treated than
slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a
sense of the word, as a wife is. Hardly any slave, except one
immediately attached to the master's person, is a slave at all hours
and all minutes; in general he has, like a soldier, his fixed task,
and when it is done, or when he is off duty, he disposes, within
certain limits, of his own time, and has a family life into which the
master rarely intrudes. "Uncle Tom" under his first master had his
own life in his "cabin," almost as much as any man whose work takes
him away from home, is able to have in his own family. But it cannot
be so with the wife. Above all, a female slave has (in Christian
countries) an admitted right, and is considered under a moral
obligation, to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the
wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained
to--though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily
pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to
loathe him--he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation
of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal
function contrary to her inclinations. While she is held in this
worst description of slavery as to her own person, what is her
position in regard to the children in whom she and her master have a
joint interest? They are by law _his_ children. He alone has any
legal rights over them. Not one act can she do towards or in relation
to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is dead she is
not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so. He could
even send them away from her, and deprive her of the means of seeing
or corresponding with them, until this power was in some degree
restricted by Serjeant Talfourd's Act. This is her legal state. And
from this state she has no means of withdrawing herself. If she
leaves her husband, she can take nothing with her, neither her
children nor anything which is rightfully her own. If he chooses, he
can compel her to return, by law, or by physical force; or he may
content himself with seizing for his own use anything which she may
earn, or which may be given to her by her relations. It is only legal
separation by a decree of a court of justice, which entitles her to
live apart, without being forced back into the custody of an
exasperated jailer--or which empowers her to apply any earnings to
her own use, without fear that a man whom