The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
It will not do. Every sane woman who has arrived at the
age of discretion is the guardian of her own honor. To
relieve her of this responsibility is to insult her intelligence.
To divide the responsibility with men of the world is to place
her on the same moral plane with the roue and the
courtesan, ready to err should opportunity offer.
It is a trifle strange that those good people who value
female purity so highly that they would reform every
roue in Christendom to secure it, have little or nothing
to say about the chief cause of hymeneal infidelity,--
loveless marriages. No woman who really loves her
husband can be untrue to him. Duty and inclination point
the same way. But if a woman does not love her husband
she will, in nearly every instance, love someone else. She
may never manifest this illicit affection by word or look--she
may not admit it even to her own heart; but no matter how
strongly armed she be in honesty, she stands within the
pale of danger. From the questionable act of bartering,
according to due forms of law and with priestly blessing, an
attractive person for wealth or social position, is a
comparatively easy step to practices no more
reprehensible, but wanting the sanction of society. Is it at
all strange that an impulsive young woman, whose parents
have persuaded her to marry a man she cordially detests,
and who is perhaps four times her age, should conclude
that moral codes are chiefly fashionable cant and that
a pretense of observing them is all that is really necessary?
. . .
While the reformers are busy saving the world it is strange
that they do not devise some method of checking the
decided misogamistic tendency of the young men of to-day.
Marriages are becoming decidedly unpopular with them,
and the result is that thousands of young men, who should
be model husbands, are living lives of but quasi-
respectability; thousands of young women who should be
honored wives and happy mothers are thrown upon their
own resources,--forced to choose between virtue and rags
and silks and shame. The latter soon learn that honest
poverty brings almost as complete social ostracism, almost
as much contumely, as dishonest finery, and, despairing of
ever becoming true men's wives, too many of them become
false men's mistresses.
Here is work in abundance for the reformer. To it, oh, ye
saviors of the world. Teach the young men of the land that
marriage is a thing to be desired, even though they be not
millionaires and no heiress smiles upon them.
. . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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