Chapter 11

"What are we going to tell Elizabeth?" She gave me a wondering look. "You're the man in the family", Josie told me. "You tell her what you want her to do."

"But", I started to object.

Josie interrupted me, "Alex, you have to make the decision for the family not Elizabeth. She's only a woman. A woman can't know what's best for the family."

That was the first of our conversations as I tried to reconcile the viewpoint of a nineteenth century woman and my upbringing as the son and brother of twenty-first century feminists.

As we rode back home Josie continued to educate me on the patriarchal nature of nineteenth century family life. I found myself variously shocked and amused about how the view of a husband's role had changed over the last two centuries. I had always known that this culture didn't have a high opinion of women's abilities, but I was shocked at how little the vast majority of women objected to the status quo. The descriptions reminded me a lot about what I had read about the dominant/submissive lifestyle in the future.

Men have ultimate authority over their families. They were the ones who made all major decisions affecting spending of money, if a family was going to move or not, where the children would go to school, who their daughters would be allowed to court. A father or other male relative would control everything the daughters did until they gave her to a husband who would then control everything about his wife. Even if the husband died, the widow would be controlled by their son or some other male relative. The more enlightened men would sometimes consult their wives and ask their opinions on major decisions, but that was not the norm and no man would ever allow a woman to make major decision by themselves.

Women who did not marry by chance or choice faced obstacles that restricted their life. They could work at various practical jobs like domestic service, in factories, as teachers and in trade in some shops that cater mostly to other women if they were lucky. They are looked down upon as taking jobs away from men when they did though. If unlucky they worked in the saloons or brothels. Even a good education was not really a help in most cases. Learned women were met with ridicule or treated with scorn. Some women worked in the professions of law, theology and medicine, but there aren't too many of those.

"Why would anyone want someone to run their life like that? I can't understand how an intelligent woman would want to be treated like a not-too-bright, perpetual child."

"Alex, you don't realize how hard it is to be a woman. If you do something differently no one really cares. It's not the same for a woman. Your wives are the first women who treated me like I was a normal woman since my parents died. Even men look at me as if I were some sort of freak."

As Josie continued to explain during the trip I began to realize how different the culture of this time was from when I grew up. The pressures to conform were really strong in polite society. Women who deviated even slightly from their expected role are treated as virtual pariahs. If a woman is still unmarried by the age of twenty it is assumed that something is seriously wrong with her.

Josie had grown up expecting to stay at home and wait for a proper suitor to come along and ask her parents or guardian for permission to court her. If permission was granted, then the couple would attend church together, visit each other's family, and attend dances and other public events that were always carefully chaperoned so that they had the absolute minimum amount of time together. After a certain period of time, usually about a year, the couple then married in either a public church ceremony or at the bride's home by a clergyman with families and friends attending. After that they passed from the authority of their father or brother to the authority of their new husband. Any sort of inheritance they have from their parents is taken over by the husband as they were considered intellectually superior.

"Alex, your marriage shocked me at first since your wives made so many decisions that I expected you to make. While we were treating the smallpox victims you had taken control of that situation and made all the major decisions like I expected. I never expected you were so different at home. I'm old enough that felt I could stand to be in a multiple marriage where I was taken care of properly. The trip to California has shown me there are men there willing to marry an old maid like me. I want to be the only wife in a marriage and have the man make the decisions. "

"I can't imagine living like that, but if that is the way you want to live I'll support you."

"Alex that is exactly what I meant. A normal man would have told me what to do without considering what I wanted as being very important. He would just assume that he knew what was best for me."

I guess that I was just too much of a twenty-first century man. The idea that women couldn't look after themselves and had no rights had shocked me when I had first learned about this time. This whole society sounded like the dominant-submissive clubs of my time the more I learned about it.

"Josie, I just can't act that way. I was brought up with a mother and sisters who were able do anything they wanted whenever they wanted. The idea that I have to make all the decisions is stupid. Women can think just as well as I can."

Josie gave me a strange look. "Where did you grow up? I've never heard of anyplace like that."

I shut my mouth and refused to answer her questions for a while. I had almost admitted that I was from the future. None of the cultures in this time admitted that women had rights and abilities other than in domestic issues.

Josie looked down, "Could you do one thing for me?"

"What?'

"Could you act like my brother and give your permission for someone to court me? No decent man would ever ask me directly. It just isn't done."

I admit that that was something I hadn't expected. I was tempted to refuse, but she gave me such a look of desperate appeal that I couldn't. I didn't know how I was going to explain this either.

While Josie and I had been chasing English Jim through Northern California, packers going over the Siskiyou trail had found gold in Southwestern Oregon. Instead of the empty land we had gone through on our first trip we found noisy brawling gold towns. The rivers no longer flowed clear, being discolored by the runoff from the mining. We found ourselves in Jacksonville buying supplies when Josie grabbed my arm. Turning to her I saw her looking at something outside the store.

"Alex, that man is beating a woman over there"

I looked in the direction where she was pointing and saw a young Indian girl being hit by a white man. I reacted by running outside and pulling the man off, striking him in the belly. He looked at me with outrage.

"What did you hit me for?" he spat out. Other men began gathering around us.

"Why were you hitting her?"

"That's none of your business! She belongs to me, so I can treat her anyway I want."

The other men began agreeing with him. I was afraid that I had bitten off more than I could chew when a shotgun went off behind me. We all turned around and saw Josie picking up another shotgun and bringing it to swing back and forth over the crowd.