurate. It is wise to keep these qualifications in mind when reading this chapter's account of our sexual heritage.
THE ANCIENT HEBREWS
One of the oldest and most important sources of our present-day sexual standards is the Hebrew civilization. Most of our information on the early Hebrews comes from the Old Testament and the Talmud. Hebrew culture came into existence about thirty-five or forty centuries ago. It was from this culture that ultimately the Christian religion was born and to which many of the basic ideas in the Western world can be traced. In the beginning, the Jews were one of the many Semitic tribes who wandered in the Middle East. Their real flourishing and entrance into agriculture occurred after their exodus from enslavement in Egypt somewhere between 1450 and 1200 B.C.3
Marriage was arranged by one's parents, in particular, one's father. The legal age for marriage was twelve for girls and thirteen for boys. The Hebrews, like the ancient Sumer-ians, paid the girl's family a certain amount of money, a "bride price," when she married. This was not actually a pur-chase of the girl but merely a custom symbolizing a bond between the two families and reimbursing the girl's family for the loss of her services. Jacob's fourteen years of labor for Leah and Rachel is the most famous incident of "bride price."
Marriage, in almost all of these ancient cultures, was more of a unity between two families than between two people. It was a social and economic agreement to bind two families together. Thus, parents did the choosing and love was not of primary concern. Our customs of choosing our own mates and marrying for love could hardly have fit into an agricultural society where large families and economic motives were so powerful.
The Hebrew religion favored early marriage and many children. Polygyny and concubinage are mentioned in the Old Testament, but monogamy became the favored form of marriage. The woman's place, as in most of the Semitic tribes, was in the home. She fulfilled her role by caring for the house and bearing and rearing the children. Male children were especially valued. The position of the father was similar to that in other Semitic societies and thus quite powerful.4
The double standard was apparent in the divorce laws which seemed to allow only men to initiate divorce proceedings. It is probable, however, that women could ask their husbands to initiate such proceedings:
When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it comes to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.5
The double standard prevailed in sexual morality also. Abstinence was the formal standard, and thus both men and women were forbidden to have premarital or extramarital coitus, but informally, the written punishments and social censure was much greater for the female than for the male. For example, if a husband should think his bride to be nonvirginal, he could order her to prove her virginity and if:
. . . the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die:6
No such test of virginity applied to men. It should be noted, however, that if the bride proved to be virginal, then the husband paid a fine of 100 shekels of silver and was never permitted to divorce his wife. Much of our own double standard here in America dates back to the influences of Hebrew culture. Women were considered to be unfit for independence; they were always dependent on some man— their father or husband most often. It should be noted that women were valued in other ways and were not without influence, as illustrated by the well-known stories of Sarah, Rebekah, and Jezebel, in the Old Testament.
GREEK AND ROMAN CIVILIZATIONS
Two other cultures besides the Hebrew can be selected as of vital importance to the understanding of how our present-day sexual standards developed. These are the Greek and Roman civilizations.
In the fourth and fifth centuries, B. C., Athens was the intellectual center of the world. Socrates was telling all men that he knew nothing, thereby evidencing their ignorance. Plato was soon to write the Republic,'7 and Aristotle, in the fourth century, B. C., would teach philosophy to Alexander of Macedon and then watch him go off to conquer the world. Aristotle probably clearly reflected the common attitudes of the wealthy class of Greeks toward women. In his Politics, he quite emphatically states that women are by nature inferior to men and, as such, should obey men and perform their family functions well.8 Women were to marry at 18 and men at 37. (Aristotle himself was thirty-seven when he married.)9
To the average Greek of some wealth, a wife had the major duties of managing the household and educating all the children. She usually had a few slaves under her to do the menial work around the house. She herself would supervise them and do the more intricate weaving and child-educating. Her husband was her master, and his word was law for, after all, he was more possessed of reason than she. A wife was carefully guarded and often not allowed to even meet other men. A part of the house was set aside as the "women's quarter," and she lived most of her life there. Greek women were mostly excluded from public life.
The Greek husband had many forms of sexual pleasure when he was away from home. For man's sexual pleasures, Greece had created a class of Hetaerae, in addition to the common prostitute. The Hetaerae in Greek society were the higher-class prostitutes or mistresses. A Hetaera was often an educated woman, a woman much more cultivated than were the wives of most men. She was a woman who knew how to make herself attractive and how to please men. In certain cases, these women were associated with religious sects, and their prostitution was a vital part of their religious beliefs. This seems to have been the case on Cyprus and in Corinth.10 Religious prostitution is quite common in the history of other countries, such as Babylon in Mesopotamia. In other cases, the Hetaerae became famous: Pericles eventually married Aspasia; Thais was the mistress of Alexander the Great; and Phryne was a model for Praxiteles when he created his statue of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.
