While he adopts the oriental hypothesis of
woman for the sake of man, he modifies it by laying more stress upon
mutual affection, the charities of home, and the intercommunion of
intellectual and moral life, than upon that ministration of woman to
the appetite and comforts of man, which makes up the whole of her
functions in the Puritan apprehension. The failure in his own case to
obtain this genial companionship of soul, which he calls "the gentlest
end of marriage," is what gave the keenest edge to his disappointment
in his matrimonial venture.
But however keenly he felt and regretted the precipitancy which had
yoked him for life to "a mute and spiritless mate," the breach did not
come from his side. The girl herself conceived an equal repugnance to
the husband she had thoughtlessly accepted, probably on the strength
of his good looks, which was all of Milton that she was capable of
appreciating. A young bride, taken suddenly from the freedom of a
jovial and an undisciplined home, rendered more lax by civil confusion
and easy intercourse with the officers of the royalist garrison,
and committed to the sole society of a stranger, and that stranger
possessing the rights of a husband, and expecting much from all who
lived with him, may not unnaturally have been seized with panic
terror, and wished herself home again.
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