It is not our business to inquire here whether this modern interpretation has become incarnated in facts; whether the old principle is not still struggling with the new; whether the holders of political and familial authority are not still making insane pretensions to divine right; we have only to show what the notion of the ruling power has become in the present state of thought and feeling.
What will be the ruling power in marriage, in accordance with modern opinion, if not the delegation by one spouse to the other of the management of business and of the family—a delegation of function; no longer a right?
And if man and woman are socially equal in principle, if the aptitudes, upon which all functions are based, are not dependent on sex, by what right does society interfere to give the authority either to the husband or the wife?
If there is need of a ruling power in the household, are not the parties themselves best capable of bestowing it on the one who can best and most usefully exercise it?
But among partners, is there really room for a ruling power? No, there is room only for division of labor, mutual understanding with respect to common interests. To consult each other, to come to an agreement, to divide the tasks, to remain master each of his own department; this is what the spouses should do, and what they do in general.
The law has so little part in our customs that to-day things happen in this wise: many rich women translate two articles of the Code as follows; the husband shall obey his wife, and shall follow her wherever she sees fit to dwell or sojourn. And the husbands obey, because it would not do to offend a wife with a large dowry; because it would make a scandal to thwart their wife; because they need her, being unable, without dishonoring themselves, to keep a mistress.
Husbands in the great centres of population escape obedience through love outside of marriage; they lay no restrictions on their part; Madame is free.
Among the working classes of the citizens and the people, it is practically admitted that neither shall command, and that the husband shall do nothing without consulting his wife and obtaining her consent.
In all classes, if any husband is simple enough to take his pretended right in earnest, he is cited as a bad man, an intolerable despot whom his wife may hate and deceive with a safe conscience; and it is a curious fact that the greater part of the legal separations are for no other cause at the bottom than the exercise of the rights and prerogatives conceded to the husbands by law.
I ask you now, what is the use of maintaining against reason and custom, an authority which does not exist, or which is transferred to the spouse condemned to subjection.