hey are together
who stands or who sits, or which of them walks on the inside of the
path, or goes first into a gateway. And the women look for nothing
different. They expect to be treated as equals. If a cottage woman found
that a cottage man was raising his hat to her, she would be aflame with
indignation, and would let him know very plainly indeed that she was not
that sort of fine lady.

In general, the relations between the sexes are too matter-of-fact to
permit of any refinement of feeling about them, and it is not surprising
that illegitimacy has been very common in the village. But once a man
and a woman are married, they settle down into a sober pair of comrades,
and instead of the looseness which might be looked for there is on the
whole a remarkable fidelity between the married couples. I have no
distinct memory of having heard during twenty years of any certain case
of intrigue or conjugal misbehaviour amongst the cottage folk. The
people seem to leave that sort of thing to the employing classes. It
scandalizes them to hear of it. They despise it. Oddly enough, this may
be partly due to the want of a feminine ideal, such as is developed by
help of our middle-class arts and recognized in our conventions. True,
the business of making both ends meet provides the labourer and his wife
with enough to think about, especially when the children begin to come.
Then, too, they have no luxuries to pamper their flesh, no lazy hours in
which to grow wanton. The severity of the man's daily labour keeps him
quiet; the woman, drudge that she is, soon loses the surface charm that
would excite admirers. But when all this is said, it remains probable
that a lowliness in their ideal preserves the villagers from temptation.
They do not put woman on a pedestal to be worshipped; they are
unacquainted with the finer, more sensitive, more high-strung
possibilities of her nature. People who have been affected by long
traditions of chivalry, or by the rich influences of art, are in another
case; but here amongst the labouring folk a woman is not seen through
the medium of any cherished theories; she is merely an individual
woman, a man's comrade and helper, and the mother of his family. It is a
fine thing, though, about the unions effected on these unromantic terms,
that they usually last long, the man and wife growing more affectionate,
more tender, more trustful, as they advance in years.

Of course, the marriages are not invariabl