H. Chapin. 218 pp. G.W.
Briggs. Boston, 1848.
CHAPTER III
THE DUALISM IN MODERN LIFE: THE INSTITUTIONAL TABOO
The taboo and modern institutions; Survival of ideas of the uncleanness
of woman; Taboo and the family; The "good" woman; The "bad" woman;
Increase in the number of women who do not fit into the ancient
classifications.
With the gradual accumulation of scientific knowledge and increasing
tendency of mankind toward a rationalistic view of most things, it might
be expected that the ancient attitude toward sex and womanhood would
have been replaced by a saner feeling. To some extent this has indeed
been the case. It is surprising, however, to note the traces which the
old taboos and superstitions have left upon our twentieth century social
life. Men and women are becoming conscious that they live in a world
formed out of the worlds that have passed away. The underlying principle
of this social phenomenon has been called the principle of "the
persistence of institutions."[1] Institutionalized habits, mosaics of
reactions to forgotten situations, fall like shadows on the life of
to-day. Memories of the woman shunned, of the remote woman goddess, and
of the witch, transmit the ancient forms by which woman has been
expected to shape her life.
It may seem a far cry from the savage taboo to the institutional life of
the present; but the patterns of our social life, like the infantile
patterns on which adult life shapes itself, go back to an immemorial
past.
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