Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/95

 her offence is not only an offence against her own person. One would feel more inclined to give ear to this explanation if it could be proved that it was only in the case of actual infractions of the moral code that the male was in the habit of availing himself of his opportunities of shifting the blame that should be his on to the back of the weaker vessel. But it is not. Why, for instance, when a man who has been engaged to a woman changes his mind and throws her over against her will should the woman be regarded as to some extent humiliated and disgraced by the action of another person, an action over which she has had no control whatever, which has, in fact, been performed against her express desire? Yet in such circumstances the woman who has been left in the lurch is supposed to suffer, quite apart from the damage to her affection, a sort of moral damage and disgrace from the heartlessness or fickleness of another person—the man to whom she has been engaged; and this moral damage is, I believe, taken into account in actions for breach of promise of marriage (where there is no question of seduction). In these instances of fickleness on the side of the