deed, 'twas the fashion of the day,
as I must own; and there's not a writer of my time of any note, with the
exception of poor Dick Steele, that does not speak of a woman as of
a slave, and scorn and use her as such. Mr. Pope, Mr. Congreve, Mr.
Addison, Mr. Gay, every one of 'em, sing in this key, each according to
his nature and politeness, and louder and fouler than all in abuse is
Dr. Swift, who spoke of them as he treated them, worst of all.

Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come
in my mind from the husband's rage and revolt at discovering that
his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is
church-sworn to honor and obey him--is his superior; and that HE,
and not she, ought to be the subordinate of the twain; and in these
controversies, I think, lay the cause of my lord's anger against his
lady. When he left her, she began to think for herself, and her thoughts
were not in his favor. After the illumination, when the love-lamp is
put out that anon we spoke of, and by the common daylight we look at the
picture, what a daub it looks! what a clumsy effigy! How many men and
wives come to this knowledge, think you? And if it be painful to a woman
to find herself mated for life to a boor, and ordered to love and honor
a dullard; it is worse still for the man himself perhaps, whenever in
his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his slave and drudge yonder
is, in truth, his superior; that the woman who does his bidding, and
submits to his humor, should be his lord; that she can think a thousand
things beyond the power of his muddled brains; and that in yonder head,
on the pillow opposite to him, lie a thousand feelings, mysteries of
thought, latent scorns and rebellions, whereof he only dimly perceives
the existence as they look out furtively from her eyes: treasures of
love doomed to perish without a hand to gather them; sweet fancies and
images of beauty that would grow and unfold themselves into flower;
bright wit that would shine like diamonds could it be brought into the
sun: and the tyrant in possession crushes the outbreak of all these,
drives them back like slaves into the dungeon and darkness, and chafes
without that his prisoner is rebellious, and his sworn subject undutiful
and refractory. So the lamp was out in Castlewood Hall, and the lord
and lady there saw each other as they were. With her illness and altered
beauty my lord's fire for his wife disappeare