Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/42

The Legal Position of Women in China. or noise. Nevertheless, according to some, ond matrimonial venture her only way of divorce is rare in China. A woman cannot escape is to become a bonzess, a priestess of obtain a legal separation from her husband. Buddha. Chinese legislation is relatively moderate (Westermarck, pp. 524, 525, 528.) According to Ta Tsing Leu Lee (sec. 116), in regard to adultery. In the first place the if a husband repudiates his wife without her husband is expressly forbidden to lend, or having broken the matrimonial connection let out, his wife under pain of twenty-four by adultery or otherwise, and without her strokes of the bamboo. A Chinese woman having furnished him with any of the seven can certainly be imprisoned for adultery, but justifying causes of divorce, he shall be pun the punishment is generally repudiation; in ished with eighty blows. Moreover, though fact, the husband is liable to twenty strokes one of the seven justifying causes should be of the bamboo if he does not put her away. chargeable against the wife, yet if any of the She can, also, be sold by her husband, or a three reasons against divorce should exist, judge, for this sin. The man who takes namely, (i), the wife having mourned three away the wife or the daughter of a freeman, years for the husband's parents; (2), the to make her his wife by force, is punishable family having become rich, after being poor by imprisonment and death by strangulation. previous to and at the time of their marriage; (Letorneau, Evolution of Marriage, p. 216.) Criminal intercourse with either an un (3), the wife having no parents living to re ceive her back again: in these cases none married or a married woman is severely pun of the aforementioned causes will justify a ished. Rape is punished with death by divorce, and the husband who puts away his strangulation; an assault with intent to com wife on such grounds shall suffer punish mit rape is punished by one hundred blows ment two degrees less than that last stated and perpetual imprisonment. Criminal in and shall be obliged to receive her again. tercourse with any woman under twelve years of age is punishable as rape. If the wife has broken the matrimonial con If a woman murders her husband she is nection by an act of adultery or by anyother act which, by law, not only authorizes chopped into seven pieces and is thrown out without proper burial; on the other hand, the but requires that the parties shall be sep arated, the husband shall receive a punish husband, if he kills his wife, is only pun ment of eighty blows if he retains his wife. ished by three months' imprisonment. We It is not considered proper for a widow to may, however, remember that by a law not contract a second marriage and in genteel abolished until 1790, a wife in England, who families such an event rarely, if ever, occurs. murdered her husband, was publicly burnt Indeed, a lady of rank by marrying a second to death alive. time exposes herself to a penalty of eighty If a woman runs away from her husband blows. (Gray's China, Vol. T. p. 215.) he may. if he catch her, give her one hundred The loyal woman who refuses to survive strokes with the bamboo and sell her to any her husband receives great honor in China. .one willing to buy. (Letorneau, p. 241.) However, if the widow is without fortune Any person guilty of striking his mother, and does not die, another mate is generally or his grandmother, had to suffer death by her fate; she represents a value to her hus beheading; and the luckless wife who pre band's heirs which they hasten to profit by, sumed to strike her husband's father, mother, she is sold nolens z-olens; the child at the paternal grandfather or grandmother, was breast, if there is one, is included in the bar punished in the same way. gain. Yet the law will not allow the sale of Women, as well as men over eighty and a widow before the expiration of the time boys under ten years of age. and cripples for mourning. If she desires to avoid a sec who have lost an eye or a limb, are entitled,