Thus, a woman had predominantly two choices. She could become a wife and manage a household and bear and rear children, or she could become a Hetaera and entertain the husbands of other women. Prostitutes were not considered of the highest prestige, but they were accepted with much more status than they had in other societies. They were considered an essential part of life. Extramarital sex was strictly forbidden for women, but for men, it was the expected thing. The double standard was most certainly in force here. Demosthenes described the marital situation quite clearly as follows: "Man has the Hetaerae for erotic enjoyments, concubines for daily use and wives of equal rank to bring up children and to be faithful housewives."11
Another aspect of Greek society was its homosexuality. Married men not only visited their Hetaerae, but also had their young men with whom anal and oral intercourse were commonly practiced. Just as in the Siwan culture in Africa today, homosexuality was accepted behavior for the men in Greek society. Many of the Greek philosophers had young male lovers. Such homosexual behavior was not allowed for women.
Marriage was arranged by one's parents, and one lived thereafter with the groom's parents. Thus, here too, marriage was a union of two families, rather than two individuals. Marriage was encouraged, and laws were passed punishing bachelors. The marriage ceremony included a bridesmaid and a best man, and the bride wore a veil. Just as with the Hebrews, a feast was held to celebrate the wedding and was begun with a kiss by the newlyweds.12 Kisses then were similar to ours today except for the "handle kiss" in which one holds the ears of the other person. Another interesting difference is that the Greeks viewed the onion as an aphrodisiac and frequently ate it before kissing. Premarital coitus was forbidden for women but tolerated for men. The Greek ideal seems to have been the full development of all human functions without any unnecessary restraints. This ideal was much more applicable to men than women.
Let us turn from Athens to Rome. Roman culture is also a basic source of our present-day sexual standards. The legal status of the Roman wife was similar to that of her Grecian sister. For much of the history of Rome, man was the supreme power in his family and had the right to put his wife and his children to death if he so desired! This legal right does not mean that such actions occurred frequently, but it is indicative of relative status. The courtesan class existed in Rome as it had in Athens, but in Rome it lost much respect and its members were not as highly educated or trained. It should be added that female virginity was highly valued in Rome, as it is in all double-standard cultures. Many ancient myths about virginity were held by the Romans, e.g., the sanctity of female purity was thought to hold sway over all nature, and, therefore, a virgin could make even a wild lion become docile and meek. It was popularly believed that wild animals were actually captured in such a fashion, but the more sophisticated scoffed at these folk tales even at that time.13
The Roman wife had one advantage over her Greek counterpart—she was able to sit at banquets with her husband and go to public places with him, while a Greek wife was often forbidden such privileges." 14 The Romans, much more than the Greeks, idealized their mothers and women in general. They were more clever than the Greeks in regard to insuring virginity. Instead of depending upon keeping their women locked up and restricted or clamped in chastity belts, they taught them from birth to think of chastity as the highest good and thus imprisoned women much more securely by the walls of their own consciences.
The Romans were "coarser" than the Greeks; actions that were basically similar brought consequences that were different. The Greeks made sexual pleasure a companion of the arts; the Romans joined it with brutal gladiatorial shows. The esthetic element that the Greeks preserved, at least partially, in their premarital and extramarital sex activity was forgotten and replaced by the Romans with more earthly factors. In their attitudes towards their wives, there was perhaps more similarity, e.g., the ancient Greek saying was also part of Roman culture:
Marriage brings only two happy days—the day when the husband first claps his wife to his breast and the day when he lays her in the tomb.15
Roman culture underwent some radical changes at about the time of the Punic Wars (286-146 B.C.). These wars meant that numerous men were absent from Rome for long periods of time. They led to wealth from the conquered areas, encouraged growth of the city area, the rise of a leisure class, the importation of slaves, and many other changes. Finally, the relations among men and women began to change also.
Women began to gain in status and legal rights. A wife was now allowed to relax with her husband instead of sitting while he relaxed. The power of death was taken away from the husband; women were able to inherit property freely; common-law marriage, which is still with us today, was strengthened in this period of transition as one form of marriage. The divorce laws were equalized, allowing divorce by mutual consent in many cases. Upper-class women participated more and more in life outside the home. All of this made the woman somewhat less of a chattel. However, the double standard, though weakened, still prevailed. As Cato said: "If you take your wife in adultery, you may freely kill her without a trial. But if you commit adultery or if another commits adultery with you, she has no right to raise a finger against you."16
It may be of interest to note that the Roman marriage ceremonies had many points of similarity to our own, and thus the cultural influence is clear. For example, marriage was a civil ceremony. Engagement was announced by placing a ring on the girl's third finger, left hand. There was a wedding cake and the bride had a dowry. After the ceremony, the bride was carried over the threshold by the groom— another indication of our heavy debt to the past.
