Page:Woman in the Nineteenth Century 1845.djvu/144

138 the influence of parents, or the self-sacrifice of the young girl, should never pass. We shall be told that this repugnance is an affair of the imagination; it may be so; but imagination is a power which it is temerity to brave; and its antipathy is more difficult to conquer than its preference.”

Among ourselves, the exhibition of such a repugnance from a woman who had been given in marriage “by advice of friends,” was treated by an eminent physician as sufficient proof of insanity. If he had said sufficient cause for it, he would have been nearer right.

It has been suggested by men who were pained by seeing bad men admitted, freely, to the society of modest women, thereby encouraged to vice by impunity, and corrupting the atmosphere of homes; that there should be a senate of the matrons in each city and town, who should decide what candidates were fit for admission to their houses and the society of their daughters.

Such a plan might have excellent results, but it argues a moral dignity and decision, which does not yet exist, and needs to be induced by knowledge and reflection. It has been the tone to keep women ignorant on these subjects, or when they were not, to command that they should seem so. “It is indelicate,” says the father or husband, “to inquire into the private character of such an one. It is sufficient that I do not think him unfit to visit you.” And so, this man,