Woman under socialism

With the rise of feudalism, the condition of a large number of the members of the free communities declined. The victorious army-commanders utilized their power to appropriate large territories unto themselves; they considered themselves masters of the common property, which they distributed among their devoted retinue – slaves, serfs, freedmen, generally of foreign descent, – for a term of years, or with the right of inheritance. They thus furnished themselves with a court and military nobility, in all things devoted to their will. The establishment of the large Empire of the Franks finally put an end to the last vestiges of the old gentile constitution. In the place of the former councils of chiefs, now stood the lieutenants of the army and of the newly formed nobility.

Gradually, the mass of the freemen, members of the once free communities, lapsed into exhaustion and poverty, due to the continuous wars of conquest and the strifes among the great, whose burdens they had to bear. They could no longer meet the obligation of furnishing the army requisitions. In lieu thereof, Princes and high nobility secured servants, while the peasants placed themselves and their property under the protection of some temporal or spiritual lord – the Church had managed, within but few centuries, to become a great power – wherefor they paid rent and tribute. Thus the thitherto free peasant's estate was transformed into hired property; and this, with time, was burdened with ever more obligations. Once landed in this state of dependence, it was not long before the peasant lost his personal freedom also. In this way dependence and serfdom spread ever more.

The landlord possessed the almost absolute right of disposal over his serfs and dependents. He had the right, as soon as a male reached his eighteenth year, or the female her fourteenth, to compel their marriage. He could assign a woman to a man, and a man to a woman. He enjoyed the same right over widows and widowers. In his attribute of lord over his subjects, he also considered the sexual use of his female serfs and dependents to be at his own disposal, – a power that finds its expression in the "jus primae noctis" (the right of the first night). This right also belonged to his representative, the stewart, unless, upon the payment of a tribute, the exercise of the right was renounced. The very names of the tribute betray its nature.37

It is extensively disputed that this "right of the first night" ever existed. The "right of the first night" is quite a thorn in the side of certain folks, for the reason that the right was still exercised at an age, that they love to hold up as a model, – a genuine model of morality and piety. It has been pointed out how this "right of the first night" was the rudiment of a custom, that hung together with the age of the mother-right, when all the women were the wives of all the men of a class. With the disappearance of the old family organization, the custom survived in the surrender of the bride, on the wedding night, to the men of her own community. But, in the course of time, the right is ever more restricted, and finally falls to the chief of the tribe, or to the priest, as a religious act, to be exercised by them alone. The feudal lord assumes the right as a consequence of his power over the person who belongs to the land, and which is his property; and he exercises the right if he wills, or relinquishes it in lieu of a tribute in products or money. How real was the "right of the first night" appears from Jacob Grimm's "Weisthumer."38

Sugenheim39 says the "jus primae noctis," as a right appertaining to the landlords, originates in that his consent to marriage was necessary. Out of this right there arose in Bearn the usage that all the first-born of marriages, in which the "jus primae noctis" was exercised, were of free rank. Later, the right was generally redeemable by a tribute. According to Sugenheim, those who held most stubbornly to the right were the Bishops of Amiens; it lasted with them till the beginning of the fifteenth century. In Scotland the right was declared redeemable by King Malcolm III, towards the end of the eleventh century; in Germany, however, it continued in force much longer. According to the archives of a Swabian cloister, Adelberg, for the year 1496, the serfs, located at Boertlingen, had to redeem the right by the bridegroom's giving a cake of salt, and the bride paying one pound seven shillings, or with a pan, "in which she can sit with her buttocks." In other places the bridegrooms had to deliver to the landlord for ransom as much cheese or butter "as their buttocks were thick and heavy." In still other places they had to give a handsome cordovan tarbouret "that they could just fill."40 According to the accounts given by the Bavarian Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals, Welsch, the obligation to redeem the "jus primae noctis" existed in Bavaria as late as the eighteenth century.41 Furthermore, Engels reports that, among the Welsh and the Scots, the "right of the first night" prevailed throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, with the difference only that, due to the continuance of the gentile organization, it was not the landlord, or his representative, but the chief of the clan, as the last representative of the one-time husbands in common, who exercised the right, in so far as it was not redeemed.

