The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/192 (page 39)
    neither wife nor child had any rights as against the Pazerfamilias, the unit recognized by the State. He wielded over both absolute power of life and death; it depended upon his will alone whether a girl baby were reared or cast out to die —and the latter alternative was no doubt often chosen. If in matriarchal days woman might have said with Louis XIV, L’Etat est mot, the tables were turned upon her in Rome, for there, as Mommsen says, “ Slaves and women were not reckoned as being properly members of the com- munity,’ and to such an extent did the family supersede the State in the life of women that if a woman was accused of crime she was judged and punished privately by her own men relations.* Sons, on becoming heads of households in their turn, obtained the full status of citizens, but women were, at least in theory, life-long slaves. Even their property was administered by father or husband or other male guardian. And yet, in spite of this truly appalling legal position, the Roman matron occupied a place practically honourable, analogous with that of the wife among ourselves. Touching and beautiful instances of wedded love and wifely devotion occur in Roman story, but with their legal position Roman women were often bitterly dissatisfied. If the accusations of their resort to poisonf are true, their wrongs must *Mommsen, History of Rome, Book I, Chapters V and XI. + The Position of Woman in Ancient Greece and Rome. Sir James Donaldson. Book II, Chapter 2.