"With respect to the difference of rewards and punishments between the male and female sex, it has been considered," said the Meer, "that as the latter have not the same opportunities of acquiring knowledge, their responsibility should be less, and it is decreed that they shall only receive for any crime half the punishment that would be inflicted upon a man. The same principle, in reference to their good actions, has led to their being only deemed entitled to half the enjoyment that a man can attain in the next world. But this is a point," said the Meer, "that I do not well comprehend. It has puzzled many of our wisest Moollâhs, and volumes upon volumes of contradictory opinions have been written by the expounders of the Koran, upon the duties, rewards, and punishments of women here and hereafter; God alone knows who is right and who is wrong."
"I know as little as you or the Moollâhs either," said Jaffier Ali, "of what will be the lot of our ladies in the next world, but I am positive they enjoy plenty of power in this. Really, my good friend," said he, addressing me, "if you could get a peep behind the curtain, you would find that from the palace of the king to the hut of the peasant, some personage, either in the shape of a wife or a mother, secretly or openly rules the whole household, the master not excepted. Some men, in the hope of preserving their authority, marry a woman of low connexions, or a slave, who cannot claim a dower. Such wives, being pennyless and unsupported by relations, will, they expect, continue mild and submissive, and neither give themselves airs nor leave the house in a pet. These wary gentlemen, however, are often disappointed; for if the partners they select are handsome and beloved, they too become tyrants and tormentors."
"That may be," said Mahomed Hoosein Khan, who had hitherto listened to our discussion with much more patience than I had expected, "but in such a case a man becomes a slave of his own passions, which is far better than selling himself, as many do, to be the slave of those of an arrogant woman, who, from superior birth or great wealth, considers herself as the ruler of him she has condescended to espouse."
Hajee Hoosein, on hearing this remark, eagerly exclaimed, "How exactly that was the case with Sâdee! 'My termagant of a wife,' (said that wise man), 'with whom, after my release from the Christians at Tripoli,[101] I had received a dower of a hundred dinars, one day addressed me in a reproachful tone, and asked, 'Are not you the contemptible wretch whom my father ransomed from the slavery of the Franks at the cost of ten dinars?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'I am the same wretch whom he delivered from the infidels for ten dinars, and enslaved to you for one hundred!'"