Page:Sexology.djvu/85

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yourselves to your husbands" is a text which has been construed with a crushing literalness, while the reciprocal injunction, "Husbands love your wives," and "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies," seems to be entirely ignored.

A woman of much social and intellectual distinction said, not long ago, "When my husband closes the door of our apartments at night, he is no longer a man, he is a monster!" Christianity has been imitated by the civil law in this last remaining tyranny, which she still permits to be exercised upon the "weaker vessel." For a woman subjected to the most hellish tortures under the forms of "marital rights" there would seem to be, literally, no redress either in "Church or State." Religion replies to such an one, "Your duty to your -husband is submission," while the Civil Code utterly ignores her complaint. In a land where divorces can be had on the most frivolous pretexts, no allegations of cruelty in the marriage chamber, however horrible they may be, can command a hearing. We give the strongest proof of this in an application for divorce just terminated. A young and beautiful girl who had "taken all the honors" in the high school of her city, and subsequently carried off the prizes for scholarship and lady-like accomplishments in a celebrated seminary, was persuaded by her parents to marry a man far inferior to herself, whose sole recommendation was his wealth. A physician was called to attend the lady some months after her marriage, and a more pitiable spectacle, he says, has seldom come within my professional observation. I could scarcely realize that the haggard and emaciated creature before us was the wreck of the beautiful girl so recently proverbial for her fascinations. In place of the brilliant eyes, flashing with proud intelligence, her dull