They are promised a permanent maintenance from their master's
estate, and promise in return a fixed term of marriage. After two or
three years they are free to rescind the contract; after ten or twelve
they may leave their husbands with a stipulated pension. They receive
an allowance for dress and so forth proportionate to their personal
attractions or to the fancy of the suitor; and of course the richest
men can offer the best terms, and generally secure the most agreeable
wives, in whatever number they please or think they can without
inconvenience support."
"Then," I said, "the women can divorce themselves at pleasure, but the
men cannot dismiss them! This hardly looks like equality."
"The practical result," he answered, "is that men don't care for a
release which would part them from complaisant slaves, and that women
dare not seek a divorce which can only hand them over to another
master on rather worse terms. When the longer term has expired, the
latter almost always prefer the servitude to which they are accustomed
to an independent life of solitude and friendlessness.
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