Created for man, she is the altar of his heart, his refreshment, his consolation. In her presence he gains new vigor, becomes inspirited, draws the strength necessary to the accomplishment of his high mission as worker, creator, organizer.
He should love her, watch over her, maintain her; be at once her father, her lover, her instructor, her priest, her physician, her nurse, and her waiting-maid.
When, at eighteen, a virgin in reason, heart and body, she is given to this husband, who should be twenty-eight, neither more nor less, he confines her in the country in a charming cottage, at a distance from her parents and friends, with the rustic maid that we just mentioned.
Why this sequestration in the midst of the nineteenth century, do you ask?
Because the husband can have no power over his wife in society, and can have full power over her in solitude. Now, it is necessary that he should have this full power over her, since it belongs to him to form her heart, to give her ideas, to sketch within her the incarnation of himself. For know, readers, that woman is destined to reflect her husband, more and more, until the last shade of difference, namely, that which is maintained by the separation of the sexes, shall be at last effaced by death, and unity in love be thus effected.
At the end of half a score years of housekeeping, the wife is permitted to cross the threshold of the gynæceum, and to enter the world, or the great Battle of Life. Here she will meet more than one danger; but she will escape them all if she keeps the oath she has taken to make her husband her confessor.... It is evident that Michelet respects the rights of the soul. The husband, who at this epoch has become absorbed in his profession, has necessarily degenerated, hence there is danger that the wife may love another; may become enamored, for instance, of her young nephew. In the book, she does not succumb, because she confesses everything to her husband; still it may happen that she succumbs, then repents, and solicits correction from her lord and master. The latter should at first refuse, but, if she insists, rather than drive her to despair, Michelet—who would on no account drive a woman to despair—counsels the husband to administer to his wife the chastisement that mothers infliction inflict on their darlings.
There must be no separation between the husband and wife; when the latter has given herself away, she is no longer her own property. She becomes more and more the incarnation of the man who has espoused her; fecundation transforms her into him, so that the children of the lover or of the second husband resemble the first impregnator. The husband, being ten years older than the wife, dies first; the woman must preserve her widowhood; her rôle henceforth until death is to fructify within her and about her the ideas which her husband has bequeathed, to remain the center of his friendships, to raise up to him posthumous disciples, and thus remain his property until she rejoins him in death.
In case the husband survives, which may happen, the author does not tell us whether he should re-marry. Probably not, since love exists only between two; unless Michelet, who reproves polygamy in this world, admits it as morality in the life to come.
You see, my readers, that in Michelet's book, woman is created for man; without him she would be nothing; he it is who pronounces the fiat lux in her intellect; he it is who makes her in his image, as God made man in his own.
Accepting the Biblical Genesis, we women can appeal from Adam to God; for it was not Adam, but God, who created Eve. Admitting the Genesis of Michelet, there is no pretext, no excuse for disobedience; woman must be subordinate to man and must yield to him, for she belongs to him as the work to the workman, as the vessel to the potter.