It is just because
there are such people as _ladies_ in Europe that the women of the
lower classes, that is to say, the great majority of the sex, are much
more unhappy than they are in the East. And even Lord Byron says:
_Thought of the state of women under the ancient Greeks--convenient
enough. Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric
and the feudal ages--artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind
home--and be well fed and clothed--but not mixed in society. Well
educated, too, in religion--but to read neither poetry nor politics--
nothing but books of piety and cookery. Music--drawing--dancing--also
a little gardening and ploughing now and then. I have seen them
mending the roads in Epirus with good success. Why not, as well as
hay-making and milking_?
The laws of marriage prevailing in Europe consider the woman as the
equivalent of the man--start, that is to say, from a wrong position.
In our part of the world where monogamy is the rule, to marry means to
halve one's rights and double one's duties. Now, when the laws gave
women equal rights with man, they ought to have also endowed her with
a masculine intellect. But the fact is, that just in proportion as
the honors and privileges which the laws accord to women, exceed the
amount which nature gives, is there a diminution in the number
of women who really participate in these privileges; and all the
remainder are deprived of their natural rights by just so much as is
given to the others over and above their share.
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