THE CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE
The influence of Christianity was not felt for several centuries. For the first three centuries, most Christians were poor people, despised by others, and frequently persecuted for their radical ideas.17
The Christians opposed from the beginning the new changes in the family and in female status that had occurred since the Punic Wars. They fought the emancipation of women and the easier divorce laws. They demanded a return to older and stricter Roman, Greek, and Hebrew ideas, and, beyond this, they instituted a very low regard for sexual relations and marriage. The basis for this negative feeling was the belief in the Second Coming of Christ. If Christ was soon to return to the earth, all men should spend their time contemplating God and cleansing their souls, rather than enjoying sexual pleasures or raising families. Ultimately, these early Christians of the first few centuries accorded marriage, family life, women, and sex the lowest status of any known culture in the world. To further show the extent of this depreciation of heterosexual relations, let me quote from St. Paul:
It is good for man not to touch woman. Yet for fear of fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. . . . But this I say by way of concession, not by way of commandment. But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they so remain, even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn . . . the virgin thinks about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit. Whereas she who is married thinks about the things of the world, how she may please her husband ... he who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not give her does better.18
Thus the early Christians felt that marriage was a second-rate choice, but if one lacked self-control, he had to take such a choice. "It is better to marry than to burn." Such an ascetic view of life was indeed a harsh change for many people at that time. It conflicted with Roman law which favored large families and levied a fine on bachelors. For the first four centuries of Christianity, priests were allowed to marry, if they found it necessary, but thereafter, the formal ruling of chastity was gradually imposed on the clergy.19 This was inevitable in a sect that thought of sex as something unclean—something vile, to be avoided. Some of the early Church fathers castrated themselves to further show their attitude towards sexual pleasures. Origen was perhaps the most famous of such men. Women were the temptresses, the Eves carrying the forbidden fruit! Eve tempting Adam had led to all men being tainted with "original sin" and made Christ's coming to earth necessary to save men's souls. Thus, women were very much at the root of sinfulness. Tertullian most clearly expressed this view of women:
You are the devil's gateway: You are the unsealer of that forbidden tree: You are the first deserter of the divine law: You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.20
For over four centuries, the Church's attitude towards divorce was uncertain, but in the early fifth century, the ancient privilege of divorce by mutual consent was erased and marriage became indissoluble. At the Council of Trent (1545-64), marriage finally officially became a sacrament of the Church. The early Christians would never have made marriage a sacrament of their Church—marriage was a concession to sin. Divorce was acceptable to some only because it allowed one to enter into that holy state of abstinence. Even the abolition of divorce in the fifth century was based somewhat on the view that men remarried only for lust.
Quite a few married people did live in chastity for long periods of time, indulging only when they desired another child. Abstinence for married people the night before a Church festival was a prerequisite for attendance. The churchmen often looked upon early marriage as a sign of an evil, uncontrollable temperament. Jerome best expressed the limited view of sex even in marriage when he said: "He who too ardently loves his own wife is an adulterer."20a
It is known that, in some respects, the status of women under Christianity reached depths never before approached. Women, as the source of sin, were, of course, not allowed to own or inherit property. The Christian woman was offered the alternative of a nunnery or marriage—a much different choice from the Hetaerae or marriage which the Greeks and Romans offered their women. "Non-sexual" females, however, were respected. The woman who was not a temptress could perform a respectable role in Christian society.21
The Christians' ascetic attitude increased the value of virginity in both men and women, but particularly women. The double standard of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans had always valued virginity in women, and Christianity stressed this to an extreme. The opposition came when the asceticism was also applied to men and to marriage. The Christians favored abstinence (no intercourse outside marriage for men as well as women)—in this sense, they gave women more equality.
A command that is given to men applies logically also to women.
It cannot be that an adulterous wife should be put away and an unfaithful husband retained. . . . Among the Romans men's un-chastity goes unchecked; seduction and adultery are condemned, but free permission is given to lust to range the brothels and to have slave girls, as though it were a person's rank and not the sensual pleasure that constituted the offense. With us what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men, and as both sexes serve God they are bound by the same conditions.22
This the Greco-Roman world would not accept, and in time, the Church did informally modify its doctrines and tolerate a double standard of morality. Of course, formally, only abstinence is tolerated. But in practice, by church members themselves and often in the minds of churchmen, the old double standard is somewhat accepted, and it is mainly women who are strictly controlled and censured. Nevertheless, the Christian influence has given our culture an element of guilt associated with all sexual behavior outside of marriage. We still have this attribute to a considerable degree at the present time.
THE BIRTH OF ROMANTIC LOVE
One could not possibly understand sexual standards in America in the twentieth century unless he understood the roots of those notions of courtly love, or, as it is popularly called, romantic love, which the Normans brought to England,23 and which are still with us today. By the eleventh century, the notion of romantic love was becoming well known among the aristocrats. This notion basically consisted of the idea that one could become obsessed with the beauty and character of another person, and that this love would make one eternally happy as long as it were returned or eternally damned if one were spurned.
On the continent and in England, Christianity had spread its somber dogma concerning the sinfulness of sexual pleasure and the importance of duty and obedience in marriage. The adherents of courtly or romantic love may have been in revolt against such restricting doctrines. In fact, De Rougemont believes they were members of a heretical religious movement allied with Manichaeism and the Catharist Church.24 Suffice it to say that there was much brutality and lawlessness in European feudal society, and there were many severe religious restrictions. This new concept of love was a reaction against that part of their culture. Out of the Christian degradation of sex rose the romantic idealization of it. Beliefs in romantic love were common only among the aristocratic ladies and among the knights and troubadours. The lower classes were not yet aware of this movement.
Here indeed was a strange contrast to the Christian conception of woman as a temptress—as the gate to hell. To the knight and the troubadour, his lady was an angel, a collection of perfection. The troubadour would come to serenade his lady; he would compose ballads to her beauty and his immortal love for her. Knights would engage in mortal combat in order to win honors for their chosen lover. Like our adolescents today, they would wear some object of their beloved into battle—a handkerchief, a swatch of cloth around their necks in honor of their lady.
