Conjugal duty

“ It does suffer seriously in the case of the husband, but emphatically not in the case of the wife. Even though she be cognisant—as she often is—of her husband’s extra-marital relations, she abates nothing of the duty which she has been taught to regard as the first canon of female ethics. ”

“ Men may take different views as to the reciprocal obligations of husband and wife on many points, but no one, I think, will maintain that it is the duty of the wife to submit to stripes and blows—to go in hourly danger of her life by night and day, without seeking, not for redress—for who can attempt to redress such wrongs as these?—but simply for immunity from further violence. ”

“ But the die is cast; and you must carefully remember that no neglect of duty on his part can give a legitimate sanction to a failure of duty on yours. The sacredness of those ties which bind you as a wife remain equally strong and heavy, whatever be the conduct of your husband; and galling as the chain may be, you must only endeavour for resignation to bear it, till the Almighty, by lightening it, pleases to crown your gentleness and efforts with success. ”

“ It is the familiar story of marriage without much thought, the husband’s rapid development into a vulgar brute, and his final desertion of wife and children. Then the right man appears upon the scene, and the deserted wife is torn by the conflict between desire and duty. The plea of duty is voiced by the representatives of church and society, and their argument convinces her intellect, yet it takes only a slight mishap to the man whom she loves to bring about her surrender.”—Dial. ”

“ I want women to know their places and do their duty; but there is a low, stinking pride in a woman, that wants to leave a good husband to go to another. What does it matter where you are, if you do your duty? Being in one man's family or the other man's family is not going to save you, but doing your duty before your God is what will save you. ”

“ This would give only a literal verbal significance to the statement that a man’s duty is quite as much toward his home as is a woman’s. If we were simply using words that sounded reasonable we might as well repeat the oft expressed and seemingly perfectly balanced retort of woman to her husband: “If I have to bear the child, why on earth shouldn’t you care for it?” ”

“ It is the husband's duty to join with his wife in all her endeavors to instruct her children, to defer all matters pertaining to their discipline to her, aiding her in this respect as she requires it. ”

“ Of course no one believes that it is a wife's duty to obey when her husband wishes her to act contrary to the dictates of conscience. As little is she expected to conform to a standard of obedience and service such as was laid down in a conversation overheard between two children who were playing on the sands together. ”

“ Surely, if it is right—and it is right—that a down-trodden wife should be protected, it is equally right and just, nay, it is absolutely imperative, that a husband should have some means of obtaining redress—some chance of lightening his heavy burden. ”

“ It is considered a wife’s duty to obey the most capricious and unreasonable commands of her husband, without one word of expostulation or inquiry. If her master be dissatisfied with the most trifling particular in her conduct, he tears the cap or veil from her head, and this constitutes a divorce. The complexion of these people is generally extremely pale, owing probably to their wretched fare. ”

“ The law of husband and wife, as modified by statute in the course of the nineteenth century, as I have often enough had occasion to point out, is a monument of legalised tyranny over the husband in the interests of the wife. ”

“ Upon the one hand it is the duty of the wife to arrange her thought and life with reference to maternity and the bearing of such a number of children as can be brought into the world in the highest state of physical, intellectual and moral equipment. Upon the other hand, the husband is to regard himself under obligation to practice such personal self-control and to bear such disadvantages as are incident to the greatest fidelity of the wife in her duties while the body and character of her child are being formed within her, and while it is being nursed, nurtured and cared for after its birth. ”

“ But an Husband may prevent his Wife's doing that Duty, even after his Death, when they have no Parent but a Mother, by ordering the Children into other Hands, tho' no other can be so nearly concern'd for them. ”

“ It was urged before the Court of Appeal that by the law of England a husband may beat his wife with a stick if she refuses to obey him, and that if a wife refused her husband conjugal rights, whatever that phrase may mean, which I have never been able to make out, he may imprison her until she restores him conjugal rights, or satisfies him that she will. ”

“ A happy wife, happy during and after half a lifetime spent in wedlock which did not escape the usual number of family troubles and sorrows, said once to me that the trouble with marriage was that conjugal impulse and conjugal sense were the scarcest faculties of the feminine nature. ”

“ Is it possible for a responsible man of a serious turn of mind and a true Christian to care for the love of his wife? ... If the husband seeking divorce, or the wife seeking separation, alleges the refusal of the conjugal right, then, of course, there is a legitimate reason for a rupture, for the service for which the marriage is granted has not been carried out. ”

“ These are some of the Things which Modesty and Decency forbids between a Man and his Wife; the contrary is a Debt to conjugal Affection on one hand, and to Laws of Decency and good Manners on the other, both which no matrimonial Familiarities or Intimacies can destroy. ”

“ If a second Marriage exposes Children by a Former, to the Oppression of a latter Husband, and Utterly disables the Mother to rescue them from it; whence does that Inability arise, but from those Laws which give the Husband so exorbitant a Power over the Wife, that she cannot exert herself in those Duties which God has commanded her to do, unless it be at the Will and Pleasure of her Husband? ”

“ In other words, let her be the legally acknowledged mistress of her own household, and a co-partner, at least, in the interests and destiny of her own offspring. Let the interests of the maternity be as much respected, at least, as those of the paternity; and thus surround the hallowed place of the wife’s and mother’s sphere of action, with a fortress so strong and invincible, that the single will of a perverted man cannot overthrow it. For home is woman’s proper sphere or orbit, where, in my opinion, God designed she should be the sovereign and supreme ”

