Shall she burst open the gate on
which is written LEGALITY?
Evidently the temptation is mighty. Laden with a forsaken, wounded and
perhaps angry heart, she is so easily led into the belief that her
exceptional suffering gives her a right to exceptional action! She feels
herself justified in setting aside law, when law, falsifying its purpose,
violating its solemn pledge, brings her misery instead of happiness. She
will not, or cannot, reflect that special hardships must occur under all
law; that it is the duty of the individual to bear such chance griefs
without insurrection against the public conscience; that entire freedom of
private judgment would dissolve society.
Too often--though far less often than man does the like--she makes of her
sorrow an armor of excuse, and enters into a contest for unwarrantable
chances of felicity. Only, in general, she is so far conscious of guilt,
or at least so far fearful of punishment, as to carry on her struggle in
the darkness. Few, however maddened by suffering, openly defy the serried
phalanx of the world. Still fewer venture the additional risk of defying
it under the forms of a legality which they have ventured to violate.
Why is it that so few women, even of a low and reckless class, have been
bigamists? It is because the feminine soul has a profound respect, a
little less than religious veneration, for the institution of marriage;
because it instinctively recoils from trampling upon the form which
consecrates love; because in very truth it regards the nuptial bond as a
sacrament.
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