This account of romantic love may sound familiar, but lest one deceive himself, he should realize that this love affair was almost always between a bachelor knight or troubadour and a married aristocratic woman. Most of these love affairs were encouraged by their setting—a castle filled with bachelor knights and troubadours and but one or a few aristocratic ladies. This is a perfect setting for idealizing the aristocratic female. There were many other reasons for bachelors and married women being involved in love affairs; one basic reason was that people .in those days generally believed that love and marriage would not mix, so they did not think of love in connection with their mates. At many points in the romantic love movement, it was also thought that to consummate love with sexual intercourse was to destroy it. Love, to last, must remain free of marriage and sex. In the year of 1174, one of the many courts of love (which used to meet to discuss love questions just as many of our "advice to the lovelorn" columns do today) met at the house of the Countess of Champagne and stated officially that the "true" relation between love and marriage is as follows:
We declare and affirm, by the tenor of these presents, that love cannot extend its rights over two married persons. For indeed lovers grant one another all things, mutually and freely, without being impelled by any motive of necessity, whereas husband and wife are held by their duty to submit their wills to each other and to refuse each other nothing.
May this judgment, which we have delivered with extreme caution, and after consulting with a great number of other ladies, be for you a constant and unassailable truth. Delievered in this year 1174, on the third day before the Kalends of May, Proclamation VII.25
In the early phases of courtly love, there was often little sexual element involved. It consisted mainly of admiration from a distance, with perhaps a kiss on the forehead as a reward for a heroic deed or a newly-composed or well-sung ballad. The knights and troubadours, for a while at least, were content with the idealistic element of their love and even seemed to glory in their self-denial. Of course, in true double-standard fashion, these bachelors had other lower-class women with whom they could release their sexual restraints.
Love relationships introduced tenderness and affection into the relations among men and women in a way that contrasted with the male-dominated, low female-status society of the Middle Ages. It further strengthened the desires for love and affection that went unsatisfied due to the rigors of feudal life and Christianity.
By the sixteenth century, the lovers' deeds began to be regularly rewarded by carnal favors rather than with a kiss on the forehead. The transition was slow from the beginning of romantic love in about the eleventh century. Even in the early days of romantic love, however, the knight or troubadour was often allowed to fully undress his beloved and put her to bed—providing, of course, that he did not take any sexual liberties. On other occasions, he was rewarded by spending the night with his lover if he swore continence. In the course of a few centuries, the system broke down, and sexual intercourse became the reward which was informally taken; by the middle of the sixteenth century, extramarital coitus was formally given as the reward. In addition to this liberalization movement, there was a spread of romantic-love ideas to the new middle-class merchants who were quick to adopt them. But this formal acceptance of rewarding love with adultery bothered many of the aristocrats and, especially, the new conservative bourgeoisie. The new middle class had come to value love very highly—they wanted to be like the aristocrats, but they also valued faithfulness in marriage. How to obtain both was the problem.
The seventeenth century saw the working out of a solution. Romantic love had now spread to much of the populace and the love object was rapidly changing from a married woman to a single girl. In this way the adultery problem could be solved, but as we shall see, many more problems arose. This shifting of love to the single girl occurred almost exclusively among couples who were engaged. This is as it had to be for, if the reader recalls, the parents were still choosing mates— there- was no such thing as casual dating with a woman of one's own class. A few formal dates with a parentally-ap-proved girl were all the preliminaries needed for an engagement. After the engagement, one had a somewhat better opportunity to get to know his prospective mate. Thus, some people began to fall in love with each other and, thereby, challenged the ancient rulings of the courts of love that had decreed love and marriage incompatible. The next step was inevitable. If young people were falling in love and marrying, then young people would demand the right to pick and choose the person they could best fall in love with and marry that person. Parental right to choose a mate was seriously challenged. Young people wanted to marry for love and not only for money or status as was the custom. This was indeed a radical departure from the way things had been done for centuries. As has been pointed out, marriage formerly was more a union of two families than of two people. By the eighteenth century the revolt had secured many adherents and was increasingly successful, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, in many parts of Europe and especially in America, young people were choosing their own mates and love was a key basis for marriage. The revolution had been won! Many other movements such as feminism, urbanism, and the industrial revolution helped in this change.
Romantic love was not unknown before the middle ages. It was, however, not common to even a class of people previous to that time. Most cultures viewed romantic lovers as somewhat mad, and such lovers were probably relatively rare.25a It should be clear, though, that many husbands and wives in all cultures, in time, developed great fondness or love for each other, but such a "practical" brand of love was not the basis for marriage nor was it the same as romantic love. Outside of the Western world:—among many other cultures—the notion of romantic love is today laughed at, scorned, and thought to be ludicrous and impractical. These peoples cannot conceive of picking a life-mate on the basis of an emotion. This is a clear example of the spread and integration of an idea to one part of the world, and its consequent appearance as a perfectly "natural" and right form of behavior, while another part of the world looks with amazement on such behavior.
