“
Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
“
Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?
”
”
William Wilberforce
“
My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education.
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are the lord of my duty,
I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Othello)
“
[Jesus] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; 1st Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world...
The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, bothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.
But since we are bound to abhor any deception which hides the truth from our sight, we must of necessity repudiate any direct relationship with the things of this world--and that for the sake of Christ. Wherever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanctions of Christian principles.,,
There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)
“
At some point, to counter the list of the dead, I had begun keeping my own list of the living. It was something I noticed Len Fenerman did too. When he was off duty he would note the young girls and elderly women and every other female in the rainbow in between and count them among the things that sustained him. The young girl in the mall whose pale legs had grown too long for her now too-young dress and who had an aching vulnerability that went straight to both Len's and my own heart. Elderly women, wobbling with walkers, who insisted on dyeing their hair unnatural versions of the colors they had in youth. Middle-aged single mothers racing around in grocery stores while their children pulled bags of candy off the shelves. When I saw them, I took count. Living, breathing women. Sometimes I saw the wounded- those who had been beaten by husbands or raped by strangers, children raped by their fathers- and I would wish to intervene somehow.
Len saw these wounded women all the time. They were regulars at the station, but even when he went somewhere outside his jurisdiction he could sense them when they came near. The wife in that bait-'n'-tackle shop had no bruises on her face but cowered like a dog and spoke in apologetic whispers. The girl he saw walk the road each time he went upstate to visit his sisters. As the years passed she'd grown leaner, the fat from her cheeks had drained, and sorrow had loaded her eyes in a way that made them hang heavy and hopeless inside her mallowed skin. When she was not there it worried him. When she was there it both depressed and revived him.
~Len Fenerman on stepping back/letting go/giving up
pgs 271-272
”
”
Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)
“
In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined.
Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue.
Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.
”
”
Alison Weir (Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (World Leaders Past & Present))
“
We women own nothing absolutely, save what lies between our ears. Our virtue belongs first to our father and then to our husband. We dedicate our duty to our family. As soon as we share our thoughts with another, put pen to paper or thread a needle, all that we do and make belongs to someone else. So long as she has words and ideas, Annie will always possess something that is hers alone.
”
”
Deborah Harkness (Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2))
“
Who a man is as a husband and father to a large degree shapes who he is as a minister of the gospel. In fact, his calling is evaluated at least in part by how well he performs his duties in the home. I do not believe it is necessary to rank marriage and ministry any more than I would rank eating and drinking. Both are essential. My point is simply this: it is wrong to argue that marriage is somehow less important than ministry. Marriage is ministry.
”
”
Voddie T. Baucham Jr. (What He Must Be …If He Wants to Marry My Daughter)
“
She will have reason in future to thank you for it,” said Mary. Her face was serious. “We women own nothing absolutely, save what lies between our ears. Our virtue belongs first to our father and then to our husband. We dedicate our duty to our family. As soon as we share our thoughts with another, put pen to paper or thread a needle, all that we do and make belongs to someone else. So long as she has words and ideas, Annie will always possess something that is hers alone.” “If
”
”
Deborah Harkness (Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2))
“
The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought was had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)
“
If an average man’s natural desire were to be a good husband and father, then their work would have been easy. But in early Rome, for example, bachelorhood had to be forbidden by law.[ix] The problem with the view of the social conservative is that it assumes a man’s duty to his wife and children is more natural, and therefore more easily enforced, than it actually is. They often do not see the immense work that had to go into making men good husbands or fathers, nor the great privileges through which men had to be enticed to accept these duties; still less do they see or dare to mention the great work—some would say oppression—that had to be exerted to make women faithful wives and mothers.[x] Social liberals and feminists make the same mistake. They assume the problem is that men desire patriarchy and ownership over the wife and family, that men desire dominion over wife and children. They do not see these are, in part, methods some civilizations resorted to in order to induce men to accept the responsibilities of father and husband. Men deprived of patriarchy have no reason to accept duty or responsibility, nor the loss of freedom that goes with family life.
”
”
Costin Alamariu (Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy)
“
My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing himself apart from her. "We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me." Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying: "No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you!" Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
“
The future - what should I do with the future? I felt like one who has climbed the brow of a great hill, and finds only a sea of mist beyond. Go forward I must; but to what goal? With what aim? With what hopes? My father had already distinctly forbidden me to adopt art as a profession. My sister, by ignoring all the purport of my last letter, as distinctly signified her own contempt for that which was to me as the life of my life. Neither loved me; both had wounded me bitterly; and I now, almost for the first time, distinctly saw how difficult a struggle lay before me.
