WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
monogamous. But it is a monogamy differing essentially from that of Christian countries.
The legal and religious single marriage of England is an enduring link that can only be severed by divorce. Legal separation is an incomplete dissolution, inasmuch as the sundered persons cannot enter into marriage. In Catholic nations the tie is still more difficult to loosen. In India divorce is easy. You may, if you choose, engage in a succession of monogamous unions, without forfeiting social esteem, or infringing the principles of your creed.
Facility of divorce does not tend naturally to inconstancy, in spite of all that is said to the contrary by those who oppose it. In Burma, for example, divorce is a simple and speedy process; but such separation between the married is rare. There is a reason for this comparative rarity of divorce in the East, and especially among the upper classes. When a man has four legal wives, and a number of secondary spouses, entirely at his disposal, he is apt to overlook, or to deal leniently with, the faults of one of his chief wives.
A discontented husband, under the monogamic sway, sometimes seeks love, or the gratification of sexual passion, outside of the home. Often he maintains a second house, and lives a double life, or he frequents the company of demi-mondaines. There
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