true that the English married
woman is "virtually a bondwoman" to her husband; that "she can hardly
go and come without his consent, and usually he does not consent;" that
"all she has is his." If there is such a thing as "the bitterness of the
English married woman to the law," underlying it there is such a thing
as ignorance of what the law is. The "subjection of woman," as it exists
today in England, is customary and traditionary--a social, not a legal,
subjection. Nowhere has law so sharply challenged that male dominion
whose seat is in the harder muscles, the larger brain and the coarser
heart And the law, it may be worth while to point out, was not of woman
born; nor was it handed down out of Heaven engraved on tables of stone.
Learned English judges have decided that virtually the term "marital
rights" has no longer a legal signification. As one writer puts it,
"The law has relaxed the husband's control over his wife's person and
fortune, bit by bit, until legally it has left him nothing but the power
to prevent her, if he is so disposed, and arrives in time, from jumping
out of the window." He will find it greatly to his interest to arrive in
time when he conveniently can, and to be so disposed, for the husband is
still liable for the wife's torts; and if she makes the leap he may have
to pay for the telescoping of a subjacent hat or two.

In England it is the Tyrant Man himself who is chafing in his chain. Not
only is a husband still liable for the wrongs committed by the wife whom
he has no longer the power to restrain from committing them, but in many
ways--in one very important way--his obligation to her remains intact
after she has had the self-sacrifice to surrender all obligation to him.
Moreover, if his wife has a separate estate he has to endure the pain
of seeing it hedged about from her creditors (themselves not altogether
happy in the contemplation) with restrictions which do not hamper the
right of recourse against his own. Doubtless all this is not without a
softening effect upon his character, smoothing down his dispositional
asperities and endowing him day by day with fresh accretions of
humility. And that is good for him. I do not say that female autonomy is
not among the most efficacious agencies for man's reclamation from the
sin of pride; I only say that it is not indigenous to this country, the
sweet, sweet home of the assassiness, the happy hunting ground of the
whiplady, the paradise of th