uperstition of the evil eye. Pretty women
attracted admiration, which was dangerous, as all prosperity, glory, and
preeminence were dangerous under that notion. When _pretty_ women were
veiled or secluded, the custom was sure to spread to others. The wives
and daughters of the rich and great were secluded in order to shield
them from easy approach, and to pet and protect them. This set the
fashion which lesser people imitated so far as they could. The tyranny
of husbands and fathers also came into play, and another force acting in
the same direction was the seduction exerted on women themselves by the
flattering sense of being cared for and petted. Lane[1286] tells us
that "an Egyptian wife who is attached to her husband is apt to think,
if he allows her unusual liberty, that he neglects her, and does not
sufficiently love her; and to envy those wives who are kept and watched
with greater strictness." "They look on the restraint [imposed by
husbands] with a degree of pride, as evincing the husband's care for
them, and value themselves on being hidden as treasures." Women who earn
their own living have to go into the streets and the market and to come
in contact with much from which other classes of women are protected.
The protected position is aristocratic, and it is consonant with
especial feminine tastes. The willingness to fall into it has always
greatly affected the status of women.

+406. Second marriages. Widows.+ Second marriages affect very few people
beyond those immediately concerned, and they are not connected with any
social principle or institution so as to create what is sometimes called
a "societal interest," unless there is current in the society some
special notion about ghosts and the other world. Nevertheless, the
bystanders have, until very recent times, pretended to a right to pass
judgment and exert an influence on the remarriage of widows, and less
frequently of widowers. The story of the status of widows is one of the
saddest in the history of civilization. In uncivilized society a widow
is considered dangerous because the ghost of her husband is supposed to
cleave to her. Under marriage by capture or purchase she is the property
of her husband, and, like his other property, ought to accompany him to
the other world. When she is spared she has no rational place in the
society; therefore widows were a problem which the mores had to solve.
In no other case have societies shown so much indifference