WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
A Persian wife is permitted by custom to tease her husband, and to indulge her humours and caprices to her heart's content. She believes that her compliance must be won, and not enforced harshly. The submissive wife often loses favour in the husband's eyes; therefore the astute Persian woman cultivates the art of pique, and shows her displeasure in little spiteful speeches and acts. A dutiful husband must wait upon his wife when she is going a journey to visit her relatives or friends. After the visit he must go to escort her back to the home, and sometimes the lady refuses to accompany him. She changes her mind suddenly, and expresses her intention of remaining longer.
In that case, the husband cannot oblige her to return. He must come again and again until the recalcitrant wife decides to accompany him.
These devices to retain a husband's love by annoying him appear rather farcical; but in Persia there is a method in a wife's management of her spouse; and apparently such uncertainty and variability are accepted by some men as the proper and normal traits of women.
Westermarck quotes Dr. Polak to show that Persian wives suffer deep pain when supplanted by another woman. No doubt such jealousy is not very infrequent; but we have the authority of other writers, to whom I have referred, that on the whole the life of the
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