Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/638

618 the Orient the seclusion of women has tended to make the men more effeminate. She avenges herself for the injustice, as a French writer happily observes, by wielding greater influence on the temperament. This appears to be the case also here to some extent, for the men certainly display a sensuous indolence and irresolution, with an undue fondness for dress and other feminine vanities. They also assume a multiplicity of menial and light tasks which we delegate to the other sex, and among the lower classes there is a reversal, by imposing heavier labor on women. With the growth of culture, however, there will doubtless appear that proper division of labor and freer intercourse between the sexes prevailing among the most advanced nations.

The existing relationship naturally reduces love to a lower level, lacking as it does certain sustaining elements of social culture and strong character. The fault lies partly in higher circles with the duenna system, which imparts the idea that the temptation of opportunity is not to be resisted, partly with the frivolous conduct of the husband; for the woman is modest in language, dress, and manner. Finally she yields to an indulgent opinion and to the flattering idea of conquest, and accepts a lover, with little effort at concealment. So contagious an example set by the upper classes fails not to increase the influences which affect the people in general, such are the lack of real homes and proper education, the frequent limitation of families to one room, in small and flimsy houses, the