immunity from discipline, and to make any other terms that she may
be led to regard as equitable. At present women are unable to make
most of these concessions even if they would: the laws of the
majority of western nations are inflexible. If, for example, an
Englishwoman should agree, by an ante-nuptial contract, to submit
herself to the discipline, not of the current statutes, but of the elder
common law, which allowed a husband to correct his wife
corporally with a stick no thicker than his thumb, it would be
competent for any sentimental neighbour to set the agreement at
naught by haling her husband before a magistrate for carrying it out,
and it is a safe wager that the magistrate would jail him.


This plan, however novel it may seem, is actually already in
operation. Many a married woman, in order to keep her
husband from revolt, makes more or less disguised surrenders of
certain of the rights and immunities that she has under existing laws.
There are, for example, even in America, women who practise the
domestic arts with competence and diligence, despite the plain fact
that no legal penalty would be visited upon them if they failed to do
so. There are women who follow external trades and professions,
contributing a share to the family exchequer. There are women
who obey their husbands, even against their best judgments. There
are, most numerous of all, women who wink discreetly at husbandly
departures, overt or in mere intent, from the oath of chemical purity
taken at the altar. It is a commonplace, indeed, that many happy
marriages admit a party of the third part. There would be more of
them if there were more women with enough serenity of mind to see
the practical advantage of the arrangement. The trouble with such
triangulations is not primarily that they involve perjury or that they