So firmly implanted in the feminine breast is the idea of the ownership of her by the man, that it is to the man who assumes and exercises ownership that she clings. This is why
A woman easily changes her allegiance; since,
Allegiance, to a woman, means loyalty to the man who assumes and exercises ownership over her:
Let a man who a fractional part of a second evince the shadow of a doubt of his proprietorship—at once he undermines a woman's allegiance. Consequently,
It is folly for men to express amazement at the ease with which a woman will transfer herself and her affections.
A woman will transfer herself bodily over and over again, but only because the previous owner lightly esteemed, or weakly maintained, his ownership. As a matter of fact
In pristine days woman was, naturally and necessarily, the property, the chattel, of the man: marriage was not then a matrimonial syndicate of two: marriage meant that a woman sought a provider, a supporter, a defender; the man a mate for his delight, his comfort, and his solace, a keeper op is cave or hut, a mother and nurse for his heirs. And provision, support, and defense, being, in pristine days, matters of strength, prowess, or cunning, naturally and necessarily pristine man 65 gained him and kept him a mate by strength, prowess, or cunning; he regarded that mate as his by right of force, not as a partner in a compact. And
The most complicated of modern communities has no whit altered the relationship of man to mate, conceal though it may the origin and history of marriage. Finally,
No woman at the bottom of her heart has any objection to being owned.
Indeed (though no woman would say it, a man may),
Every woman at the bottom of her heart delights to be owned, and tacitly and secretly seeks the man who she thinks will glory in that ownership and keep his property safe—not only from material harms, but from temptations to changes of ownership. In which last little fact lies a curious truth.