How is one to explain this singular phenomenon, that so many good and even generous-minded men, after expressing a heart-felt sympathy with the sufferings of women, after proclaiming their intelligence and their right to live, falter and hide their heads when the question of liberty at home is raised? It is not because they believe there is no more to be said. La Rochefoucauld declares that “there are few good wives but are tired of their calling,” to which it would be easy to reply, “There are few good wives whose calling is not tiring.” But what is to be done? No one is inclined to go like Plato to the root of the matter and suppress marriage altogether. Marriage obviously necessitates a husband; it is a vexatious, clogging, disagreeable necessity, maybe, but there are no visible means of escaping it. A wife too is necessary; well, once a man and woman are united in wedlock, one of the two must needs hold the reins. There are many reasons, even physical ones, why a woman should not undertake to earn bread for the family and to flog the husband. And so the husband retains that right. But if we go a little deeper into the psychology of domestic life in the sixteenth century, we shall note other important phenomena, pointing to a different conclusion. To begin with, investigating facts from the outside, who was it that complained of marriage? The man; always the man. In actual working the woman found compensations, or at least advantages in it. For her it was a state leading to boundless possibilities if only she cared to open the door. The more ardent paladins of feminism, indeed, were often disconcerted by her outwardly conciliatory attitude towards it. But the husband, married though he was, could not forget that setting up an establishment had involved the turning his back upon life. His chains appeared to him, if not heavy (to him they were not heavy), at any rate the sign of a monotonous, unvarying servitude. In the words of an old ballad, the monk may change his order, the canon his stall, the official his functions, But we that be poor married men Can neither go up nor down. If we enquire of the spouses themselves, we find that the disagreements and difficulties rarely sprang from the larger facts—those that were regarded as irreparable.