"If I become a painter," I thought, "I become so in defiance of my family; and, defying them, am alone in the wide world evermore. If, on the contrary, I yield and obey, what manner of life lies before me? The hollow life of fashionable society, into which I shall be carried as a marriageable commodity, and where I shall be expected to fulfil my duty as a daughter by securing a wealthy husband as speedily as possible.
Alas! alas! what an alternative! Was it for this that I had studied and striven? Was it for this that I had built such fairy castles, and dreamt such dreams?
”
”
Amelia B. Edwards (Barbara's History: A Novel)
“
She truly believed he was a decent husband to her for not sleeping around and not hitting her. Of the four sons she raised thus, Jiyoung’s father was the only one to carry out his duties as a son in her old age. Unwanted by her ungrateful children, Koh Boonsoon rationalized this sad outcome with an incoherent logic: “Still, I get to eat warm food my son made for me, and sleep under warm covers my son arranged for me because I had four sons. You have to have at least four sons.
”
”
Cho Nam-Joo (Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982)
“
how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her "What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
“
He was thinking of the irony of friendship — so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible fathers these are what she wants, and if we are friends it must be in our spare time. Abram and Sarai were sorrowful, yet their seed became as sand of the sea, and distracts the politics of Europe at this moment. But a few verses of poetry is all that survives of David and Jonathan.
”
”
E.M. Forster (The Longest Journey)
“
Men will be drawn back into family life only when they are convinced that being a good husband and father is a manly thing to do. That parental duty and sacrifice are masculine virtues. That marital love and fidelity are not female standards imposed on men externally but an integral part of the male character. Something inherent and original, created by God.
”
”
Nancy R. Pearcey (Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity)
“
Many a tale of inguldgent parenthood illustrates the antique idea that when the roles of life are assumed by the improperly initiated, chaos supervenes. When the child outgrows the popular idyle of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father-who becomes for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the good and evil, so does now the father, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.
The traditional idea of initiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to the parental images. The mystagogue is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectually purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes-for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment. Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father. And he is competent consequently now to enact himself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one may pass from infantile illusions of good and evil to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at peace in understanding the revelation of being.
”
”
Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
“
The Confucian texts, for instance, provided the foundation for the imperial law. (Is not the law… true virtue? asked one of the nineteenth-century intellectuals. “In the law we can… find complete expositions of the three duties [of a prince, a father, and a husband] and of the five constant virtues [benevolence, righteousness, propriety, knowledge, and sincerity] as well as the tasks of the six ministries [of the central government].”20 ) As one historian has pointed out, the texts established a social contract between the government and the governed,
”
”
Frances FitzGerald (Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam)
“
Can any position be more wretched than that of the unhappy father who, when he clasps his child to his breast, is haunted by the suspicion that this is the child of another, the badge of his own dishonor, a thief who is robbing his own children of their inheritance. Under such circumstances the family is little more than a group of secret enemies, armed against each other by a guilty woman, who compels them to pretend to love one another.
Thus it is not enough that a wife should be faithful; her husband, along with his friends and neighbors, must believe in her fidelity; she must be modest, devoted, retiring; she should have the witness not only of a good conscience, but of a good reputation. In a word, if a father must love his children, he must be able to respect their mother. For these reasons it is not enough that the woman should be chaste, she must preserve her reputation and her good name. From these principles there arises not only a moral difference between the sexes, but also a fresh motive for duty and propriety, which prescribes to women in particular the most scrupulous attention to their conduct, their manners, their behavior.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Emile, or On Education)
“
Their future seemed bright with joy, while his own loomed dark and impenetrable. What if he should now dash into Gitl’s apartments and, declaring his authority as husband, father, and lord of the house, fiercely eject the strangers, take Yoselé in his arms, and sternly command Gitl to mind her household duties? But the distance between him and the mayor’s office was dwindling fast. Each time the car came to a halt he wished the pause could be prolonged indefinitely; and when it resumed its progress, the violent lurch it gave was accompanied by a corresponding sensation in his heart.
