WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
thousands of women experience dissatisfaction with their chosen partners, and suffer a terrible ennui from conjugality. At all events, the woman of a monogamous nation is able to exercise very considerable free choice, and even before the strictest marriage of convenience, arranged as in France, the plighted girl is allowed to meet her future husband in society. The maiden destined for the harem has not this opportunity. She goes to an union with an utterly unknown man, who may be morally and physically repulsive to her.
The wife of the average shopkeeper and artisan in Egypt has, of course, rather more freedom of selection. She is not brought from a foreign country, and condemned to a kind of gilded durance amid a number of women. We must not forget that a large proportion of the population of the East are practically, if not always, quite strictly monogamous.
For the present we are concerned with the life of the women of the harem, and their specific temptations to inconstancy. Let it be remembered that, from racial causes, and the sensuous atmosphere in which they are reared, these women are peculiarly susceptible to passion. Their whole thought is concentrated upon love and its pleasures. In the state of hyperæsthesia thus set up, it is not strange that they should brood incontinently, and long for experiences denied to them in the seraglio.
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