Habituated from infancy to such a yoke, and regarding themselves as of an inferior race, most women submit to their lot with exemplary resignation. Having no idea of progress, or of an infraction of established usage, they bear all things. They become devoted and obedient wives, jealous of the reputation and well-being of their husbands. They even submit calmly to the tyranny and unreason of their mothers-in-law. Often, however, there is genuine rebellion in the household. Adding to her other faults of character, violence and insubordination, a Corean wife quarrels with her mother-in-law, makes life to her husband a burden, and incessantly provokes scenes of choler and scandal. Among the lower classes, in such cases, a few strokes of a stick or blows of the fist bring the wife to terms. In the higher classes it is not proper to strike a woman, and the husband has no other course than that of divorce. If it is not easy for him to marry again, he submits. If his wife, not content with tormenting him, is unfaithful to him, or, deserting his bed, goes back to her own house, he can lead her before the magistrate, who after administering a beating with the paddles, gives her as a concubine to one of his underlings. Women of tact and energy make themselves respected and conquer their legitimate position, as the following example shows. It is taken by Dallet from a Corean treatise on morals for the youth of both sexes: Toward the end of the last century a noble of the capital, of high rank, lost his wife, by whom he had had several children. His advanced age rendered a second marriage difficult. Nevertheless, the middle-men (or marriage-brokers employed in such cases) decided that a match could be made with the daughter of a poor noble in the province of Kiung-sang. On the appointed day he appeared at the mansion of his future father-in-law, and the couple mounted the stage to make the salute according to custom. Our grandee, casting his eyes upon his new wife, stopped for the moment thunderstruck. She was very fat, ugly, hump-backed, and appeared to be as slightly favored with gifts of mind as of body. But he could not withdraw, and he played his part firmly. He resolved neither to take her to his house nor to have anything to do with her. The two or three days which it was proper to pass in his father-in-law’s house being spent, he departed for the capital and paid no further attention to his new relatives.