From its beginning less than 1,000 years ago, romantic love changed from a non-sexual attachment, with a married woman, that was unrelated to marriage, to a sexual attraction, for a single woman, which was the basis for marriage. Of course, the meaning of love changed in these centuries also.26 The original accent on a "one and only love" which would lead to "eternal happiness" has survived the ten centuries since its birth, but it also has been sharply altered. In America today, with such increased contact among young people and so many of them falling in love several times in their courtship period, and a one-in-four divorce rate, it is difficult to sustain the "one and only" notion. Our young person's concept of love today seems more "hardboiled," more realistic, but still with an emotional if not intellectual attachment to some of the older romantic ideas.27
It is most important to note here that the joining together of love and sexual behavior, by the romantic love movement, formed the groundwork for love to become the justification for sexual intimacies in a more liberal and equalitarian premarital sexual standard. Young people increasingly came to justify their sexual behavior by their love feelings. In this fashion, the romantic love movement encouraged the growth of new premarital sexual standards.28
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
Intimately related to the success of the romantic love movement was the feminist revolt. There had been protestors fighting for women's rights in the times of the Greeks and Romans, but in the last 300 years, this movement took on renewed and unprecedented vigor. During the seventeenth century, women began publicly to proclaim their objections to the low status and unfair treatment to which they were subjected. Mary Astell in England was one of the first proponents of feminine rights, although she was not as violent as her followers. Ben Franklin, in our own country, fought moderately for a fairer treatment of women. The first modern, thoroughgoing feminist was Mary Wollstonecraft whose daughter married the romantic poet, Shelley. Mary Woll-stonecraft's most famous work was her Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she advanced arguments for the education of women in all matters and thus for the end of the double standard and its doctrine of female inferiority. She sums up her witty and satiric arguments as follows:
Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty. If the latter, it will be expedient to open a fresh trade with Russia for whips; a present which a father should always make to his son-in-law on his wedding day, that a husband may keep his whole family in order by the same means; and without any violation of justice reign, wielding his sceptre, sole master of his house, because he is the only being in it who has reason; the divine indefeasible earthly sovereignty breathed into man by the Master of the Universe. Allowing this position, women have not any inherent rights to claim, and by the same rule their duties vanish, for rights and duties are inseparable.
Be just then, O ye men of understanding and mark not more severely what women do amiss than the vicious tricks of the horse or the ass for whom ye provide provender, and allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of reason, or ye will be worse than Egyptian taskmasters, expecting virtue where nature has not given understanding.29
This was the "Age of Reason" when Voltaire in France was demanding sweeping reforms, Thomas Paine was denouncing the Judeo-Christian religious tradition and, together with many of the founders of our country, declaring himself a Deist.30 Two revolutions had swept the world—one in America and one in France, and the latter gave women greater rights than before. It was the time when many people felt the world was going to radically alter its way of living. But most of these people were wrong; for the next generation, the early nineteenth-century generation, reverted to a more conservative way of life.
Nevertheless, the feminist pressure was too powerful to be denied. It soon regained its lost momentum. In Seneca Falls, New York, in the year 1848, the first "Woman's Rights Convention" was held. The leaders at that time were Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They opened the meeting with their famous Declaration of Sentiments, "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal."31 These women were the true descendants of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Queen Victoria of England had set the pace for the nineteenth century, and it was indeed a conservative one. The good Queen felt that "Woman's place was in the home," just as the Old Testament Hebrews said three thousand years before Victoria. Many other women, both in England and the United States, felt that Queen Victoria had the proper notions about female behavior. But the feminists rose up in violent disagreement, and the latter half of the nineteenth century smelled the smoke from the vast battles the feminists were waging.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the orator for the movement, but she could have accomplished little without the organizing genius of Susan B. Anthony. They struck out at those who said women were intellectually inferior to men—the same enemy that Mary Wollstonecraft battled two generations earlier. Christianity, in the Bible and in the Pulpit, had preached the inferiority of women, and, thus, the feminists attacked organized religion. They did not just want to "honor and obey" the superior male nor did they want to eliminate religion. They wanted a reformation of existing beliefs and practices.
Although most men were indifferent or hostile to these new-type females, some men backed the feminists in their demands. John Stuart Mill in England wrote The Subjection of Women, and this pamphlet did much to help the cause of the feminists, one of whom was Mrs. J. S. Mill.32 Mr. Mill, supported by Florence Nightingale, soon introduced the first suffrage bill to Parliament. In this country, Robert Dale Owen was aiding the feminists as well as other liberal movements. The feminists received the vote in Wyoming, in 1869, and might have won suffrage in many other states had they not made a serious political error—they added to their aims the prohibition of alcohol. This prohibition plank in their platform alienated most of the men who would have otherwise supported them. It was at this time that Carrie Nation and her famous axe paid nightly visits to the local bars and left them in ruins. She began her fanatical attacks on saloons after her first husband died of acute alcoholism.
