husband's property? and does not this counterbalance his lien upon hers?
About as equally as are all other privileges balanced between the
sexes; no more.

She has no legal voice whatever in the management of her husband's
estate. His real estate is the only thing upon which she has any claim,
and this is only a life interest--after his death--of the one-third of
the estate; and of this she may only draw the interest upon the
valuation. She may refuse to bar her dower[K] in a sale of land, but if
the bargain goes on, her refusal does not invalidate the title; all she
can do is, in the event of her husband's death, to claim her interest on
her "thirds." This is all she can claim. The furniture of her home, the
very beds which she may have brought to the house, are included in the
inventory of her husband's effects; and, unless she agrees to accept
them as part of her thirds, she may be left without, one on which to
rest her weary limbs; and that, too, though the property may have been
purchased with money brought by her into the matrimonial firm; or though
she may have been the working-bee who in reality acquired it. This is
not an overdrawn picture. It is the law in civilized countries; and men
are found every day who avail themselves of its conditions. That all men
are not mean enough to take advantage of such laws, is no excuse for
their existence. It is barbarous that, by laws in the enacting of which
women have had no voice, they are left to the mercy of unscrupulous men,
without the possibility of better men coming to their help, except by
repealing the iniquitous statutes.

It is quite true that all women are not made to feel the full force of
this bitter oppression, because of the kindness of their husbands, or
the prudent forethought of their fathers in providing for unlooked-for
emergencies which might occasion poverty or distress; but the laws, and
the makers of them, deserve little credit for any comfort or degree of
independence enjoyed by women. More sorrowful than it is, infinitely
more sorrowful, would woman's condition be, if true Christianity had not
made many men more just than the laws require them to be. Many of the
slaves had kind masters; but was slavery any the less an iniquitous
outrage upon humanity, a curse upon the land, a blot that could only be
wiped away by a bloody war? The present social condition of women is
merely one system of domestic slavery, which is hourly calling out to
God for