There is, accordingly, no doubt whatever that the so-called "right of the first night" existed, not only during the whole of the Middle Ages, but continued even down to modern days, and played its role under the code of feudalism. In Poland, the noblemen arrogated the right to deflower any maid they pleased, and a hundred lashes were given him who complained. That the sacrifice of maidenly honor seems even to-day a matter of course to landlords and their officials in the country, transpires, not only in Germany, oftener than one imagines, but it is a frequent occurrence all over the East and South of Europe, as is asserted by experts in countries and the peoples.

In the days of feudalism, marriage was a matter of interest to the landlord. The children that sprang therefrom entered into the same relation of subjection to him as their parents; the labor-power at his disposal increased in numbers, his income rose. Hence spiritual and temporal landlords favored marriage among their vassals. The matter lay otherwise, particularly for the Church, if, by the prevention of marriage, the prospect existed of bringing land into the possession of the Church by testamentary bequests. This, however, occurred only with the lower ranks of freemen, whose condition, due to the circumstances already mentioned, became ever more precarious, and who, listening to religious suggestions and superstition, relinquished their property to the Church in order to find protection and peace behind the walls of a cloister. Others, again, placed themselves under the protection of the Church, in consideration of the payment of duties, and the rendering of services. Frequently their descendants fell on this route a prey to the very fate which their ancestors had sought to escape. They either gradually became Church dependents, or were turned into novices for the cloisters.

The towns, which, since the eleventh century were springing up, then had at that time a lively interest in promoting the increase of population; settlement in them and marriage were made as easy as possible. The towns became especially asylums for countrymen, fleeing from unbearable oppression, and for fugitive serfs and dependents. Later, however, matters changed. So soon as the towns had acquired power, and contained a well-organized body of the trades, hostility arose against new immigrants, mostly propertyless peasants, who wanted to settle as handicraftsmen. Inconvenient competitors were scented in these. The barriers raised against immigration were multiplied. High settlement fees, expensive examinations, limitations of a trade to a certain number of masters and apprentices, – all this condemned thousands to pauperism, to a life of celibacy, and to vagabondage. When, in the course of the sixteenth century, and for reasons to be mentioned later, the flower-time of the towns was passing away, and their decline had set in, the narrow horizon of the time caused the impediments to settlement and independence to increase still more. Other circumstances also contributed their demoralizing effect.

The tyranny of the landlords increased so mightily from decade to decade that many of the vassals preferred to exchange their sorrowful life for the trade of the tramp or the highwayman, – an occupation that was greatly aided by the thick woods and the poor condition of the roads. Or, invited by the many violent disturbances of the time, they became soldiers, who sold themselves where the price was highest, or the booty seemed most promising. An extensive male and female slum-proletariat came into existence, and became a plague to the land. The Church contributed faithfully to the general depravity. Already, in the celibatic state of the priesthood there was a main-spring for the fostering of sexual excesses; these were still further promoted through the continuous intercourse kept up with Italy and Rome.

Rome was not merely the capital of Christendom, as the residence of the Papacy. True to its antecedents during the heathen days of the Empire, Rome had become the new Babel, the European High School of immorality; and the Papal court was its principal seat. With its downfall, the Roman Empire had bequeathed all its vices to Christian Europe. These vices were particularly nursed in Italy, whence, materially aided by the intercourse of the priesthood with Rome, they crowded into Germany. The uncommonly large number of priests, to a great extent vigorous men, whose sexual wants were intensified by a lazy and luxurious life, and who, through compulsory celibacy, were left to illegitimate or unnatural means of gratification, carried immorality into all circles of society. This priesthood became a sort of pest-like danger to the morals of the female sex in the towns and villages. Monasteries and nunneries – and their number was legion – were not infrequently distinguishable from public houses only in that the life led in them was more unbridled and lascivious, and in that numerous crimes, especially infanticide, could be more easily concealed, seeing that in the cloisters only they exercised the administration of justice who led in the wrong-doing. Often did peasants seek to safeguard wife and daughter from priestly seduction by accepting none as a spiritual shepherd who did not bind himself to keep a concubine; – a circumstance that led a Bishop of Constance to impose a "concubine tax" upon the priests of his diocese. Such a condition of things explains the historically attested fact, that during the Middle Ages – pictured to us by silly romanticists as so pious and moral – not less than 1500 strolling women turned up in 1414, at the Council of Constance.

