of a woman at the business of what is called keeping
house--a business founded upon a complex of trivial technicalities. As I
have argued at length, women are congenitally less fitted for mastering
these technicalities than men; the enterprise always costs them more
effort, and they are never able to reinforce mere diligent application
with that obtuse enthusiasm which men commonly bring to their tawdry and
childish concerns. But in addition to their natural incapacity, there
is a reluctance based upon a deficiency in incentive, and deficiency
in incentive is due to the maudlin sentimentality with which men regard
marriage. In this sentimentality lie the germs of most of the evils
which beset the institution in Christendom, and particularly in the
United States, where sentiment is always carried to inordinate lengths.
Having abandoned the mediaeval concept of woman as temptress the men of
the Nordic race have revived the correlative mediaeval concept of woman
as angel and to bolster up that character they have create for her a
vast and growing mass of immunities culminating of late years in the
astounding doctrine that, under the contract of marriage, all the duties
lie upon the man and all the privileges appertain to the woman. In part
this doctrine has been established by the intellectual enterprise
and audacity of woman. Bit by bit, playing upon masculine stupidity,
sentimentality and lack of strategical sense, they have formulated it,
developed it, and entrenched it in custom and law. But in other part it
is the plain product of the donkeyish vanity which makes almost every
man view the practical incapacity of his wife as, in some vague way, a
tribute to his own high mightiness and consideration. Whatever is revolt
against her immediate indolence and efficiency, his ideal is nearly
always a situation in which she will figure as a magnificent drone,
a sort of empress without portfolio, entirely discharged from every
unpleasant labour and responsibility.

29. Marriage and the Law

This was not always the case. No more than a century ago, even by
American law, the most sentimental in the world, the husband was the
head of the family firm, lordly and autonomous. He had authority over
the purse-strings, over the children, and even over his wife. He could
enforce his mandates by appropriate punishment, including the corporal.
His sovereignty and dignity were carefully guarded by legislation, the
product of thous