est, and the whole force of the state comes down upon
him. If he corrects her with the bastinado or locks her up, he is good
for six months in jail. If he cuts off her revenues, he is incarcerated
until he makes them good. And if he seeks surcease in flight, taking the
children with him, he is pursued by the gendarmerie, brought back to his
duties, and depicted in the public press as a scoundrelly kidnapper, fit
only for the knout. In brief, she is under no legal necessity whatsoever
to carry out her part of the compact at the altar of God, whereas he
faces instant disgrace and punishment for the slightest failure to
observe its last letter. For a few grave crimes of commission, true
enough, she may be proceeded against. Open adultery is a recreation that
is denied to her. She cannot poison her husband. She must not assault
him with edged tools, or leave him altogether, or strip off her few
remaining garments and go naked. But for the vastly more various and
numerous crimes of omission--and in sum they are more exasperating and
intolerable than even overt felony--she cannot be brought to book at
all.

The scene I depict is American, but it will soon extend its horrors to
all Protestant countries. The newly enfranchised women of every one of
them cherish long programs of what they call social improvement, and
practically the whole of that improvement is based upon devices for
augmenting their own relative autonomy and power. The English wife
of tradition, so thoroughly a femme covert, is being displaced by a
gadabout, truculent, irresponsible creature, full of strange new ideas
about her rights, and strongly disinclined to submit to her husband's
authority, or to devote herself honestly to the upkeep of his house, or
to bear him a biological sufficiency of heirs. And the German Hausfrau,
once so innocently consecrated to Kirche, Kche und Kinder, is going the
same way.

30. The Emancipated Housewife

What has gone on in the United States during the past two generations
is full of lessons and warnings for the rest of the world. The American
housewife of an earlier day was famous for her unremitting diligence.
She not only cooked, washed and ironed; she also made shift to master
such more complex arts as spinning, baking and brewing. Her expertness,
perhaps, never reached a high level, but at all events she made
a gallant effort. But that was long, long ago, before the new
enlightenment rescued her. Today, in h