sours these men.

I have known wives to walk through such an experience as this into
a condition of abject slavery--to waste their affection without
return, until they have become poor, and spiritless, and mean. I
have known them to lose their will--to become the mere dependent
mistresses of their husbands--to be creeping cravens in dwellings
where it should be their privilege to move as radiant queens. I
have known them thrown back upon themselves, until they have
become bitter railers against their husbands--uncomfortable
companions--openly and shamelessly flouting their affection. I do
not know what to make of the perverseness which induces a man to
repel the advances of a heart which worships him, and to become
hard and tyrannical in the degree by which that heart seeks to
express its affection for him. There are husbands who would take
the declaration that they do not love their wives as an insult,
yet who hold the woman who loves them in fear and restraint
through their whole life. I know wives who move about their houses
with a trembling regard to the moods and notions of their
husbands--wives who have no more liberty than slaves, who never
spend a cent of money without a feeling of guilt, and who never
give an order about the house without the same doubt of their
authority that they would have if they were only housekeepers,
employed at a very economical salary. I can think of no proper
punishment for such husbands except daily ducking in a horse-pond,
until reformation. Yet these asses are so unconscious of their
detestable habits of feeling and life, that, probably, not one of
them who reads this will think that I mean him, but will wonder
where I have lived to fall in with such outlandish people.