The feminist movement itself was far from fully united. There were many splits, starting around the 1870's when Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe split from Stanton and Anthony and formed a conservative branch of feminism. Lucy Stone was one of the feminists who refused to give up her maiden name when she married. Her husband, Henry Blackwell was quite adjusted to such feminist activities; he had two sisters who were the first women doctors in America and a sister-in-law who was the first female minister.33
The feminists ran into much opposition from the double standard. One incident which illustrates this best is the famous adultery trial of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. The result of this trial was the conviction of Reverend Beecher's "companion," Mrs. Tilton, of adultery, while the Reverend was acquitted of adultery by a hung jury!34
Many changes occurred in the life of American women in the decades after 1848. Women began to go to college in larger and larger numbers. In 1910 there were 11,000 women graduated from college, and President Eliot of Harvard University stated publicly that women were too frail to stand the pace of college life. Today, one-third of the approximately three and one-half million college students are women.35
Another major change besides education came in the area of work. Women began to earn their own livings as secretaries, sewing machine operators, etc. Today one-third of our labor force is made up of women, over 20,000,000 women, and about one-half of them are married.36 We are so dependent on women workers that our economy could not function if women ceased to work. This movement of women to industry in the last one hundred years is, of course, closely related to the need for workers created by the industrial revolution.
By the turn of the century, the feminists were winning their battles on all fronts. Women were now wearing lipstick and rouge and were beginning to smoke. Silk stockings and shorter skirts were coming into style and were being displayed at the bars which women were attending. Bathing suits were shortened to expose the knees. There was opposition, to be sure. In 1904, a woman was arrested for smoking on the streets of New York, and, as late as 1922, women were arrested on the beaches for exposing too much of their arms! These changes may make one smile today, but the only women who wore make-up, smoked, drank, and earned their own livings back in the mid-nineteenth century were prostitutes! Now, most women were accepting such behavior as normal and, of course, this shocked most of the older generation in the early 1900's. But these people were not to make the most radical inroads. As I shall discuss later, the generation that really altered our way of life seems to be that born between 1900 and 1910. It was this generation which appears to have started the tremendous increase in premarital coitus and almost all other forms of sexual behavior.
On August 18, 1920, the suffragettes won their battle and women were given the vote. This was a long-awaited goal, one that had been put forth in Seneca Falls by Mrs. Stanton back in 1848. But the feminists had won much more than the vote; they had revolutionized the place of women. For the first time, women were independent economically. They no longer needed to depend upon men for their sustenance. Women were being educated along with men, entering professions with men, becoming freer sexually, and in many other ways equalizing the gap between the two sexes. The gap has not closed, and the double standard, in a much weakened form, is still with us in sex, industry, education, and many other aspects of our life; but more has changed in the last one hundred years than in the previous five thousand years.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
One final occurrence which I shall discuss very briefly and which was one of the most vital factors in making possible the feminist revolt and most of the other recent changes in our sexual standards, is the alteration in our economic way of life—the industrial revolution.37 Movements like the industrial revolution have no specific point in time when they begin. However, the arbitrary date, when the effects of this change first became apparent, is the middle of the eighteenth century in England. The industrial revolution brought about changes comparable in scope to those effected by the invention of agriculture ten thousand years earlier. The textile industry was the first to be affected. The change occurred very slowly; at first a few farmers took on a part-time task of making small amounts of cloth. Then eventually, because they were not sorely needed on the farm due to agricultural improvements, and because they were earning good money, some farmers left the farms and entered into cloth-making full-time in small factories employing about a dozen people. By the middle of the nineteenth century, thousands of people had left the farms, and large factories, employing many scores of workers, were established. Other industries were also developing, and trade and colonization increased tremendously, for the more one manufactures, the larger the market one needs.
What happens when farmers leave the farm? First of all, they congregate in specific areas near the factories, and this means the growth of cities, ever larger and larger. As of 1959, about 100,000,000 Americans, over half of our population, lived in or near cities of 50,000 or more people.37a A city means the lessening of the intimate, primary relationships that characterize the rural areas of the world. It means a change in the way of life of the family also. Space in the city, unlike the country, is extremely expensive. One cannot easily rent an apartment to house fifteen family members. Furthermore, most farmers who came to the city did not want to do that, because they were either bachelors, or they came with their wives and children only. Thus the city breaks up the extended family which has been so common throughout history and replaces it with a nuclear family composed of the husband, wife, and children. Once more, one can see how customs eventually change as their integration in society becomes altered.
Children became less economically desirable, thus making the nuclear family even smaller; in fact, the modern city family is the smallest family the world has ever known. Were it not for people entering the city from rural areas, cities would constantly decrease in population, for the modern urban family does not usually reproduce itself. Children on the farms were an asset. This was particularly true of boys and they were therefore more highly valued than girls. This preference for male babies is still with us, even though over two-thirds of us are now urban dwellers. Customs often outlive their original supports and display a certain type of social inertia.38 But in time such customs often die away, which seems to be the case for many of our older customs.
Another change in the family brought on by the industrial revolution was the authority of the husband. On the farm, if a wife did not obey her husband or the children their father, they were in great danger. Where could one go, how could one live, without staying on the farm? But with the industrial revolution, any child of ten years or more, male or female, could get a job in one of the textile mills. For the first time in history, great masses of women were afforded a good chance of leaving home and earning a living. By the mid-nineteenth century, there was a labor shortage, and female work was further encouraged. One of the main props of masculine authority was economic power. This prop was now on the way out, and, accordingly, there were many more opportunities for females and children to express their distaste for masculine authority and actually free themselves of that authority. This situation led to husbands and fathers becoming less tyrannical and less dominating and started a slow movement toward equalitarian marriage that is still in progress. More and more, double-standard areas became weakened, and the feminist cause was furthered.
