The wife has recognized duties to her husband, but he has few, if any, to her. It is correct for a man to treat his wife with external marks of respect, but he would be an object for scorn and ridicule if he showed her affection or treated her as a companion. Among the upper classes a bridegroom, after passing three or four days with his wife, leaves her for a considerable time to show his indifference. To act otherwise would be “bad form.” My impression is that the community of interests and occupations which poverty gives, and the embargo which it lays on other connections, in Korea as in some other Oriental countries, produces happier marriages among the lower orders than among the higher. Korean women have always borne the yoke. They accept inferiority as their natural lot; they do not look for affection in marriage, and probably the idea of breaking custom never occurs to them. Usually they submit quietly to the rule of the _belle-mère_, and those who are insubordinate and provoke scenes of anger and scandal are reduced to order by a severe beating, when they are women of the people. But in the noble class custom forbids a husband to strike his wife, and as his only remedy is a divorce, and remarriage is difficult, he usually resigns himself to his fate. But if, in addition to tormenting him and destroying the peace of his house, the wife is unfaithful, he can take her to a mandarin, who, after giving her a severe beating, may bestow her on a satellite. The seclusion of girls in the parental home is carried on after marriage, and in the case of women of the upper and middle classes is as complete as is possible. They never go out by daylight except in completely closed chairs. At night, attended by a woman and a servant with a lantern, and with a mantle over her head, a wife may stir abroad and visit her female friends, but never without her husband’s permission, who requires, or may require, proof that the visit has been actually paid. Shopping is done by servants, or goods are brought to the veranda, the vendors discreetly retiring. Time, which among the leisured classes hangs heavily on the hands, is spent in spasmodic cooking, sewing, embroidering, reading very light literature in _En-mun_, and in the never-failing resources of gossip and the interminable discussion of babies. If a wife is very dull indeed, she can, with her husband’s permission, send for actors, or rather posturing reciters, to the compound, and look at them through the chinks of the bamboo blinds. Through these also many Korean ladies have seen the splendors of the _Kur-dong_.