But these conditions came in by no means with the decline of the Middle Ages. They began early, and gave continuous occasion for complaints and decrees. In 802 Charles the Great issued one of these, which ran this wise: "The cloisters of nuns shall be strictly watched; the nuns may not roam about; they shall be kept with great diligence; neither shall they live in strife and quarrel with one another; they shall in no wise be disobedient to their Superiors or Abbesses, or cross the will of these. Wherever they are placed under the rules of a cloister they are to observe them throughout. Not whoring, not drunkenness, not covetousness shall they be the ministrants of, but in all ways lead just and sober lives. Neither shall any man enter their cloisters, except to attend mass, and he shall immediately depart." A regulation of the year 869 provided: "If priests keep several women, or shed the blood of Christians or heathens, or break the canonical law, they shall be deprived of their priesthood, because they are worse than laymen." The fact that the possession of several women was forbidden in those days only to the priests, indicates that marriage with several wives was no rare occurrence in the ninth century. In fact, there were no laws forbidding it.

Aye, and even later, at the time of the Minnesaenger, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the possession of several wives was considered in order.42

The position of woman was aggravated still more by the circumstance that, along with all the impediments which gradually made marriage and settlement harder, their number materially exceeded that of the men. As special reasons herefor are to be considered the numerous wars and feuds, together with the perilousness of commercial voyages of those days. Furthermore, mortality among men was higher, as the result of habitual excesses and drunkenness. The predisposition to sickness and death that flowed from such habits of life, manifested itself strongly in the numerous pest-like diseases that raged during the Middle Ages. In the interval between 1326 to 1400, there were thirty-two; from 1400 to 1500, forty-one; and from 1500 to 1600, thirty years of pestilence.43

Swarms of women roamed along the highways as jugglers, singers and players in the company of strolling students and clericals; they flooded the fairs and markets; they were to be found wherever large crowds gathered, or festivals were celebrated. In the regiments of foot-soldiers they constituted separate divisions, with their own sergeants. There, and quite in keeping with the guild character of the age, they were assigned to different duties, according to looks and age; and, under severe penalties, were not allowed to prostitute themselves to any man outside of their own branch. In the camps, they had to fetch hay, straw and wood; fill up trenches and ponds; and attend to the cleaning of the place along with the baggage lads. In sieges, they had to fill up the ditches with brushwood, lumber and faggots in order to help the storming of the place. They assisted in placing the field pieces in position; and when these stuck in the bottomless roads, they had to give a hand in pulling them out again.44

In order to counteract somewhat the misery of this crowd of helpless women, so-called "Bettinen houses" were instituted in many cities, and placed under municipal supervision. Sheltered in these establishments, the women were held to the observance of a decent life. But neither these establishments, nor the numerous nunneries, were able to receive all that applied for succor.

