deprive her of it by will. She may bring up his children carelessly and 

idiotically, cursing them with abominable manners and poisoning their 

nascent minds against him, and he has no redress. She may neglect her 

home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon his 

table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers, hand 

over his home to the Periplaneta americana, accuse him falsely of 

preposterous adulteries, affront his friends, and lie about him to the 

neighbours--and he can do nothing. She may compromise his honour by 

indecent dressing, write letters to moving-picture actors, and expose 

him to ridicule by going into politics--and he is helpless. 

Let him undertake the slightest rebellion, over and beyond mere 

rhetorical protest, and the whole force of the state comes down upon 

him. If he corrects her with the bastinado or locks her up, he is good 

for six months in jail. If he cuts off her revenues, he is incarcerated 

until he makes them good. And if he seeks surcease in flight, taking the 

children with him, he is pursued by the gendarmerie, brought back to his 

duties, and depicted in the public press as a scoundrelly kidnapper, fit 

only for the knout. In brief, she is under no legal necessity whatsoever 

to carry out her part of the compact at the altar of God, whereas he 

faces instant disgrace and punishment for the slightest failure to 

observe its last letter. For a few grave crimes of commission, true 

enough, she may be proceeded against. Open adultery is a recreation that 

is denied to her. She cannot poison her husband. She must not assault 

him with edged tools, or leave him altogether, or strip off her few 

remaining garments and go naked. But for the vastly more various and 

numerous crimes of omission--and in sum they are more exasperating and 

intolerable than even overt felony--she cannot be brought to book at 

all. 

The scene I depict is American, but it will soon extend its horrors to 

all Protestant countries. The newly enfranchised women of every one of 

them cherish long programs of what they call social improvement, and 

practically the whole of that improvement is based upon devices for 

augmenting their own relative autonomy and power. The English wife 

of tradition, so thoroughly a femme covert, is being displaced by a 

gadabout, truculent, irresponsible creature, full of strange new ideas 

about her rights, and strongly disinclined to submit to her husband's