| Wife options - You see nowadays marriages are arranged that way - like traps. What is the natural way? The lass is ripe, she must be given in marriage. It seems very simple if the girl is not a fright and there are men wanting to marry. That is how it was done in olden times. The lass was grown up and her parents arranged the marriage. So it was done, and is done, among all mankind - Chinese, Hindus, Mohammedans, and among our own working classes; so it is done among at least 99% of the human race. Only among 1% or less, among us libertines, has it been discovered that that is not right, and something new has been invented. And what is this novelty? It is that the maidens sit round, and the men walk about, as at a bazaar, choosing. And the maidens wait and think, but dare not to say: "me, please!" "No, me!" "not her, but me!" "Look what shoulders and other things I have!" And we men stroll around and look, and are very pleased. "Yes, I know! I won't be caught!" They stroll about and look, and are very pleased that everything is arranged like that for them. And then in an unguarded moment - snap! He is caught! - Then how ought it to be done? - I asked - Should the women propose? - Oh, I don't know how; only if there's to be equality, let it be equality. If they have discovered that prearrenged matches are degrading, why this is a thousand times worse! Then the rights and chances were equal, but here the woman is a slave in a bazaar or the bait in a trap. Tell any mother, or the girl herself, the truth, that she is only occupied in catching a husband... oh dear! what an insult! Yet they all do it and have nothing else to do. What is so terrible is to see sometimes quite innocent poor young girls engaged on it. TOLSTOI, Leon - The Kreutzer Sonata I don't think I have anything left to say. |
