[340] It is sometimes said in defence of the claim for damages for seducing a wife that women are often weak and unable to resist masculine advances, so that the law ought to press heavily on the man who takes advantage of that weakness.  This argument seems a little antiquated.  The law is beginning to accept the responsibility even of married women in other respects, and can scarcely refuse to accept it for the control of her own person.  Moreover, if it is so natural for the woman to yield, it is scarcely legitimate to punish the man with whom she has performed that natural act.  It must further be said that if a wife’s adultery is only an irresponsible feminine weakness, a most undue brutality is inflicted on her by publicly demanding her pecuniary price from her lover.  If, indeed, we accept this argument, we ought to reintroduce the mediaeval girdle of chastity.

[341] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 114.

[342] This rule is, in England, by no means a dead letter.  Thus, in 1907, a wife who had left her home, leaving a letter stating that her husband was not the father of her child, subsequently brought an action for divorce, which, as the husband made no defence, she obtained.  But, the King’s Proctor having learnt the facts, the decree was rescinded.  Then the husband brought an action for divorce, but could not obtain it, having already admitted his own adultery by leaving the previous case undefended.  He took the matter up to the Court of Appeal, but his petition was dismissed, the Court being of opinion that “to grant relief in such a case was not in the interest of public morality.”  The safest way in England to render what is legally termed marriage absolutely indissoluble is for both parties to commit adultery.

[343] Magnus Hirschfeld, Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft, Oct., 1908.

[344] H. Adner, “Die Richterliche Beurteilung der ‘Zerruetteten’ Ehe,” Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, Teil 8.

[345] Gross-Hoffinger, Die Schichsale der Frauen und die Prostitution, 1847; Bloch presents a full summary of the results of this inquiry in an Appendix to Ch.  X of his Sexual Life of Our Times.

[346] Divorce in the United States is fully discussed by Howard, op. cit., vol. iii.

[347] H. Muensterberg, The Americans, p. 575.  Similarly, Dr. Felix Adler, in a study of “The Ethics of Divorce” (The Ethical Record, 1890, p. 200), although not himself an admirer of divorce, believes that the first cause of the frequency of divorce in the United States is the high position of women.