Marriage as a Trade

Marriage as a Trade

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Marriage as a Trade by Cicely Hamilton

Published:

1909

Pages:

127

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1,000

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Marriage as a Trade

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(0 Reviews)
The only excuse for this book is the lack of books on the subject with which it deals -- the trade aspect of marriage. That is to say, wifehood and motherhood considered as a means of livelihood for women.I shall not deny for an instant that there are aspects of matrimony other than the trade aspect; but upon these there is no lack of a very plentiful literature -- the love of man and woman has been written about since humanity acquired the art of writing.

Book Excerpt

statement; but all the same, I maintain that I am perfectly justified in asserting that the average man does mentally and unconsciously except the mass of women from the workings of that universal law.

To give a simple and familiar instance. Year by year there crops up in the daily newspapers a grumbling and sometimes acrid correspondence on the subject of the incursion of women into a paid labour market formerly monopolized by their brothers. (The unpaid labour market, of course, has always been open to them.) The tone taken by the objector is instructive and always the same. It is pointed out to us that we are working for less than a fair wage; that we are taking the bread out of the mouths of men; that we are filching the earnings of a possible husband and thereby lessening, or totally destroying, our chances of matrimony.

The first objection is, of course, legitimate, and is shared by the women to whom it applies; from the others one can only infer that it is an impertinence in a woman to be