Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
no doubt, a good deal of expense, but he does not in any degree impair his means
of earning a living. When a woman marries, she practically renounces in all but
the rarest cases the possibility of undertaking any profession but one, and the
possibility of carrying on that one profession in the society of any man but one.
Here is a second inequality. It would be easy to mention others of the deepest
importance, but these are enough to show that to treat a contract of marriage as
a contract between persons who are upon an equality in regard of strength and
power to protect their interest is to treat it as being what it notoriously is not.
Again, the contract is one which involves subordination and obedience on the
part of the weaker party to the stronger. The proof of this is, to my mind, as clear
as that of a proposition in Euclid, and it is this:
1. Marriage is a contract, one of the principal ones of which is the
government of a family.
2. This government must be vested either by law or by contract in the hands
of one of the two married persons.
3. If the arrangement is made by contract, the remedy for breach of it must
either be by law or by a dissolution of the partnership at the will of the
contracting parties.
4. Law could give no remedy in such a case. Therefore the only remedy for
breach of the contract would be dissolution of the marriage.
5. Therefore, if marriage is to be permanent, the government of the family
must be put by law and by moral rules in the hands of the husband, for
no one proposes to give it to the wife.
Mr. Mill is totally unable to meet this argument, and apparently embraces the
alternative that marriage ought to be dissoluble at the pleasure of the parties. After
much argument as to contracts which appear to be visionary, his words are these:
“Things never come to an issue of downright power on one side and obedience on
the other except where the connection has been altogether a mistake, and it would
be a blessing to both parties to be relieved from it.”
This appears to me to show a complete misapprehension of the nature of
family government, and of the sort of cases in which the question of obedience and
authority can arise between husband and wife. No one contends that a man ought
to have power to order his wife about like a slave, and beat her if she disobeys him.
Such conduct in the eye of the law would be cruelty, and ground for a separation.
The question of obedience arises in quite another way. It may, and no doubt often
does, arise between the very best and most aectionate married people, and it
need no more interfere with their mutual aection than the absolute power of the
captain of a ship need interfere with perfect friendship and condence between
himself and his rst-lieutenant. Take the following set of questions: “Shall we
live on this scale or that? Shall we associate with such and such persons? Shall
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