We do not find in history, as a matter of fact, that women do assert their rights, and savage women would, I think, be peculiarly unlikely to uphold their dignity in the manner supposed.[144]
It is quite true that it is not observed “in history” that women assert their rights. It has been shown, however, that prior to the historic age, through capture and the individual ownership of land, women had become dependent upon men and wholly subject to their control. After thousands of years of subjection to male influence, the movements of women, who are still dependent upon men, furnish little satisfactory information regarding the character of free women at a time before they had succumbed to the exigencies of brute force, and the unbridled appetites of their male masters. Slaves seldom assert their rights, or, if they do, of what avail is it?
Were we in possession of no other facts in support of the theory of an early age of female supremacy than that all relationships to which rights of succession were attached were formerly traced through women, the evidence in its favour would be sufficient to prove it true, but this manner of reckoning descent represents only one of the many indications of such an age which Lubbock himself has been constrained to record; yet, because—during the historic age—an age throughout which the masculine element has ruled supreme, women have not asserted their rights, this writer feels inclined to ignore all the evidence bearing upon the subject, at the same time declaring that women could not have “upheld their dignity in the manner supposed”; that the female, on gaining human conditions, could not have exercised the instincts inherited by her from her dumb progenitors.
If the females among insects, birds, and many species of mammals are able to control the relations between themselves and their male mates, why should it not be inferred that the female of the human species would still be able to uphold the natural dignity of the female sex?
As an argument in support of his theory that the influence of women was never supreme, Sir John Lubbock alludes to the position of Australian women as being one of “complete subjection,” and as the native Australians represent perhaps the lowest existing stage of human society, he doubtless thinks his argument unassailable. However, that the position of Australian women cannot be taken as a reliable guide in estimating primitive womanhood is shown by the writer’s own reasoning when he says: