Note 250-7 — Chapter II
John J. (John Joseph) Lalor translation
A young American woman says to Mrs. Butler: "We enjoy ourselves before marriage, but in your country girls marry to obtain a greater degree of freedom, and indulge in the pleasures and dissipations of society." While the young girls are always to be met with in the streets, wives are to be found always in the kitchen. (Mrs. Butler, American Journal, II, 183.) Compare Beaumont, Marie ou l'Esclavage aux États-Unis, I, 25 ff. 349. The opposite extreme in Italy, where, therefore, too favorable an inference should not be drawn from the small number of illegitimate births. Morally considered, one act of adultery outweighs 10 stupra! Even in the age of the renaissance,[TN 97] the free intercourse of young girls in England and the Netherlands made a favorable impression on Italian travelers; Bandello, Nov., II, 42; IV, 27.
Similar contrast in antiquity between Ionian and Dorian women. Wives were more rigidly excluded from entering gymnasia for males in Sparta than young girls. (Pausan.,[TN 98] V, 6, 5; VI, 20, 6; Plato, De Legg., VII, 805; Xenoph., De Rep. Laced., I.) Compare K. O. Müller, Dorier, II, 276 ff.