d of each third year either male or female can divorce the other and
is free to marry again. At the end of ten years the An has the privilege
of taking a second wife, allowing the first to retire if she so please.
These regulations are for the most part a dead letter; divorces and
polygamy are extremely rare, and the marriage state now seems
singularly happy and serene among this astonishing people;--the Gy-ei,
notwithstanding their boastful superiority in physical strength and
intellectual abilities, being much curbed into gentle manners by the
dread of separation or of a second wife, and the Ana being very much the
creatures of custom, and not, except under great aggravation, likely
to exchange for hazardous novelties faces and manners to which they
are reconciled by habit. But there is one privilege the Gy-ei carefully
retain, and the desire for which perhaps forms the secret motive of most
lady asserters of woman rights above ground. They claim the privilege,
here usurped by men, of proclaiming their love and urging their suit;
in other words, of being the wooing party rather than the wooed. Such a
phenomenon as an old maid does not exist among the Gy-ei. Indeed it
is very seldom that a Gy does not secure any An upon whom she sets her
heart, if his affections be not strongly engaged elsewhere. However coy,
reluctant, and prudish, the male she courts may prove at first, yet her
perseverance, her ardour, her persuasive powers, her command over the
mystic agencies of vril, are pretty sure to run down his neck into
what we call "the fatal noose." Their argument for the reversal of that
relationship of the sexes which the blind tyranny of man has established
on the surface of the earth, appears cogent, and is advanced with a
frankness which might well be commended to impartial consideration.
They say, that of the two the female is by nature of a more loving
disposition than the male--that love occupies a larger space in her
thoughts, and is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore
she ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a shy and
dubitant creature--that he has often a selfish predilection for the
single state--that he often pretends to misunderstand tender glances
and delicate hints--that, in short, he must be resolutely pursued and
captured. They add, moreover, that unless the Gy can secure the An of
her choice, and one whom she would not select out of the whole world
becomes her mate, she