Another consequence of city life was the lessening of social controls and resultant increases in divergent viewpoints. In short, the city did not have the intimacy, the control by reputation and gossip which the farm or the small town had. People hardly knew their neighbors and were not as strongly concerned with their opinions. Then, too, in the small town, there was usually general agreement on what was proper; in the city, this agreement was often lacking, so that if one group of people criticized a person, it would not be difficult to find another group supporting him in his position. Thus, individ-ualization of behavior was encouraged. This situation, of course, helped destroy many of the older sexual standards and made possible the growth of newer, more liberal and equalitarian standards.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that our new type of urban-industrial society has sharply changed our courtship and marriage standards. By the time of World War I, dating without chaperons was common. The feminists had won out here also. No longer did a girl and boy meet at a church affair and, after their third or fourth meeting, announce a parentally-approved engagement. Girls and boys met in all sorts of unchaperoned places—schools, dances, drugstores— and they did not consider it necessary to become serious with each other. With the new accent on picking one's own mate on the basis of love, there came a responsibility to find the mate one could best love and live with. This search necessitated a courtship change, and dating as we know it today was the result. Of course, much dating is not aimed at discovering compatibility but is done merely for social pleasure. This, too, is a new event in American courtship. Dating is another example of a custom which developed to fit the needs of a changing society. Along with such unchaperoned dating came the growth of more liberal and equalitarian sexual standards.
SUMMARY
All of these modern movements have increasingly weakened the double standard and abstinence and made our sexual standards more liberal and equalitarian. All of these so-called revolutions are still going on. The number of mutual supports among them are endless. Together they have altered our older way of life tremendously. We still, however, have many traces of the past; we still retain much of our heritage from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. We, in America, are in transition; we are somewhere between the old and the new, in a world not fully formed or structured.
This period of transition is not a period of disorganization only. It is also a period of construction and reorganization.39 But there is much confusion, for we still are not clear on our relations to the past or the future. For the first time in several thousand years, some of our core sexual standards (abstinence and the double standard) have not only been temporarily questioned but seem to be increasingly challenged. The old way is decaying rapidly, but what is replacing it?
This historical account has been highly selective, but it should help in seeing how our customs fit together and why our sexual standards are changing. Our society is like a man whose past way of life has been challenged. He cannot ignore the challenge, for the challenge originates within himself. Yet he is so strongly tied to the past that he is not certain that he wants to or is able to change. This is a portrait of internal conflict—this is the setting in regard to our sexual standards in America today.
1. Many books on our prehistoric period are available—I mentioned several of them in the last chapter. For a more technical coverage, see W. E. LeGros Clark, The Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), and W. E. LeGros Clark, History of the Primates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). See also the excellent account in M. Boule and H. V. Vallois, Fossil Men (New York: Dryden Press, 1957).
2. Previous to this time, before the agricultural revolution, there likely was a good deal of variety in social forms just as there is today. See Harry L. Shapiro, Man, Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), and V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (New York: Mentor Books, 1951).
3. Two brief but informative sources on the Hebrews are: S. A. Queen and J. B. Adams, The Family in Various Cultures (New York: J. B. Lip-pincott, 1952), chap. vi, "The Ancient Hebrews," and Rollin Chambliss, Social Thought from Hammurabi to Comte (New York: Dryden Press, 1954), chap. vi, "The Hebrews of the Old Testament." For rnore detail, see B. J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1957); also four Volumes by H. E. Goldin, Universal History of Israel (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1935), especially Vol. I.
4. Deuteronomy 21:18.
5. Deuteronomy 24:1.
6. Deuteronomy 22:20-22.
7. A. D. Lindsay (trans.), The Republic of Plato (New York: E. P.
Button, 1950). See Book V in particular for Plato's suggestions regarding
family life.
8. Richard McKeon (trans.), The Basic Works of Aristotle (New
York: Random House, 1941); see the Politics, p. 1132 (1254:10-15).
9. A good source, although somewhat partial, for some of the key aspects of Greek life is H. Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1953). See also Everyday Life in Ancient Times (Washington: National Geographic Society, 1951); this book is also valuable for describing Roman and early Mesopotamian culture. See also Crane Brinton, John B. Christopher, and Robert L. Wolff, A History of Civilization (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1955).
10. Licht, op. cit., Part I, chap. vi.
11. Quoted in Licht, op. cit., p. 399.
12. Licht, op. cit., Part II, chap. i.
13. A thorough but somewhat one sided account of Roman sexual cus-
toms can be found in Otto Keifer, Sexual Life in Ancient Rome (New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1953). For a most entertaining and satirical account of
Greek and Roman culture written in the second century A.D., see H. W.
Fowler and F. <3. Fowler (trans.), The Works of Lucian of Samosota
(London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 4 volumes. See also Queen and
Adams, op. cit., chap. vii, "The Ancient Romans."
14. The Hebrew wife had more freedom than either the Roman or Greek wife. The Hebrew wife participated more fully in her husband's life and in general social organization.
