A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised. / An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovators

by Madame d' Héricourt

"What is marriage?" asks M. Legouvé.

"The union of two free beings, forming an alliance in order to perfect themselves through love." Neither antiquity nor the Middle Age considered it in this light. The father, in ancient times, transmitted to the husband his right of property in his daughter in consideration of a certain sum. At Athens, the daughter, even when married, formed part of the paternal inheritance, and was bound to leave her husband to espouse the heir. At Rome, the father, after having given his daughter in marriage, had the power to take her back and to espouse her to another. Among the barbarians, she belonged to him who paid the mundium to her father. Under the feudal system, the law disposed also of the daughter without her consent. The French Revolution emancipated her in this respect; she is required now to consent to her marriage; but the customs of the age take from her the benefit of this emancipation; she is married too young to know what she is doing, and interest almost always determines her parents to give her in marriage. For woman to profit by her legal emancipation, she should be at least twenty-two years old when she marries; she should make her choice freely; and her relatives should content themselves with keeping her apart from those whom she ought not to choose, and should only enlighten and counsel her; for on the love between the married couple depends the happiness and virtue of the wife.

Examining next the origin of the dower, the transferral of the dowry, the betrothal and the marriage, he shows the mundium paid at first to the father or the brother; then later, to the maiden, becoming, with the rest of the nuptial gifts, the origin of the dower, which he wishes to see made obligatory in modern times. Passing to the dowry, he proves that, becoming by degrees a custom among the Romans, it was at first the property of the husband; then, as the world progressed, it became the property of the wife. Our code fully protects the dowry; but the law should oblige wealthy parents to endow their daughters so that they can marry. In olden times, a maiden was betrothed by pledges exchanged by the father and the man who asked her in marriage; at a later date the pledge was given to the maiden instead of the father, and the law intervened to render obligatory promises of marriage. At the present day, in France, there are no longer betrothed, but future spouses.

In his second book, the author distinguishes the beloved one from the mistress, the adoration of pure from that of sensual love; the first produces goodness, patriotism, and respect for woman; the second regards her only as an object of pleasure and of disdain. Antiquity had no knowledge of pure love; the Middle Age, which comprehended it, was divided equally between it and sensual love; to-day, we have learned to comprehend that the two loves should be united; that the beloved and the mistress should make one in the person of the wife.

The third book, "The Wife," is divided into seven chapters.

The subordination of woman in marriage, with contempt for the mother, arose from two erroneous ideas: the inferiority of her nature; her passivity in the reproduction of the species, in which she performed the part of the earth with respect to the reception of germs. Modern science has destroyed these bases of inferiority by demonstrating: 1st, that the human germ, before taking its definitive form, passes, in the bosom of its mother, through progressive degrees of animal life; 2d, that in all species, both animal and vegetable, the females are the conservers of the race, which they bring to their own type.

Among the Romans, two forms of marriage placed the wife, soul, body and estate, in the hands of her husband; in a third form, which left her in her father's family, she received a dowry, inherited, and administered her property. Barbarism and feudality made the wife a ward, the husband an administrator, and a step was taken towards the equality of the spouses by the institution of acquêts, or property belonging to both, though obtained by but one. To-day, the maiden is married sometimes under the dotal system, occasionally under that of the separation of property, and chiefly under that of communion of goods. This last, which is the rule, permits the husband to dispose of the property of his partner, to sell the household furniture, to take possession of the very jewels of his wife to adorn his mistress. "Thus, this law respects no dignity, no delicacy, nothing whatever," says M. Legouvé. The omnipotence of the husband is a crime of the law in every point of view; it is in manifest violation of the modern principle, which exacts that all authority shall be limited and placed under surveillance. "To surrender to the husband the fortune of the wife is to condemn her to an eternal moral minority, to create him absolute master of the actions and almost of the soul of his companion." The author next addresses himself to those who pretend to justify marital omnipotence by the incapacity of woman: "In vain do facts protest against this alleged incapacity; in vain does reality say: To whom is the prosperity of most of our commercial houses due? To women. Who establish, who superintend the thousands of establishments of millinery and objects of taste? Women. By whom are the boarding-schools, the farms, often even, the manufactories, sustained? By women. It matters not, the Code denies to the wife the foresight to preserve, the judgment to administer, even the maternal tenderness to economize, and the marriage certificate becomes the expression of this disdainful phrase: the most reasonable woman never attains the good sense of a boy fourteen years of age." How shall we set to work to remedy this iniquitous and shameful state of affairs? The property of the partners should be divided into three shares: one for the wife, to be placed at her disposal five years after marriage, one for the husband, and a third common to both, to be administered by the husband under the direction of a family council, which council, in case of incapacity or waste, shall have the right provisionally to take away the management from him, to entrust it to his wife.

If anything is iniquitous and revolting, it is the power of the husband over the person and the actions of his wife; the right over her of correction, still tolerated in our days. There must be a directing power in the household; the husband must be the depositary of this power, which should be limited, and controlled by the family council. Legal omnipotence demoralizes the husband, who believes in the end in the lawfulness of his despotism. It is said that custom establishes precisely the contrary of what the laws prescribe: this is generally true, but it is at the expense of the moral character of the wife, thus forced to have recourse to artifice. "Restore liberty to women, since liberty is truth!" exclaims Legouvé. "This will be, at the same time, to affranchise man. Servitude always creates two slaves: he who holds the chain and he who wears it."

Antiquity, the Middle Age, and the centuries nearer our own, punished the adultery of the wife severely, even cruelly, yet did not admit that a man could become guilty of this offence with respect to his spouse. Our present code acknowledges, indeed, that the husband can commit adultery, but only in case he maintains his mistress under the conjugal roof; the wife is an adulteress everywhere, and is punished severely; as to the husband, his punishment is a farce. "Such impunity," says M. Legouvé, "is not only injurious to order, it is an insult to public morals, it is a lesson of debauchery, given by the law itself." If, by adultery, the wife wounds the heart of an honorable man, introduces false heirs into the family, she at least can abstract nothing from the common fortune; while the husband, in the same case, can ruin the family, while increasing the number of natural children and provoking his wife to wrong by his neglect and brutality. The husband, besides, is more criminal than the wife, for he seeks adultery, while, on the contrary, it comes to the wife under a thousand attractive forms. Notwithstanding, the adultery of the woman deserves greater punishment than that of the man.... Ah! M. Legouvé, is this logic?

The Oriental wife was and is still, a slave, a generatrix; the Roman wife was something more than this; the wife of the Middle Age owed her body to her husband, but the Courts of Love had decided that her affections could, nay, should belong to another. To-day, the ideal of marriage is enlarged; we comprehend that it is the fusion of two souls, a school for mutual perfection, and that the two spouses should belong wholly to each other.