Payback

Yet the female Justice figures persisted. What accounts for their staying power?

If we were primatologists, we could point to the fact that among the chimpanzees it’s often the older matriarchs who are the king-makers: the alpha male can stay in power only with their support. This tendency is even more marked among the gelada monkeys of the Ethiopian highlands, where families consist of groups of tightly bonded females, their children, and the mate they’ve selected, who remains the in-house family male only as long as the females say so. If we were anthropologists, we might point to the female elders in hunter-gatherer bands such as the Iroquois, who had a lot of say when an animal was being divided up and shared out among families, as they were well versed not only in relative social status but in relative need. If we were Freudians, we might talk about psychic child development: the first food comes from the mother, as do the first lessons in justice and punishment and in the fair sharing-out of goods.

Whatever the reason, Justice continues to wear a dress, at least in the Western tradition, which is a possible explanation for the attachment of our Canadian Supreme Court justices to their lovely red gowns and their wigs.

From the Egyptian goddesses Ma’at and Sekhmet to the Roman goddess Iustitia to the Archangel Michael to Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is a long journey, but if it’s true that human beings don’t create anything unless it’s a variation of the human-behaviour modules present on their Homo sapiens sapiens smorgasbord, then each of these supernatural beings is a manifestation of that inner module we were talking about earlier: the one we could call “fairness,” “balancing out,” or “reciprocal altruism.” As we sow, so shall we reap, or that’s what we’d like to believe; and not only that, but someone or something is in charge of evening up the scores.

Christianity has no goddesses as such. It has some female saints, many of whom are pictured holding their cut-off body parts, but though they may help you get a husband, play the piano, or find lost objects, they don’t have major powers. The Virgin Mary is the strongest one, but all she can do is intercede on your behalf: she performs no devastating lionesslike acts of retribution.