Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/813

Rh which is to make her a mere slave, under every form of religion extant, and of which the complex marriage of the Oneida Community was but another logical result.

When woman interprets the Bible for herself, it will be in the interest of a higher morality, a purer home. Monogamy is woman's doctrine, as polygamy is man's. Backofen, the Swiss jurist, says that the regulation of marriage by which, in primitive times, it became possible for a woman to belong only to one man, came about by a religious reformation, wherein the women, in armed conflict, obtained a victory over men.

In Christian countries to-day, the restrictions on woman in the married relation are much greater than upon man. Adultery, which is polygamy outside of the married relation, is everywhere held as more venial in man than in woman. In England, while the husband can easily obtain a divorce from his wife, upon the ground of adultery, it is almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce upon the same ground. Nothing short of the husband's bringing another woman into the house, to sustain wifely relations to him, at all justifies her in proceeding for a separation; and even then, the husband retains control of the wife's property. A trial in England is scarcely ended in which a husband willed his wife's property to his mistress and illegitimate children. The courts not only decided in his favor, but to this legal robbery of the wife, added the insult of telling her that a part of her own money was enough for her, and that she ought to be willing that her husband's mistress and illegitimate children should share it with her.

Milton's "Paradise Lost" is responsible for many existing views in regard to woman. After the Reformation, as women began to waken to literature, came Milton, a patriot of patriots—as patriots were held in those days, a man who talked of liberty for men—but who held man to stand in God's place toward woman. Although it has been affirmed that in his blindness Milton dictated his great epic to his daughters, and a Scotch artist has painted the scene (a picture recently purchased by the Lenox Library), yet this is one of the myths men call history, and amuse themselves in believing. This tale of blind Milton dictating "Paradise Lost" to his daughters, is a trick designed to play upon our sympathies. Old Dr.