Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/239

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MARRIAGE AS A TRADE
231

tained the privileges of the married woman to be, at the outside, three in number. (About two of them there is no doubt; the third is already being invaded, and can no longer be esteemed the exclusive property of the matron.) They are as follows—

1. The right to wear on the third finger of the left hand a gold ring of approved but somewhat monotonous pattern.

2. The right to walk in to dinner in advance of women unfurnished with a gold ring of the approved, monotonous pattern.

3. The right of the wife and mother to peruse openly and in the drawing-room certain forms of literature—such as French novels of an erotic type—which the ordinary unmarried woman is supposed to read only in the seclusion of her bedroom.

I cannot honestly say that any one of these blessings arouses in me a spasm of uncontrollable envy, a mad desire to share in it at any cost. As a matter of fact, I have—like many of my unmarried friends—annexed one of the above matrimonial privileges, if not in deed, at any rate potentially and in thought. I have never