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WHY MEN ARE HANGED
to early widowhood. It would be equally reasonable to bclicve that the young man died because it was his fate to die prematurely, and the girl suffers for no fault of hers. However, that is not klone ; the blame is laid at the door of the widow, and she must pay the penalty. Indeed, somctimes young widows are treated as if they had actually killed their husbands. They are often called witches who have devoured their unlucky husbands.
Among the working peasants, women cannot be segregated. Purdah, where it is observed, is rather a matter of formality. Therc, sex morality is not meticulously dressed up, as among the upper classes, in rigid social conventions and high-sounding phrases. It stands out naked as jealousy and possessiveness. The wife belongs to the husband; social morality demands that his proprietorship should be respected by others who are entitled to reciprocal consideration for their rights. Jealousy is outraged sense of ownership. It is righteous indignation against trespass. The chastity of women in general, that is, their sexual subordination to particular men they are respectively allotted to, is protected as the collective possession of the male. Such a rustic sense of sex morality, in the necessary absence of segregation, except as a mere formality, is bound to make room for what is called illicit intercourse. Conventions are there ; but not cant, which is immensely more powerful, since it influences the victims of sex subjugation
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