is you that are
going to write this "Family Library," not I. For my own part, I should
have been contented in walking into the next village, an unexpected guest,
to the houses of rich and poor--do you think you would have wanted
materials? But forewarned is forearmed--and few will "tell the secrets of
their prison-house," if you take them with a purpose. On your account, in
this matter, I have written to six ladies of my acquaintance, three
married and three single. Two of the married have replied that they have
nothing to complain of--not a wrong. The third bids me ask her husband. So
I put her down as ambiguous--perhaps she wishes to give him a hint through
me; I am wise, and shall hold my tongue. Of the unmarried, one says she
has received no wrong, but fears she may have inflicted some--another,
that as she is going to be married on Monday, she cannot conceive a wrong,
and cannot possibly reply till after the honeymoon. The third replies,
that it is _very wrong_ in me to ask her. But stay a moment--here is a
quarrel going on--two women and a man--we may pick up something. "Rat
thee, Jahn," says a stout jade, with her arm out and her fist almost in
Jahn's face, "I wish I were a man--I'd gie it to thee!" She evidently
thinks it a wrong that she was born a woman--and upon my word, by that
brawny arm, and those masculine features, there does appear to have been a
mistake in it. If you go to books--I know your learning--you will revert
to your favourite classical authorities. Helen of Troy calls herself by a
sad name, "[Greek: kuon hos eimi]," dog (feminine) as I am--her wrongs
must, therefore, go to no account. I know but of one who really takes it
in hand to catalogue them, and she is Medea. "We women," says she, "are
the most wretched of living creatures." For first--of women--she must buy
her husband, pay for him with all she has--secondly, when she has bought
him, she has bought a master, one to lord it over her very
person--thirdly, the danger of buying a bad one--fourthly, that divorce is
not creditable--fifthly, that she ought to be a prophetess, and is not to
know what sort of a man he is to whose house she is to go, where all is
strange to her--sixthly, that if she does not like her home, she must not
leave it, nor look out for sympathising friends--seventhly, that she must
have the pains and troubles of bearing children--eighthly, she gives up
country, home, parents, friends, for one husband--and perhaps a bad o