Child-marriages are another instance of the success of the male in
gaining control of the person of the female and of regulating her
conduct from his own standpoint. Girls were married or betrothed
before birth, at birth, at two weeks, three months, or seven years of
age, and variously, often to an adult, and their husbands were thus
able to take extraordinary precautions against the violation of their
chastity. On the other hand, it frequently happens, especially where
marriage by purchase is not developed, that the conduct of the girl
is not looked after until she is married; it becomes immoral only when
disapproved by her husband. In the Andaman Islands,

after puberty the females have indiscriminate intercourse
... until they are chosen or allotted as wives, when they are
required to be faithful to their husbands, whom they serve....
If any married or single man goes to an unmarried woman, and
she declines to have intercourse with him by getting up or
going to another part of the circle, he considers himself
insulted, and, unless restrained, would kill or wound
her.[209]

Under these conditions the rightness or wrongness of the sexual
conduct of the wife turned upon the attitude of the husband toward the
act. Hence a very general practice that the husbands prostituted their
wives for hire, but punished unapproved intercourse:

The chastity of the women does not appear to be held in much
estimation. The husband will, for a trifling present, lend
his wife to a stranger, and the loan may be protracted by
increasing the value of the present. Yet, strange as it may
seem, notwithstanding this facility, any connection of this
kind not authorized by the husband is considered highly
offensive and quite as disgraceful to his character as the
same licentiousness in civilized societies.[210]

When woman lost the temporary prestige which she had acquired in the
maternal system through her greater tendency to associated life, and
particularly when her person came more absolutely into the control of
man through the system of marriage by purchase, she also accepted and
reflected naively the moral standards which were developed for the
most part through male activities. Any system of checks and approvals
in the group, indeed, which was of advantage to the men would be of
advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were
safeguards of the group