Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/91

 development of a new feeling of social equality, chiefly initiated in France, which, in an atmosphere of public intercourse largely regulated by women, made the ostentatious assertion of the husband’s headship over his wife displeasing and even ridiculous. Then, especially in the nineteenth century, there began another movement, chiefly initiated in England and carried further in America, which affected the foundations of the husband’s position from beneath. This movement consisted in a great number of legislative measures and judicial pronouncements and administrative orders—each small in itself and never co-ordinated—which taken altogether have had a cumulative effect in immensely increasing the rights of the wife independently of her husband or even in opposition to him. Thus at the present time the husband’s authority has been overlaid by new social conventions from above and undermined by new legal regulations from below.

Yet, it is important to realise, although the husband’s domestic throne has been in appearance elegantly re-covered and in substance has become worm-eaten, it still stands and still retains its ancient shape and structure. There has never been a French Revolution in the home, and that Revolution itself, which modified society so extensively, scarcely modified the legal supremacy of the husband at all, even in France under