15. W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals (New York: George Braziller, 1955), Vol. II, p. 304. This book was originally published in 1869. It is "most interesting to discern how a nineteenth-century Englishman views these ancient civilizations. To see how one famous Roman viewed his culture, see: Ovid, The Art of Love, (Trans.) Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1957).
16. Quoted in Keifer, op. cit., p. 32.
17. Here also Queen and Adams, op. cit., is a good source. See chap.
viii, "The Early Christians." Another insightful book is Donald Day, The
Evolution of Love (New York: Dial Press, 1954), especially Part V. This
part is informative on early Christian culture. The book covers the entire
historical period. It focuses heavily on literary works to illustrate the
nature of various historical times.
18. Corinthians I, 7.
19. Henry C. Lea, The History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian
Church (NewYork: Russell and Russell, 1957). This is the most complete
source for information on chastity in Christianity.
20. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.), The Ante-Nicene
Fathers (Buffalo: The Christian Literature Company, 1886), Vol. IV, p. 14.
20a. Quoted in Morton M. Hunt, The Natural History of Love (New
York: Alfred Knopf, 1959), p. 115.
21. Queen and Adams, op. cit., chap. viii.
22. From a letter written by Jerome to Oceanus in 399 A.D. Quoted in
Queen and Adams, op. cit., p. 159.
23. For a view of Anglo-Saxon England, see B. Thorpe (ed.), Ancient
Laws and Institutes of England (London: Commissioners on the Public
Records of the Kingdom, 1840).
24. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940). This book is a most interesting account of love, but one which should be read with caution. For a brief account of the development of romantic love, see Hugo G. Beigel, "Romantic Love," American Sociological Review, June, 1951, pp. 326-34. Dr. Beigel will soon publish a book on romantic love, elaborating many of the ideas in the above article. For a recent well-written statement covering the entire history of Western society see Morton M. Hunt, op. cit., esp. pp. 145-50, where Hunt discusses the possible reasons for romantic love.
25. De Rougemont, op. cit., p. 25. There are two first-hand accounts of romantic love which are especially rewarding: Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John J. Parry (New York: Ungar Co., 1959); Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1959). There is evidence in these books
that some people may well have mixed love and marriage and also love and sex. However, Beigel and Hunt feel that in the early phases of romantic love, such factors were kept separate by most people.
25a. I am restricting the meaning of romantic love to heterosexual love. If we include homosexual love, then the Greeks did have a "romantic" form of such love. The "Ode to Atthis," by Sappho, describes the symptoms of love which are still present today in many romantic lovers. However, in this poem, the love spoken of is a homosexual love.
26. For an excellent collection of love stories, see John J. Maloney (ed.), Great Love Stones (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1952). These stories range from Da Porta's Juliet to Faulkner's The Wild Palms.
27. Burgess and Wallin found that two-thirds of their engaged couples
refused to say that they were "head over heels" in love because it sounded
too much like childish romanticism. See Ernest W. Burgess and Paul Wal-
lin, Engagement and Marriage (New York: J. B. Lippincott Company,
1953), p. 170. See also chap. vii, "Love and Idealization."
28. See chap. x of this book.
29. Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Phila-
delphia: Mathew Carey, 1794), pp. 334-35. This is a book well worth
reading in order to obtain the spirit of the early feminists.
30. For a most critical but interesting statement of Paine's position, see
Thomas Paine, Age of Reason (New York: Willey Book Company, 1942).
31. See Sidney Ditzion, Marriage, Morals and Sex in America (New York: Bookman Associates, 1953), pp. 257-60. This book contains the full text of the declaration.
32. J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin-
cott, 1867).
33. For an interesting, though incomplete, pictorial account of feminism, see Oliver Jensen, The Revolt of American Women (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1952). See also parts of Day, op. cit., for entertaining accounts. For a worthwhile story of six feminists, see M. F. Thorp, Female Persuasion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).
34. For an account of this trial see Gerald W. Johnson, "Dynamic
Victoria Woodhull," American Heritage, June, 1956, pp. 44-47, 86-91. For
a book-length account of this scandal see Robert Shaplen, Free Love and
Heavenly Sinners. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1954).
35. Statistical Bulletin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
XXXVIII (August, 1957), 6-8. Over 100,000 women have received a first
degree every year since 1949. See: U. S. Department of Health, Education
and Welfare, Earned Degrees in 1954-55 (Washington, 1956).
36. For detailed information see the report of the Department of Labor,
Women as Workers ("Washington: Government Printing Office, 1955). See
also National Manpower Council, Womanpower (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1957), and Robert W. Smuts, Women and Work in Amer-
ica (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).
37. For those who want to gain insight quickly, there is a very brief but well-written essay on the industrial revolution: Frederick Dietz, The Industrial Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927).
37a. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports: Population Characteristics, Series P-20 (Washington, January 25, 1960).
38. Compensatory customs often make it possible for conflict ridden or "outdated" customs to survive. See a paper by the author entitled: "Functional Narcotics: A Compensatory Mechanism for the Social System," delivered at the Eastern Sociological Society in April, 1958.
39. For a documentation of the presence of organization in the family and a statement of some new forms of family organization, see Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales, Family (Chicago, Ill.: The Free Press, 1955); see in particular chap. i.
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