WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
tice of irregularity, or, as Professor Iwan Bloch terms it, "wild love."[1] William Cobbett noted the tendency of most men to rebel secretly against the limitaions of conjugality.[2] The dramas of the Elizabethan age and the novels of the Eighteenth Century teem with allusions to men's wandering fancy in love.
The Puritans strove to suppress all forms of extramarital association of the sexes by the punishment of imprisonment for convicted offenders. Adultery on the part of a wife incurred the capital sentence.
There is little need to insist upon the frequency of legal marriage with super-added "free love." Every medical man of fairly wide experience knows perfectly well that many persons of both sexes exhibit the polygynous instinct. We may grant that monogamy is the highest and best form of sex-union; but what are we to say of that pseudo-monogamy which is so common in all the Western lands?
In a sermon, preached in New York on the subject of marriage, the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst said: "I do not know how many unfaithful wives and husbands there are in this city, but I calculate there might be a quarter of a million. I would not at any rate of premium issue
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