THE LEGAL POSITION OF MARRIED WOMEN. 643 



that intellectual culture can be complete without it. An exclusively- 

 scientific training will bring about a mental twist as surely as an exclu- 

 sive literary training. The value of the cargo does not compensate for 

 the ship's being out of trim ; and I should be very sorry to think that 

 this scientific college would turn out none but lop-sided men. There is 

 no need, however, that such a catastrophe should happen. Instruction 

 in English, French, and German is provided, and thus the three great- 

 est literatures of the world are made accessible to the student." 



Such is the way of it under the government of the classical Homer- 

 student, Gladstone ! An Englishman, who is master of only three liv- 

 ing languages and the exact sciences, is held to be as highly cultivated 

 as a barrister who understands only English and some Latin and Greek, 

 but has steered his way cleverly through Oxford or Cambridge ! 



But fancy for a moment that it should occur to the mind of some 

 opulent Jew (such an idea surely would never strike a Christian Ger- 

 man) to found such a " Mason's College " in Germany, on the plan of 

 " no religious teaching, no politics, no Latin, and Greek." Shocking ! 

 How happy we are to have a Stocker, a Treitschke, and a Putkammer, 

 who would not suffer a poison-plant like that to spring on German soil ! 



THE LEGAL POSITION OF MAKRIED WOMEN.* 



By Mrs. ANNA GAELIN SPENCER. 



IT is my intention to indicate the historical scope and present bear- 

 ings of my topic by a brief analysis of the following four condi- 

 tions of social order involved in its consideration, viz. : 



1. The law of social development underlying the various legal posi- 

 tions of married women, historically traced. 



2. Classification of the principal types of marriage. 



3. Summary of existing laws of married women in the United 

 States. 



4. Practical suggestions prompted by the study of these past and 

 present facts. 



Our first point (the social law controlling the varying position of 

 married women) brings us at once to the fact that physical unions 

 of men and women must have preceded all legal definitions of their 

 relation to each other, or to their offspring. We begin to call these 

 unions marriage, when the first headland of rude ceremonial selection 

 appears above the sea of promiscuous passions. For a long while yet, 

 no legal enactments fix the status of the wife ; but from the time of 



* A paper read before the Association for the Advancement of Women, at Boston, 

 October 14, 1880. 



