Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads by George Meredith

Author:George Meredith [Meredith, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

William Cobbett, from Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1862)1

William Cobbett (1763–1835), an agitator for radical parliamentary reform, was an English farmer and prolific writer who lived and worked in Britain and the United States. First published in 1829, his Advice to Young Men went through a number of editions and was reissued in 1862. Cobbett’s advice on the subject of adultery, excerpted here, is notable for its account of shared responsibility. Although Cobbett insists that infidelity is “much worse in the wife” than in the husband, he nevertheless concedes that husbands must work to avoid being “the cause of temptation to the wife to be unfaithful” or reacting in kind. Meredith—whose “Modern Love” turns upon the fact that both husband and wife are to blame for their marital unhappiness—was a fan of Cobbett’s work; he encouraged his friend William Hardman to write Cobbett’s biography. The numbers preceding each section are from Cobbett’s original; we retain them here for readers’ convenience.

When we consider what a young woman gives up on her wedding-day; she makes a surrender, an absolute surrender, of her liberty, for the joint lives of the parties; she gives 178. the husband the absolute right of causing her to live in what place, and in what manner and in what society, he pleases; she gives him the power to take from her, and to use for his own purposes, all her goods, unless reserved by some legal instrument; and, above all, she surrenders to him her person. Then, when we consider the pains which they endure for us, and the large share of all the anxious parental cares that fall to their lot; when we consider their devotion to us, and how unshaken their affection remains in our ailments, even though the most tedious and disgusting; when we consider the offices that they perform, and cheerfully perform, for us, when, were we left to one another, we should perish from neglect; when we consider their devotion to their children, how evidently they love them better, in numerous instances, than their own lives; when we consider these things, how can a just man think anything a trifle that effects their happiness? . . .

182. But though all the aforementioned considerations demand from us the kindest possible treatment of a wife, the husband is to expect dutiful deportment at her hands. He is not to be her slave; he is not to yield to her against the dictates of his own reason and judgment; it is her duty to obey all his lawful commands; and, if she have sense, she will perceive that it is a disgrace to herself to acknowledge as a husband a thing over which she has an absolute control. It should always be recollected that you are the party whose body must, if any do, lie in jail for debts, and for debts of her contracting, too, as well as of your own contracting. Over

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