Woman, Church and State

This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in the practice of all those nameless orgies which made a by-word of Corinth during the first century. Every evil was traced to woman. A curious old black letter volume published in London, 1632, declares that "the reason why women have no control in Parliament, why they make no laws, consent to none, abrogate none, is their original sin." CHAPTER IV. MARQUETTE. The minds of people having been corrupted through centuries by the doctrines of the Church in regard to woman, it became an easy step for the State to aid in her degradation. The system of feudalism arising from the theory that warfare was the normal condition of man, still oppressed woman by bringing into power a class of men accustomed to deeds of violence, who found their chief pleasure in the sufferings of others. To be a woman, appealed to no instinct of tenderness in this class. To be a woman was not to be protected unless such woman held power in her own right, or acted in place of some feudal lord. The whole body of villeins and serfs were under absolute dominion of the feudal lords. They were regarded as possessing nojrights of their own; the priests had control of their souls, the lord, of their bodies. But it was not upon the male serfs that the greatest oppres. sion Ml. Although the tillage of the soil, the care of swine and cattle was theirs, the masters claiming half or more of everything, even to one-half of the wool shorn from the flock,1 and all exactions upon them were great while their sense of security was slight, it was upon their wives and daughters that thegreatest outrages were inflicted. It was a pastime of the castle retainers to fall upon peaceful villages, to the consternation of the women, who were struck, tortured, and made the sport of ribald soldiers.2 "Serfs of the body," they had ...