Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/161

Rh jeopardise their future; husbands and fathers who leave wife and child, to lay the income of a family at the feet of a harlot.

But, numerous as the examples of masculine “bondage” are, every observer of life, who is at all unprejudiced, must allow that they are far from equalling, in number and importance, the cases of feminine “bondage.” This is easily explained. For a man, love is almost always only an episode, and he has many other and important interests; for a woman, on the other hand, love is the principal thing in life, and, until the birth of children, always her first interest. After this it is still often her first thought, but always, at least, takes the second place. But, what is still more important, the man ruled by this impulse easily satisfies it in embraces for which he finds unlimited opportunities. A woman in the upper classes of society, if she have a husband, is bound to him alone; and even in the lower classes there are still great obstacles to polyandry. Therefore, a woman’s husband means for her the whole sex, and his importance to her becomes very great. It must also be considered that the normal relation established by law and custom between husband and wife is far from being one of equality. In itself it expresses a sufficient predominance of woman’s dependence. The concessions she makes to her lover, to retain the love which it would be almost impossible for her to replace, only plunge her deeper in bondage; and this increases the insatiable demands of husbands resolved to use their advantage and traffic in woman’s readiness to sacrifice herself.

Here may be placed the fortune-hunter, who for money allows himself to be enveloped in the easily created illusions of a maiden; the seducer, and the man who compromises wives, calculating on blackmail; the gilded army officer and the musician with the lion’s mane, who know so well how to stammer “Thee or death!” as a means to pay debts and provide a life of ease. Here, too, belong the kitchen-soldier, whose love the cook returns with love plus means to satisfy a different appetite; the drinker, who consumes the savings of the mistress he marries; and the man who with blows compels the prostitute on whom he lives to earn a certain sum for him