The difficulties in the way of marriage; the tours undertaken by Princes, and by temporal and spiritual magnates, who with their retinues of knights and bondmen, visited the cities; even the male youth of the cities themselves, the married men not excluded, who, buoyant with life and unaffected by scruples, sought change in pleasures; – all this produced as early as in the Middle Ages the demand for prostitution. As every trade was in those days organized and regulated, and could not exist without a guild, it so was with prostitution also. In all large cities there were "houses of women" – municipal, prince or Church regalities – the net profits of which flowed into the corresponding treasuries. The women in these houses had a "head-mistress," elected by themselves, who was to keep discipline and order, and whose special duty it was to diligently watch that non-guild competitors, the "interlopers," did not injure the legitimate trade. When caught, these were condignly punished. The inmates of one of these houses for women, located in Nuerenberg, complained with the Magistrate, that "other inn-keepers also kept women, who walked the streets at night, and took in married and other men, and that these plied (the trade) to such an extent, and so much more brazenly, than they did themselves in the municipal (guild) girls-house, that it was a pity and a shame to see such things happen in this worthy city."45 These "houses for women" enjoyed special protection; disturbances of the peace in their neighborhood were fined twice as heavily. The female guild members also had the right to take their place in the processions and festivals, at which, as is known, the guilds always assisted. Not infrequently were they also drawn in as guests at the tables of Princes and Municipal Councilmen. The "houses of women" were considered serviceable for the "protection of marriage and of the honor of the maidens," – the identical reasoning with which State brothels were justified in Athens, and even to-day prostitution is excused. All the same, there were not wanting violent persecutions of the filles de joie, proceeding from the identical male circles who supported them with their custom and their money. The Emperor Charlemagne decreed that prostitutes shall be dragged naked to the market place and there whipped; and yet, he himself, "the Most Christian King and Emperor," had not less than six wives at a time; and neither were his daughters, who followed their father's example, by any means paragons of virtue. They prepared for him in the course of their lives many an unpleasant hour, and brought him home several illegitimate children. Alkuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne, warned his pupils against "the crowned doves, who flew at night over the palatinate," and he meant thereby the daughters of the Emperor.

The identical communities, that officially organized the brothel system, that took it under their protection, and that granted all manner of privileges to the "priestesses of Venus," had the hardest and most cruel punishment in reserve for the poor and forsaken Magdalen. The female infanticide, who, driven by desperation, killed the fruit of her womb, was, as a rule, sentenced to suffer the most cruel death penalty; nobody bothered about the unconscionable seducer himself. Perchance he even sat on the Judge's bench, which decreed the sentence of death upon the poor victim. The same happens to-day.46 Likewise was adultery by the wife punished most severely; she was certain of the pillory, at least; but over the adultery of the husband the mantle of Christian charity was thrown.

In Wuerzburg, during the Middle Ages, the keeper of women swore before the Magistrate: "To be true and good to the city, and to procure women." Similarly in Nuerenberg, Ulm, Leipsic, Cologne, Frankfurt and elsewhere. In Ulm, where the "houses of women" were abolished in 1537, the guilds moved in 1551 that they be restored "in order to avoid worse disorders." Distinguished foreigners were provided with filles de joie at the expense of the city. When King Ladislaus entered Vienna in 1452, the Magistrate sent to meet him a deputation of public girls, who, clad only in light gauze, revealed the handsomest shapes. At his entry into Brugges, the Emperor Charles V was likewise greeted by a deputation of naked girls. Such occurrences met not with objection in those days.

Imaginative romancers, together with calculating people, have endeavored to represent the Middle Ages as particularly "moral," and animated with a veritable worship for woman. The period of the Minnesangers – from the twelfth to the fourteenth century – contributed in giving a color to the pretence. The knightly "Minnedienst" (service of love) which the French, Italian and German knights first became acquainted with among the Moriscos of Spain, is cited as evidence concerning the high degree of respect in which woman was held at that time. But there are several things to be kept in mind. In the first place, the knights constituted but a trifling percentage of the population, and, proportionately, the knights' women of the women in general; in the second place, only a very small portion of the knights exercised the so-called "Minnedienst;" thirdly, the true nature of this service is grossly misunderstood, or has been intentionally misrepresented. The age in which the "Minnedienst" flourished was at the same time the age of the grossest right-of-the-fist in Germany, – an age when all bonds of order were dissolved; and the knights indulged themselves without restraint in waylaying of travelers, robbery and incendiarism. Such days of brutal force are not the days in which mild and poetic sentiments are likely to prevail to any perceptible extent. The contrary is true. This period contributed to destroy whatever regard possibly existed for the female sex. The knights, both of country and town, consisted mainly of rough, dissolute fellows, whose principal passion, besides feuds and guzzling, was the unbridled gratification of sexual cravings. The chronicles of the time do not tire of telling about the deeds of rapine and violence, that the nobility was guilty of, particularly in the country, but in the cities also, where, appearing in patrician role, the nobility held in its hands the city regiment, down to the thirteenth, and partly even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nor did the wronged have any means of redress; in the city, the squires (yunker) controlled the judges' bench; in the country, the landlord, invested with criminal jurisdiction, was the knight, the Abbot or the Bishop. Accordingly, it is a violent exaggeration that, amid such morals and customs, the nobility and rulers had a particular respect for their wives and daughters, and carried them on their hands as a sort of higher beings, let alone that they cultivated such respect for the wives and daughters of the townsmen and peasants, for whom both the temporal and the spiritual masters entertained and proclaimed contempt only.

