lsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter obligations. The former makes
her father's house an abode of freedom and of pleasure; the latter
lives in the home of her husband as if it were a cloister. Yet these
two different conditions of life are perhaps not so contrary as may be
supposed, and it is natural that the American women should pass through
the one to arrive at the other.

Religious peoples and trading nations entertain peculiarly serious
notions of marriage: the former consider the regularity of woman's life
as the best pledge and most certain sign of the purity of her morals;
the latter regard it as the highest security for the order and
prosperity of the household. The Americans are at the same time a
puritanical people and a commercial nation: their religious opinions,
as well as their trading habits, consequently lead them to require
much abnegation on the part of woman, and a constant sacrifice of her
pleasures to her duties which is seldom demanded of her in Europe. Thus
in the United States the inexorable opinion of the public carefully
circumscribes woman within the narrow circle of domestic interest and
duties, and forbids her to step beyond it.

Upon her entrance into the world a young American woman finds these
notions firmly established; she sees the rules which are derived from
them; she is not slow to perceive that she cannot depart for an instant
from the established usages of her contemporaries, without putting in
jeopardy her peace of mind, her honor, nay even her social existence;
and she finds the energy required for such an act of submission in
the firmness of her understanding and in the virile habits which her
education has given her. It may be said that she has learned by the use
of her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a
murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no American
woman falls into the toils of matrimony as into a snare held out to
her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught beforehand what is
expected of her, and voluntarily and freely does she enter upon this
engagement. She supports her new condition with courage, because she
chose it. As in America paternal discipline is very relaxed and the
conjugal tie very strict, a young woman does not contract the latter
without considerable circumspection and apprehension. Precocious
marriages are rare. Thus American women do not marry until their
understandings are exercised and ripened;