”
”
Abraham Cahan (Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto)
“
We are glad to visit your beautiful country. It is prosperous—you all live far from the struggle. Nobody destroys your towns, cities, fields. Nobody kills your citizens, your sisters and mothers, your fathers and brothers. I come from a place where bombs pound villages into ash, where Russian blood oils the treads of German tanks, where innocent civilians die every day.” She caught herself up, exhaled slowly as she marshaled her next words. No one moved, least of all the marksman. “An accurate bullet fired by a sniper like me, Mrs. Roosevelt, is no more than a response to an enemy. My husband lost his life at Sevastopol before my eyes. He died in my arms. As far as I am concerned, any Hitlerite I see through my telescopic sights is the one who killed him.” A frozen silence fell over the room. Only the marksman’s eyes moved as he looked around the table, cataloging responses. The Soviet delegation leader sat clutching his butter knife, looking like he wanted to saw off her head and bowl it through the window into the White House gardens. The smart Washington women in their frills and pearls looked appalled. The First Lady looked . . . Embarrassed? the marksman wondered. Did that horsey presidential bitch look embarrassed? “I’m sorry, Lyudmila dear,” she said quietly, laying down her napkin. “I had no wish to offend you. This conversation is important, and we will continue it in a more suitable setting. But now, unfortunately, it is time to disperse. My duties are calling, and I understand
”
”
Kate Quinn (The Diamond Eye)
“
When I was young most of them were quite nice - that is to say, they shared their mother's opinions, not only about topics, but what is more remarkable, about individuals, even young men; they said, "Yes, Mamma," and "No, Mamma" at the appropriate moments; they loved their father because it was their duty so to do, and their mother because she preserved them from the slightest hint of wrongdoing. When they became engaged to be married they fell in love with decorous moderation; being married, they recognized it as a duty to love their husbands but gave other women to understand that it was a duty they performed with great difficulty. They behaved nicely to their parents-in-law, while making it clear that any less dutiful person would not have done so; they did not speak spitefully about other women but pursed their lips in such a way as to let it be seen what they might have said but for their angelic charitableness.
”
”
Bertrand Russell
“
You want to control me.” She spoke dispassionately as though observing the plight of another woman far distant from herself.
Dragon looked up, surprised. “You are my wife.”
“Say rather possession for so do you think, do you not?”
He shrugged, wondering why she stated the obvious. “All wives belong to their husbands.”
“I wanted to be free.”
His eyes darkened. There was greater challenge here than even he had thought. “You wanted to be safe from Wolscroft and the rest of them, even from me when you though misguidedly. That is why you fled.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no, safety was a convent from which not even my father could have forced me. But it was not to one such that I fled, was it? I wanted freedom, and having tasted it, however briefly, I want it still.”
His hands tightened on her, driven by the sudden, piercing pain her words brought. Did she think to leave him again? To flee as she had done and leave him once more bereft. No, by heaven, she would not! “No one is free,” he said fiercely. “We are all enmeshed in duty and responsibility.”
“Your duty is of your own choosing, for you did not return here after many years away and willingly take up your inheritance. Your destiny is of your own making and you the master of it as much as any man can claim to be. I want the same myself, no more, less.”
“But you are a woman . . .” His bewilderment was genuine. Such yearnings as she described belonged to the realm of men. Women were for hearth and home, the nurturing of children, such ordered security of days as could be wrested from uncertain fate. A man in the thick of battle, in the fury of adventure, in the depths of night had to be able to count on that, for without it, of what purpose was anything?
“You are a woman,” he repeated firmly. “And my wife. You have been too long apart from womanly ways with no proper influence to guide you. I applaud your strength and your courage; both will breed true in my sons, but—”
“Your sons? Your sons? They will be my sons, Lord Vanity, and my daughters as well, mayhap only daughters, for by heaven it would suit me to thwart you so!
”
”
Josie Litton (Come Back to Me (Viking & Saxon, #3))
“
And there will come a time – I fervently believe it – when no one will be burned, no one will be decapitated, when the criminal will plead for death… And death will be denied him… When there will be no senseless forms and rites, no contract and stipulations on feeling, no duty and obligation, and we shall not yield to will but to love alone; when there will be no husbands and wives, but lovers and mistresses, and when the mistress comes to the lover saying: ‘I love another,’ the lover will answer: ‘I cannot be happy without you, I shall suffer all my life, but go to him whom you love,’ and will not accept her sacrifice,... but like God, will say to her: I want blessings, not sacrifices… There will be neither rich nor poor, neither kings nor subject, there will be brethren, there will be men, and, at the word of the Apostle Paul, Christ will pass his power to the Father, and Father-Reason will hold sway once more, but this time in a new heaven and above a new world.”
This will be the realisation, as Belinsky rightly says himself, of the dream of “the Golden Age,” and this dream is what Belinsky refers to as “Socialism.
