In any case, men and
women in the East do not marry anyone they fancy, as in England
and America. Women are secluded and marriages are arranged. In
Salt Lake City the free unsecluded woman could see and meet the
ablest man of the community, and tempt him to make her his tenth
wife by all the arts peculiar to women in English-speaking
countries. No eastern woman can do anything of the sort. The man
alone has any initiative; but he has no access to the woman;
besides, as we have seen, the difficulty created by male license
is not polygyny but polyandry, which is not allowed.
Consequently, if we are to make polygyny a success, we must limit
it. If we have two women to every one man, we must allow each man
only two wives. That is simple; but unfortunately our own actual
proportion is, roughly, something like 1 1/11 woman to 1 man. Now
you cannot enact that each man shall be allowed 1 1/11 wives,
or that each woman who cannot get a husband all to herself shall
divide herself between eleven already married husbands. Thus there
is no way out for us through polygyny. There is no way at all out
of the present system of condemning the superfluous women to
barrenness, except by legitimizing the children of women who are
not married to the fathers.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59