Note 158 — Chapter VI · ToC

Havelock Ellis writing on this subject ("Changing Status of Women," Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1886) says: "It seems that in the dawn of the race an elaborate social organisation permitted a more or less restricted communal marriage, every man in the tribe being at the outset the husband of every woman, first practically, then theoretically, and that the social organisation which had this point of departure was particularly favourable to women."