"The
list," says Westermarck (387), "might easily be enlarged." As for the
list of peoples among whom brides were sold--usually to the highest
bidder and without reference to feminine choice--that would be much
larger still. Eight pages are devoted to it and two only to the
exceptions, by Westermarck himself, who concludes (390) that "Purchase
of wives may, with even more reason than marriage by capture, be said
to form a general stage in the social history of mankind," How nearly
universal the practice is, or has been, may be inferred from the fact
that Sutherland (I., 208), after examining sixty-one negro races,
found fifty-seven recorded as purchasing their wives.
Widely prevalent also was the custom of allowing a man who had married
a girl to claim all her sisters as soon as they reached a marriageable
age. Whatever their own preferences might be, they had no choice.
Among the Indian tribes alone, Morgan mentions forty who indulged in
this custom. As for the levirate, that is another very wide-spread
custom which shows an utter disregard of woman's preference and
choice. It might be supposed that widows, at any rate, ought always to
be allowed, in case they wished to marry again, to follow their own
choice. But they are, like the daughters, regarded as personal
property, and are inherited by their late husband's brother or some
other male relative, who marries them himself or disposes of them as
he pleases.
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