The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1856-09-11
MARRIAGE GA0LERS.

Gaolers are of various kinds. There are
gaolers of criminal prisons-men of square
heads and powerful shoulders, who carry colos-
sal keys in their mighty hands, and look as if
they lived over gunpowder train with the
match burning, and they knew it; gaolers of
financial prisons, jovial and lynxeyed, who pry
sharply into feminine pockets and baskets, and
direct trembling women to the six-in-ten and
eightin four they came to see; gaolers of pGliti-
cal prisons--of an spocryphal order these in
England-whose romantic daughters file off
chains at dead of night, drug guards with
brandy and laudsnum-a fine thing in cholera
times-and, with tear and a blessing, and lots
of money stolen from the till, set the captive
hero free, to the infinite disgrace of their gaoler
relative; and there are gaolers parochial and
gaolers mathematical gaolers and scholastic
gaoers; but the worst gaoler of all is the mar
ital gaoler, as constituted by the laws of our
illogical merrie old England.
An absolute lord is this marital gaoler. He
holds the person, property, and reputation, of
his conjugal prisoner, in as fast gsol as ever
was built of granite and iron. Society and law
are the materials, unsubstsntial enough, out OF
which he has built his house of duresse but in
those airy cells lie more broken hearts than
ever the ste:nast dungeon held. More injustice
is committed there, than in the vilest Austrian
fellow, and in love with his prisoner, things
may go o. smoothly enough. But if he be a
man of coarse or tickle passions-if he be man
without consciousness or honor-if he be a
man OF violent temper, of depraved habits, of
reckless life, he may illtreat, ruin, and destroy
his prisoner, at his pleasure--all in the name
of the law, and by virtue of bis conjugal rights
The prisoner-wife is not recognised by the law;
she is her gaoler's property, the same as his dog
or his horse; with this difference, that be can.
not openly sell her; and if he main or murder
her, be Is liable to punishment, as be would be
to prosecution by the Cruelty to Animals 60
ciety, if he MANNED or ill-treated his dog or his
horse. AS "the very legal being of the wife is
suspen,tcd during the marriage, or at least in
corporated ana consolidated with that of the
husband" (ride Blacksione,) it is therefore
simply a as sentient animal, not as wife, nor as
citizehsss, that she can claim the protection
of the laws; and thsn only in cases of personal
and distinct brutality which threatens her life.
The same protection, and only the same, as ia
granted to slaves IN the United States-as is
granted to all sentient and domestica animale
in most civilized communities, The prisoner
wife has no property. All that she possessed
before her marriage, and all that she may earn,
save, or inherit, after her marriage, belongs to
her husband. He may squander her fortune
at the gaming-table or among his mistresses
he may beQueath It to bis Legitimate children,
leaving his wife and her children to beggary
he may do with it as he will; the lay makes
him lord and gaoler, and places the poor tren-
bling victim unreservedly in his hands. The
like mag be do with the earnings, the savings
of his wife, during bis incarceration, if he have
committed a crime; during his iessrtion, if he
have taken fancy to desert her for some one
else; during separation, forced on him BY her
friends, to protect her from hs brutality. What
Dyer be the cause which hes thrown tie wife on
her own resonrces, cpd made her work and gain,
earnings gained by her own work while she vas
alone; he may seize them and carry them of
pnhindered, leaving her to the same terrible