"The husband must submit. What would you have? Two wills under one roof? The shingles would fly off."
"The young men always yield?"
"What should they do but yield? Is not old age to be revered? Is not experience good? Can a man have lived his life and not learned wisdom with his years? Now, it is said, the fashion is about to change; the young men are to rule the house; the patriarchs are to hide their beards. But not in my time; not in my time!"
"Do the women readily submit to what the patriarch says?"
"They must. Suppose Nadia beaten by Old Dan. She comes to me with her shoulders black and blue. I call a meeting of patriarchs to hear her tale. What comes of it? She tells them her father beats her. She shows her scars. The patriarchs ask her why he beats her? She owns that she refused to do this or that, as he bade her; something, it may be, which he ought not to have asked, and she ought not to have done; but the principle of authority is felt to be at stake; for, if a patriarch is not to rule his house, how is the elder to rule his village, the governor his province, the Tsar his empire? All authorities stand or fall together; and the patriarchs find that the woman is a fool, and that a second drubbing will do her good."
"They would not order her to be flogged?"
"Not now; the new law forbids it; that is to say, in public. In his own cabin Daniel may flog Nadia when he likes."
This "new law" against flogging women in public is an edict of the present reign; a part of that mighty scheme of social reform which the Emperor is carrying out on every side. It is not popular in the village, since it interferes with the rights of men, and cripples the patriarchs in dealing with the defenseless sex. Since this edict put an end to the open flogging of women, the men have been forced to invent new modes of punishing their wives, and their sons' wives, since they fancy that a private beating does but little good, because it carries no sting of shame. A news-sheet gives the following as a sample: Euphrosine M——, a peasant woman living in the province of Kherson, is accused by her husband of unfaithfulness to her vows. The rustic calls a meeting of patriarchs, who hear his story, and without hearing the wife in her defense, condemn her to be walked through the village stark naked, in broad daylight, in the presence of all her friends. That sentence is executed on a frosty day. Her guilt is never proved; yet she has no appeal from the decision of that village court!
A village is an original and separate power; in every sense a state within the state.