While no system was
definitely decided upon by legislation as to the position of women,
their minds were left to follow their inclinations, and there are
found among them as many who resemble Marion Delorme as those who
resemble Cornelia; there are vices among them, but there are as many
virtues. These were creatures as incomplete as the laws which governed
them; they were considered by some as a being midway between man and
the lower animals, as a malignant beast which the laws could not too
closely fetter, and which nature had destined, with so many other
things, to serve the pleasure of men; while others held woman to be an
angel in exile, a source of happiness and love, the only creature who
responded to the highest feelings of man, while her miseries were to
be recompensed by the idolatry of every heart. How could the
consistency, which was wanting in a political system, be expected in
the general manners of the nation?
And so woman became what circumstances and men made her, instead of
being what the climate and native institutions should have made her;
sold, married against her taste, in accordance with the _Patria
potestas_ of the Romans, at the same time that she fell under the
marital despotism which desired her seclusion, she found herself
tempted to take the only reprisals which were within her power. Then
she became a dissolute creature, as soon as men ceased to be intently
occupied in intestine war, for the same reason that she was a virtuous
woman in the midst of civil disturbances.
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