“ It is therefore on the woman that any loosening of the permanence of the marriage tie will chiefly fall in untold suffering. "Le mariage c'est la justice," say the French, who have had experience enough of "les unions libres"—justice to the wife and mother, securing her the stability of her right to her husband's affections, the stability to her right of maintenance after she has given up her means of support, above all, the stability of her right to the care of her own children. ”

“ They never marry until satiated with indulgence; and if the woman then should be dissatisfied with the restraint of the conjugal yoke, the union, by mutual consent, is dissolved for a time; both then betake themselves to their former courses. ”

“ LEGAL MARRIAGE.—What would any woman give for merely a nominal or legal husband, just to live with and provide for her, but who entertained not one spark of love for her, or whose affections were bestowed upon another? ”

“ From hence I must take the Liberty to assert, that this Exemption of a Wife from Punishment, upon Consideration that she obeys her Husband, never was designed as a Privilege to Wives, and that it never can be such in its own Nature, but is a Snare and Temptation to them, to comply with the Command of an Husband be the Instance ever so sinful, and to stand more in awe of a temporary Resentment from him, than of the eternal Resentment of Omnipotence itself. ”

“ But whether the reasons which the wife entertains are honorable or dishonorable, correct or criminal, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that she is a free moral agent, and if she assumes the responsibility of declining one of the main purposes for which marriage was instituted she must herself bear the responsibility. To designedly inflict conception upon an unwilling and resisting wife the husband makes himself guilty of great injustice, invades the personal rights of his wife as an individual, and is guilty of a great wrong. ”

“ But it is well known that this conjugal complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check on her husband's pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind. ”

“ The husband being bound to provide for his wife the necessaries of life, and being responsible for "her morals" and the good order of the household, may choose and govern the domicil, choose her associates, separate her from her relatives, restrain her religious and personal freedom, compel her to cohabit with him, correct her faults by mild means and, if necessary, chastise her with moderation, as though she was his apprentice orchild. ”

“ In this case the tables are turned, and it is he who has to dread the mother-in-law; it is his turn to have to please his new relatives and to do all he can to be agreeable. He, too, may be sent away and divorced by the all-powerful parents, if he does not please; and such divorces are not uncommon. Of course, in such marriages, the woman has the greater power, and the man has to remember what he owes her; [105] and though the woman yields to him obediently in all respects, it is an obedience not demanded by the husband, as under other circumstances. ”

“ Nonsense, Hubbard. It's a woman's first duty to obey and cleave to her husband at all costs and whatever be the consequences or fancied consequences to her comfort or convenience. Marriage imposes that obligation on the woman in its sacramental character. ”

“ I would take away from marriage the idea that it legally conveys the control of the person of the wife to the husband, and I would make her as much its guardian against improper use as she is supposed to be in maidenhood. It should be her own, sacredly, never to be desecrated by an unwelcome touch. ”

“ As a wife she fulfils no wifely duty in any grand or loving sense, for the most part regarding her husband only as a banker or an adjunct, according to the terms of her marriage settlement; as a mother she is a stranger to her children, to whom nurse and governess supply her place and give such poor makeshift for maternal love as they are enabled or inclined. ”

“ The undoubted iniquity of our existing marriage laws is always spoken of as an injustice to the woman and the changes in the direction of greater freedom which are advocated as a relief to the wife bound to a bad or otherwise unendurable husband. ”

“ Though the Law allows him that Power, Conscience does not. Our very Enemies, as soon as they fall into our Power, though involuntarily, have a Title to our Favour and Protection; all the Laws of Honour and Generosity plead for their gentle Treatment; and shall a Husband be called a Man of Honour, who treats his Wife harshly for no Reason, bur because she is in his Power, and which Power he derived from her unbounded Confidence in him? She puts her whole Happiness into his Hands, a Trust for which no Man can give a sufficient Security. ”

“ But our Laws give an Husband the Power to supersede that Command, by allowing him to take all things from his Wife, and then to prevent her obtaining any thing more, by her Labour or Ingenuity. Her intellectual and personal Abilities seem to be her own, since no Pacts can transfer them to another, yet her Husband can prevent her Exertion of them, either for herself or Children, even when he won't do any thing for them himself. ”

“ There were two lower grades of civil marriage, but each gave a man supreme control of his wife, without the dignity of consecration. Whatever cruelty and suffering might result from this one-sided relation,—and the possibilities were enormous,—a woman was expected to love the husband chosen by her friends, for himself alone, and a bridegroom’s presents were limited by custom, so that she might not be tempted to love him for what he could give her. ”

“ I will have no indulgence either for domestic disorders, for the moment I hear that a wife is unfaithful to her husband, I will have her locked up, in spite of all, in spite of the generally received opinion that the husband is the real judge and master of his wife ”

“ The law does not as yet secure to a wife such independence as will guard her against injustice and meanness from the hands of her husband; but what defence have they provided against the bitter sorrows that bad wives can bring down upon their husbands? ”

“ It is only the training of the family state according to its true end and aim that is to secure to woman her true position and rights. When the family is instituted by marriage, it is man who is the head and chief magistrate by the force of his physical power and requirement of the chief responsibility; not less is he so according to the Christian law, by which, when differences arise, the husband has the deciding control, and the wife is to obey. "Where love is, there is no law;" ”

“ But the danger is that such defenses and such compensatory activities will be held onto even if the marriage has been given a chance to turn from a meaningless one into a deeply meaningful and joyful one. A husband who wishes to help his wife in her struggle to become a woman, who 236 wishes to make a marriage where only the semblance of one now exists, must now examine his attitudes with great honesty, courage, and thoroughness. ”