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CHAPTER X.
THE YOUNG WOMAN IN THE CHARACTER OF A WIFE.
In America the independence of women is irrecoverably lost in
the bonds of matrimony: if an unmarried woman is less
constrained there than elsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter
obligations. The former makes her father's house an abode of freedom
and of pleasure; the latter lives in the home of her husband
as if it were a cloister. Yet these two different conditions of life
are perhaps not so contrary as may be supposed, and it is natural
that the American women should pass through the one to arrive
at the other.
Religious peoples and trading nations entertain peculiarly serious notions of marriage: the former consider the regularity of woman's life as the best pledge and most certain sign of the purity of her morals; the latter regard it as the highest security for the order and prosperity of the household. The Americans are at the same time a puritanical people and a commercial nation: their religious opinions, as well as their trading habits, consequently lead them to require much abnegation on the part of women, and a constant sacrifice of her pleasures to her duties which is seldom demanded of her in Europe. Thus in the United States the inexorable opinion of the public carefully circumscribes woman within the narrow circle of domestic interests and duties, and forbids her to step beyond it.
Upon her entrance into the world a young American woman finds these notions firmly established; she sees the rules which are derived from them; she is not slow to perceive that she cannot depart for an instant from the established usages of her contemporaries, without putting in jeopardy her peace of mind, her honour, nay even her social existence; and she finds the energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of her under-
