The divorce suit showed the married pair to have been separated once before, Mrs. Davenport, unable to bear her husband’s tyranny, returning to her mother’s house. At that time her husband required her to eat only what he directed, and to wear only those clothes he bade her wear, selecting even the color of her ribbons. The only fault he had to find with her was that she “talked back,” which has always been deemed an unpardonable crime in woman; one for which the Ducking Stool and Scold’s Bridle were invented. After she left him, Mr. Davenport wrote affectionate letters to his wife, calling her the sweetest and best of women, imploring her to return. She relented and lived with him once more, but her husband again put his rules in force. She then sued for a divorce, which the court granted. Mr. Davenport’s treatment of his wife is by no means exceptional. The following excerpt is from a letter in the Terra Haute, Ind., Mail, 1884.
An individual who considers himself a representative man in the city, and perhaps he is, said in the presence of several persons. “I went home at three o’clock this morning and found my wife sitting up. She burst into tears and asked me where I had been and why I treated her in that manner? I just told her if she said another word I would leave the house; that as long as she had a comfortable home where she could spend her evenings it was none of her business where I spent mine. Now, if I did not provide for my family, it would be a different thing but so long as my wife is well provided for, she has no right to complain and I don’t propose to allow it.” These are the man’s own words, and there are a great many men who hold the same opinions. If their wives protest because they drink, gamble and spend their nights away, they say, “You have a good home and enough to eat and wear; what more do you want?”
A lady of Richmond, Va., anxious to know from a legal source just what her rights as a wife were, consulted a lawyer of that city.
“Well, Madam,” he replied, head thrown back, thumbs in armholes: “Well, Madam, you have a right to comfortable food; a fire to keep you warm, and two calico dresses a year. These are your legal rights; all beyond these are the gifts of your husband. Luxuries of food and clothing, journies and books, these are not yours by law; it remains with your husband to decide whether he will furnish them to you or not.”
And this is Christian civilization for woman at the close of the nineteenth century of this era.
Although married women of the State of New York have enjoyed certain property rights since 1848, subsequent legislation in various ways increasing that power, it was not until 1882, that the Court of Appeals decided them to be the rightful owners of articles of personal adornment and convenience coming from their husbands, possessing power to bequeath them at death to their heirs. The same year the Supreme Court of that state decided that a wife may sue her husband for damages for assault and battery. The influence of these decisions in recognizing woman’s rights of person, especially that of the Supreme Court in deciding the right of the wife to punish the husband through the courts for brutal treatment, can scarcely be overestimated. It opened a new era for woman:
First: A recognition of the wife’s personality.
Second: Holding the husband responsible for his treatment of the wife.
Third: An acknowledgement of the wife’s right to protection as against the husband. It destroyed, in this state the old femme covert teaching of Christianity, and recognized a wife as possessing the common rights of a human being.
The United States, making pretense of the greatest governmental freedom in the world, and in reality according it to men of every color and degree of intelligence or property, still denies such liberty to woman. In many of the states, the old restrictions of modern common law still prevail. There are states where the property of the wife upon marriage falls into the control of the husband, to do with as he alone pleases, the wife not retaining the right to its use or its management in any way whatsoever. There are other states where the separate property of the husband and the wife is made communal, but in those states the control of this communal property is in the husband’s hands. In most states the old restrictions still exist, and a woman cannot make a will; cannot act as executrix or administratrix; can neither sue nor be sued. In the largest proportion of the states in which the separate property of the wife is recognized, the husband still has the advantage in heirship. In less than one-fifth of the states has the wife the same control over the children of the marriage as the husband. In the remaining four-fifths and over, the father is assumed to be sole owner of the children, who can be bound out, willed or given away without the consent or even knowledge of the mother. Can barbarism go farther than this?