There seems to be such a thing as inheritance by sex. Woman was for thousands of years the slave or the plaything of man, and she is unconsciously but terribly avenging herself for the wrongs done her by the ruder sex. The best she could hope for in earlier days, the best that many of her sex now dare hope for, is home, protection and kind treatment. The kindness may be that the man shows to his horse or his dog, perhaps to his friend, but the fact that the woman is to be legally his equal, the appreciation of this, is as rare as the resolve of the woman herself to make herself equal to the position.
What is the result? Why, girls, sweet girls, girls whom good men regard as only a little lower than the angels, often marry for causes which should not justify any but the commonest women in marrying at all. A girl whom all of us adore for her goodness, delicacy and sweetness, suddenly appalls us some day by accepting as her husband some gross fellow who has nothing but his pocket-book to recommend him. Were she to attach herself to him without marriage vows and ceremony, although perhaps with absolute honesty of devotion and singleness of purpose, the world would be horrified. Yet where is the difference as regards her own life? Many other women know, if she does not, that no elaborateness of ceremony or solemnity can ever make a perfect marriage between a woman and a boor. Yet the old story of “Beauty and the Beast” is repeated every day a thousand times, except that the fairy touch which transformed the beast into a gentleman never occurs nowadays--except in novels.
There is prevalent a stupid notion, born of vulgar natures, too vulgar to understand that the Almighty never endowed humanity with any quality which had not a noble purpose, that it is not safe to let young people know or think anything about the realities of marriage. People allude at once to fixed passion as if the only passion possible to the marriage state were physical, and as if the companionship, sympathy, devotion, tenderness and continuity of a friendship solemnly pledged for life, a friendship of a character that children instinctively long for and youths desire more earnestly than all things else combined, never entered into the thoughts of young people. This is an insulting imputation upon your children and mine and of every other man’s beside.