Mating, marriage, and the status of woman / by James Corin.

  • Corin, James.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mating, marriage, and the status of woman / by James Corin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/204 (page 11)
    The idea that early human love affairs were conducted after the pattern of those of social animals has received a certain amount of support from several writers, who have spoken of primitive promiscuity, communal hetasrism, group-marriage, and so forth. There does not, however, seem to have been a clear idea of what it is desired to establish now, that mating was free choice on the part of the female, and that marriage was not ; while terms like hetaerism and promiscuity may convey quite wrong im- pressions. There is also a general tendency, as will be shown later, to apply the term marriage to nearly all unions between human males and females. Westermarck, for instance, in his work on Human Marriage, defines thus :—Marriage is nothing else than a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring (ed. ii, p. 19). Really, many of such unions are or were not marriage at all, but mating. There is nothing that has made greater confusion than the too liberal use of the term marriage, especially by travellers. II