She must look the whole circumstances of it in the face and ask
herself whether she herself threw dust in her own eyes as regards the
character of her husband, whether he deceived her in this, or whether
they just drifted together, each to blame as much as the other,
through the attraction of sex and the cruelty of ignorance. She may
regret it a thousandfold--but she has done the thing of her own free
will, no one forced her to wed the man; she may have done so
unwillingly in some cases--and for ulterior motives, but at all events
she was consenting and not dragged to church resisting, and so if she
is sensible she will use the whole of her intelligence to make the
best of it. She will look to the end of her every action and her every
thought. Will brooding over her "rights," and the wrongs he has
inflicted, mend them? Will it do anything but give her vanity--the
satisfaction of self-pity? Certainly not.
If she has really evolved enough to wish to impose her opinions and
individuality upon her household or the community, she will have
realised that the welfare of the home for which she is responsible,
and the community to which she belongs, are, or ought to be, of far
more consequence to her than her own personal emotions. Therefore she
must ask herself whether she has any right to upset the happiness of
the one, and the conception of good of the other, by indulging in
personal quarrels and bickerings, or open scandal with her mate. A
really noble and unselfish woman would never consider her personal
emotion before her duty to God and to her neighbour. It is because the
outlook of woman is as a rule so pitifully narrow and self-centred
that she often makes a useless and unhappy wife, and shipwrecks her
own and others' futures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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