A very small minority of knights consisted of sincere worshippers of female beauty, but their worship was by no means Platonic; it pursued quite material ends. And these material ends were pursued by those also with whom Christian mysticism, coupled with natural sensuousness, made a unique combination. Even that harlequin among the worshippers of "lovely women," Ulrich von Lichtenstein, of laughable memory, remained Platonic only so long as he had to. At bottom the "Minnedienst" was the apotheosis of the best beloved – at the expense of the own wife; a sort of hetairism, carried over into Middle Age Christianity, as it existed in Greece at the time of Pericles. In point of fact, during the Middle Ages, the mutual seduction of one another's wives was a "Minnedienst" strongly in vogue among the knights, just the same as, in certain circles of our own bourgeoisie, similar performances are now repeated. That much for the romanticism of the Middle Ages and their regard for women.

There can be no doubt that, in the open recognition of the pleasures of the senses, there lay in that age the acknowledgment that the natural impulses, implanted in every healthy and ripe human being, are entitled to be satisfied. In so far there lay in the demonstration a victory of vigorous nature over the asceticism of Christianity. On the other hand, it must be noted that the recognition and satisfaction fell to the share of only one sex, while the other sex, on the contrary, was treated as if it could not and should not have the same impulses; the slightest transgression of the laws of morality prescribed by man, was severely punished. The narrow and limited horizon, within which moved the citizen of the Middle Ages, caused him to adopt narrow and limited measures also with respect to the position of woman. And, as a consequence of continued oppression and peculiar education, woman herself has so completely adapted herself to her master's habits and system of thought, that she finds her condition natural and proper.

Do we not know that there have been millions of slaves who found slavery natural, and never would have freed themselves, had their liberators not risen from the midst of the class of the slave-holders? Did not Prussian peasants, when, as a result of the Stein laws, they were to be freed from serfdom, petition to be left as they were, "because who was to take care of them when they fell sick?" And is it not similarly with the modern Labor Movement? How many workingmen do not allow themselves to be influenced and led without a will of their own?

The oppressed needs the stimulator and firer, because he lacks the independence and faculty for initiative. It was so with the modern proletarian movement; it is so also in the struggle for the emancipation of woman, which is intimately connected with that of the proletariat. Even in the instance of the comparatively favorably situated bourgeois of old, noble and clerical advocates broke the way open for him to conduct his battle for freedom.

However numerous the shortcomings of the Middle Ages, there was then a healthy sensualism, that sprang from a rugged and happy native disposition among the people, and that Christianity was unable to suppress. The hypocritical prudery and bashfulness; the secret lustfulness, prevalent to-day, that hesitates and balks at calling things by their right name, and to speak about natural things in a natural way; – all that was foreign to the Middle Ages. Neither was that age familiar with the piquant double sense, in which, out of defective naturalness and out of a prudery that has become morality, things that may not be clearly uttered, are veiled, and are thereby rendered all the more harmful; such a language incites but does not satisfy; it suggests but does not speak out. Our social conversation, our novels and our theatres are full of these piquant equivoques, – and their effect is visible. This spiritualism, which is not the spiritualism of the transcendental philosopher, but that of the roue, and that hides itself behind the spiritualism of religion, has great power to-day.