Notwithstanding the fact that woman is estimated so low in the social scale, there is no place where she is considered of greater necessity, than in Korea. A man without a wife is to be pitied by all, and considered of all men most miserable. This seemingly high estimate is not from the same standpoint from which woman is estimated in Christian countries, but from the same standpoint from which the farmer estimates his mules or his cows—the standpoint of value. If a farmer is to farm, he must have stock with which to work the farm. So in like manner if one is to eat and wear clothes, he must have somebody to cook and sew; and who can do this as well as a wife? Was she not made for that very purpose, along with any and every thing else that will contribute to the happiness of man? Our village woman is not a partner in the house of her husband, but she is a servant, a being of inferior quality, always to be spoken to in low forms of speech by her lord and master—in short, his slave. If she is to keep his respect and be called a good wife, she must obey his every command. Not only must she obey her husband, but there is his mother, with whom she usually lives, and she too must be obeyed. Then, too, his father is at liberty to order her around as he may wish, and his older brothers also have some authority in these matters; so that in the relatives of her husband she has masters many and lords not a few.
If it were only that she must toil and work, it would not be so bad; but in the midst of all this labor and toil to be counted as nothing, a thing without a name
