[28] Loc. cit., p. 76.
[29] Loc. cit., p. 73.
[30] Loc. cit., p. 77.
[31] American Journal of Insanity, October, 1866, p. 267.
IV.—The Rights of the Husband.
Most men would claim these to be absolute. In view of such claim, which is constantly in practice enforced, married women are expected to quietly yield themselves, often most unwilling victims. Have I any ground for this last assertion? I have. Is it gained from observation or from confession? It is gained from both. Is it a conclusion hastily founded? On the contrary, it is the result of the daily study and direct questionings of fifteen long years.
But it is evident that there are two very distinct sides to this important inquiry; and it is requisite that they should both be fairly presented before the balance can be struck between them. Are these rights absolute, or are they the rather reciprocal with duties? Should mere instinct, or reason, be the rule?
The rights of the husband regarding his wife, I have said, are usually considered total and indisputable. Till now they have seldom been challenged; certainly seldom of men by a man. In listening, as I have done, to the plaints of women, I have neither eavesdropped nor suggested. In presenting them now after these years of comparison and cross-examination, it is with no quixotic feeling of championship, but solely with the desire of an earnest physician to assuage physical and mental pains, very real though often uncomplained of and unappreciated, to carry comfort to hearts disappointed and well nigh broken, to check abuses whose authors may not have recognized them as such, and to evoke a higher manliness than is our usual wont, as men, to exhibit.
What, then, do we usually claim? All that the law, and still more tyrannical custom, grants to us, in our wives; all that they have, and all that they are, in person and in very life. And here let me say, that I intend taking no ultra ground; that I am neither a fanatic nor professed philanthrope; and that in loosing, as I hope to do, some of woman’s present chains, it is solely for professional purposes, to increase her health, prolong her life, extend the benefits she confers upon society—in a word, selfishly to enhance her value to ourselves; and yet there is somewhat in this effort, as I believe there is also in the hearts of all those who will peruse it, of gratitude to her for the love with which she has solaced us, as mother, and sister, and wife, and daughter,—all of which I have myself possessed; unhappy he who has not. Give to her, then, the serious consideration due from every man “born of woman’s agony,” the depth and measure of which but few of us ever really know. I am no advocate for unwomanly women; I would not transplant them, from their proper and God-given sphere, to the pulpit, the forum, or the cares of state, nor would I repeat the experiment, so patiently tried by myself, and at last so emphatically condemned[32]—of females attempting the practice of the medical profession. I would undoubtedly open to single women every legitimate avenue to an honorable self-support, and thus keep them from many of the pitfalls which so closely environ them, and by causing for the married woman more or greater occasion to respect her husband, I would redouble for him her affection. These are some of my claims to be heard, and they are weighty ones in truth.
In the early history of nations, woman has always been the slave. She is still such, confessed, in all barbarous or but partially civilized tribes. Condemned, by custom or her lord’s caprice, to menial offices, she has pandered to his transient emotion, suffered its hardest consequences, and still drudged on. Save in name, in what does this description differ from that of thousands of our own women? They do not, in their best estate, it is true, bear the nominal burdens of life, the hoe and the venison meat, the tent pole and the paddle; but a queen’s finery, to the higher natures of our time, may be far heavier than these.