Year: 1870

DenencenE as the element OF hre, yet


like that, It sometimes tortures when il


should only have comforted.


The sufferer. if a woman, usually


bears her smart tamely-with more OIL


less domestic fretting and private weep
ing indeed, but without violent effort to


escape from her bed of embers. Divorce


is public, ugly, and brutal, her sensibili-


ty revolts from it Moreover, mere un-


happiness. mere disappointment of the
, affections, does not establish a claim for
legal separation. Finally, there IS wo-


man difficulty Of selfmaintenance-t
, fact that her labor viii not in general


give her both comfort and position.


What then Unloved, unable to love,
| yet with an intense desire for affection,


and an immense capacity for granting
it, her heart is tempted to wander beyond
the circle of her duty. A fattering shape
approaches her dungeon walls voice
calls to her to come forth and be glad
if only for a moment there seems to be
a chance of winning the alteration which
has been her whole life's desire: there
is an opportunity of using the emotions
which are burning within her. Shall she
burst open the gate on which is written
Legality?


Evidently the temptation is mighty.
| LAUGH VIII d lOl Ol5elEG4lH WOuAlNCNl anu
angry heart, she is easily led into the be-
lief that her exceptional suffering gives
her a right to exceptional action She
feels herself justified in setting aside law
when law. falsifying its purpose, viola
ting its solemn pledge, brings her misery
instead of happiness. She will not, or
cannot, reflect that special hardships
must occur under all law that it is the
duty of the individual to bear such
/ chance gTiefs without insurrection
against the public conscience; the en-
tire freedom of private judgement would
dissolve society.


Too often-though far less often than
man does the lke-she makes of her
sorrow an armOr of excuse, and enters
into a contest for unwarrantable chances
of felicity. Only, in general, she is SO
far conscious of guilt, or at least so far
| fearful of punishment, as to carry on her
struggle in the darkness. Few. however.
maddened by suffering, openly defy the
serried phalanx of the world. Still fewer
venture the additional risk of defying it
under the forms of a legality which they
have ventured to violate.
Why is it that so few women, even of
low and reckless class. have been biga-
mists It is because the feminine soul
has profound respect, little less than
religious veneration, for the institution of
marriage; because it instinctively recoils |
from trampling upon the form which
consecrates love because in very truth
it regards the nuptial bond as a sacra-
ment. / believe thar the average woman |
would turn away from bigamy with a
deeper shudder than from any other |
stain of conjugal inhdelity.


But there are exceptions to all modes |
of feeling and of reasoning.


Here is Alice Duvernois she is wo-
man of good position, of intellectual |
quickness, of unusual senSitiveness of
spirit yet she has thought out this woe |
ful question differently from the great |
majority of her sex. To her, thirsty for |
sympathy and love, bound to a man |
who gives her neither, grown feverish !
and delirious with the torment of an
empty heart, it has seemed that the sane |
tity of a second marriage will some
no W cover the violation Of first.


This alteration we can only explain /
on the ground that she was one of those
natures-mature in some respects, but |
strangely childlike in others-whom |
most of us love to stigmatize as unprac-
teal and who, in fact, never become |
quite accustomed to this world and its |
rules.


On the very evening of her arrival |
home she put to her husband a question |
of infantile and almost incredible sim /
plicity. It was one Of the many obser-
vations which made him tell her from
time to time that she was a fool.


"What do they do" she asked, ito
women who marry two husbands p


tThey put them in Jail, was his cool
reply.


Il think it is brutal, she broke out
Indignantly, as if the iron gates were al
ready closing upon her. and she were
COntesting the justice of the punishment.


You are pretty sinPleton. to set
up your opinion against that of all civili-
zed society = was the response of in
carnate Reason.


From that moment she trembled at
her danger, and quivered under the re-
morse which terror brings. At times she
thought of flying, of abandoning the |
husband who did not love her for one
that did; but she was afraid of being
pursued, afraid of discovery. The knowl-
edge that society had already passed /
judgement upon her made her see her
self in the new light of criminal. friend
less, hunted, and doomed. The penalty |
of her illegal grasp after happiness was |
already tracking her like bloodhound. |
Yet when she further learned that her
second marriage was not binding be- |
cause of the first, her heart rose in mutt
| ny. Faithful to the only love that there !
had been for her in the world, she re-
peated to herself, a hundred times a !
day, at IS binding-it IS r


She was in dark insurrection against /
her kind; at times she was on the point
of bursting out into open defiance. She
stared at Duvernois, crazy to tell him, |
Il am welded to another.


He noticed the wild expression, the
longing, wide-open eyes, the parted and |
he said, with brutality which had be- |
come customary with him, What are
you putting on those airs for ? I sup
pose you are imagining yourself the
heroine of a romance.


With glare of pain and scorn she
walked away from him in silence.


1t is shocking indeed to be fastened /
speechless upon a rack, and to be
charged by uncomprehending souls with |
counterfeiting emotion. She was so con-
stituted that she could not help laying |
up this speech of her husbands against
him as one of the many stolid misdoings |
which justified both contempt and aver
sion. In fact, his inability or unwilling |
ness to comprehend her had always !
been, in her searching and sensitive
eyes, his chief crime. To be understood, |
to be accepted at her full worth, was one
of the most urgent demands Of her ma
ture.


The life of this young woman, not
only within but without. was strange in |
deed. She fulfilled that problem of
! Hawthorne individual bearing one |
character, living one life in one place, |
and totally different one in another
place-upon one spot of earth angelic,
and upon another vile.


Stranger still, her harsher qualities
appeared where her manner of life was
lawful, and her finer ones where it was
condemnable. At Northport she had
been like sunlight to her intimates and
like a ministering seraph to the poor.
| In New York she avoided society; she