Page:The Legal Subjection of Men.djvu/39

 :(2) This so-called neglect of the husband enables the wife to commit adultery with impunity, yet still she has her claim to maintenance. (Act of 1895.)

Neglect on the part of the wife is no legal offence at all. Neglect on the part of the husband has been construed to mean anything of which the wife likes to complain. For example, an actor who is obliged to remain late at the theatre comes home late. This is held to be "neglect," with the usual penal consequences. What between the upper millstone of "cruelty" and the nether millstone of "neglect" the unfortunate husband can now be condemned alike, if he does something, or if he does nothing—anything the wife chooses to call so being construed as either "cruelty" or "neglect."

No lying charge, no matter how gross, by word or writing is punishable if committed by the wife against the husband. She is free to slander and libel him before servants and strangers, solicitors and pressmen; accuse him of every crime known to the Old Bailey calendar, and write postcards to his club or to his employer and penal consequences ensue as long as she lives in his house. Her husband cannot leave her without incurring punishment.

If the husband, not to say slanders, but speaks disrespectfully to his wife before servants or strangers, she is quite entitled to leave his house at once, and claim the usual separation and confiscation order, and deprive him of the custody of the children whom he is bound to support.

A vindictive wife who courts publicity and scandal has the average respectable man—unless he be an angel or a lawyer—at her absolute mercy. If he be a man of the middle-classes, she can waylay him at his office and