How much remorse--how many heartbreaks--have been caused by the one of these which may be indicated briefly in a sentence thus--"Stolen pleasures are always the sweetest."
"She sullied _his_ honor," "He avenged his sullied honor," and all the brood of ideas that follows in this line have built up theories and caused more useless bloodshed and sorrow than most others. No wife can stain the honor of her husband. He, only, can do that, and it is interesting to note the fact that he who struts through fiction with a broken heart and a drawn sword "avenging" said honor (in the sense in which the word is used), seldom had any to avenge, having quite effectively divested himself of it before his wife had the chance.
"She begged him to make an honest woman of her." What fiction of fiction (and, alas, of law) could be more degrading to womanhood--and hence to humanity--than the thought here presented? The whole chain of ideas linked here is vicious and vicious only. Why sustain the fiction that a woman can be elevated by making her the permanent victim of one who has already abused her confidence, and now holds himself--because of his own perfidy--as in a position to confer honor upon his victim? He who is not possessed of honor cannot confer it upon another. "The purity of family life" is another fiction of fiction which never did and never can exist, while based upon a double standard of morals. That there ever was or ever will be a "union of souls" in a family where a double standard holds sway, or that women are truthful or frank with men upon whom they are dependent, are fictions which it were time to face and controvert with facts. Dependence and frankness never co-existed in this world in an adult brain--whether it were the dependence of the serf or of the wife or daughter, the result is ever the same. The elements of character which tend to self-respect and hence to open and truthful natures, are not possible in a dependent--or in a social or political inferior. Do the peasants tell the lord exactly what they think of him, or do they tell him what they know he wishes them to think?
Did the black men, while yet slaves, give to the master their own unbiased opinion of the institution of slavery? Not with any degree of frequency. The application is obvious.