A Harsh French Law.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXII, Issue 6871, 22 April 1897, Page 4

A Harsh French Law.

•Madame Adam contributes an article to the Humanitarian on " The position of women in France." The distinguished French writer began her literary career 39 years ago with a defence of women against Proudhod's depreciation of them. She concludes the present article with a painful autobiographical reminiscence : " Most unhappily married as I was, perhaps I found in a husband, one of whose favorite formulas was that 1 Society being corrupt, one must increase its corruption in order to favor the outgrowth of a new vegetation,' perhaps, I say, it was in the MORAL STIiITGLE WITH 31Y lIUSUAXD that I found the energy which impelled me, at the ago of 22 years, after six years of wedlock, to write my " Idees AntiProudhonniennes. The first edition was sold out, ana my husband, being a lawyer, discovered in the Arsenal of the Laws of the French Code that my essay (travail) belonged to him : that he had not only the right of pocketing the profits in the hands of the editor, but that this work being part of our common possessions, he hid the legal right to issue the second edition in his own name; and he actually placed on the cover of the second edition of the "Idees Anti-Proudhon-niennes " his own name. TTIE SCANDAL THAT AROSE was great, and he was not a little amused at it, saying that the French law was clear that all property acquired during coverture was controlled by the husband. " Well, can it be believed the husband of an authoress in our own day in France still has the ri«ht to lay hands on the proSts of his wife's writings, and, unless they be divorced, to issue editions in his own name : a separation (ife corps ct d<: hi-:ii.<) does not avail. It required that an Englishwoman, Madame Sehmalk, should marry a Frenchman before the revision of such a law as this could be undertaken and become possible.