”
”
Joseph Frank (Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time)
“
The Swedish royal family’s legitimacy is even more tenuous. The current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is descended neither from noble Viking blood nor even from one of their sixteenth-century warrior kings, but from some random French bloke. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia in 1809, the then king, Gustav IV Adolf—by all accounts as mad as a hamburger—left for exile. To fill his throne and, it is thought, as a sop to Napoleon whose help Sweden hoped to secure against Russia in reclaiming Finland, the finger of fate ended up pointing at a French marshal by the name of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (who also happened to be the husband of Napoleon’s beloved Desirée). Upon his arrival in Stockholm, the fact that Bernadotte had actually once fought against the Swedes in Germany was quickly forgotten, as was his name, which was changed to Charles XIV John. This, though, is where the assimilation ended: the notoriously short-tempered Charles XIV John attempted to speak Swedish to his new subjects just the once, meeting with such deafening laughter that he never bothered again (there is an echo of this in the apparently endless delight afforded the Danes by the thickly accented attempts at their language by their current queen’s consort, the portly French aristocrat Henri de Monpezat). On the subject of his new country, the forefather of Sweden’s current royal family was withering: “The wine is terrible, the people without temperament, and even the sun radiates no warmth,” the arriviste king is alleged to have said. The current king is generally considered to be a bit bumbling, but he can at least speak Swedish, usually stands where he is told, and waves enthusiastically. At least, that was the perception until 2010, when the long-whispered rumors of his rampant philandering were finally exposed in a book, Den motvillige monarken (The Reluctant Monarch). Sweden’s tabloids salivated over gory details of the king’s relationships with numerous exotic women, his visits to strip clubs, and his fraternizing with members of the underworld. Hardly appropriate behavior for the chairman of the World Scout Foundation. (The exposé followed allegations that the father of the king’s German-Brazilian wife, Queen Silvia, was a member of the Nazi party. Awkward.) These days, whenever I see Carl Gustaf performing his official duties I can’t shake the feeling that he would much prefer to be trussed up in a dominatrix’s cellar. The
”
”
Michael Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia)
“
There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives—where the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and gray fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forgot all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under the thunder of relenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then it is that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even in the eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle with the awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which is something else than a private consolation.
”
”
George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)
“
The traditional Roman wedding was a splendid affair designed to dramatize the bride’s transfer from the protection of her father’s household gods to those of her husband. Originally, this literally meant that she passed from the authority of her father to her husband, but at the end of the Republic women achieved a greater degree of independence, and the bride remained formally in the care of a guardian from her blood family. In the event of financial and other disagreements, this meant that her interests were more easily protected. Divorce was easy, frequent and often consensual, although husbands were obliged to repay their wives’ dowries. The bride was dressed at home in a white tunic, gathered by a special belt which her husband would later have to untie. Over this she wore a flame-colored veil. Her hair was carefully dressed with pads of artificial hair into six tufts and held together by ribbons. The groom went to her father’s house and, taking her right hand in his, confirmed his vow of fidelity. An animal (usually a ewe or a pig) was sacrificed in the atrium or a nearby shrine and an Augur was appointed to examine the entrails and declare the auspices favorable. The couple exchanged vows after this and the marriage was complete. A wedding banquet, attended by the two families, concluded with a ritual attempt to drag the bride from her mother’s arms in a pretended abduction. A procession was then formed which led the bride to her husband’s house, holding the symbols of housewifely duty, a spindle and distaff. She took the hand of a child whose parents were living, while another child, waving a hawthorn torch, walked in front to clear the way. All those in the procession laughed and made obscene jokes at the happy couple’s expense. When the bride arrived at her new home, she smeared the front door with oil and lard and decorated it with strands of wool. Her husband, who had already arrived, was waiting inside and asked for her praenomen or first name. Because Roman women did not have one and were called only by their family name, she replied in a set phrase: “Wherever you are Caius, I will be Caia.” She was then lifted over the threshold. The husband undid the girdle of his wife’s tunic, at which point the guests discreetly withdrew. On the following morning she dressed in the traditional costume of married women and made a sacrifice to her new household gods. By the late Republic this complicated ritual had lost its appeal for sophisticated Romans and could be replaced by a much simpler ceremony, much as today many people marry in a registry office. The man asked the woman if she wished to become the mistress of a household (materfamilias), to which she answered yes. In turn, she asked him if he wished to become paterfamilias, and on his saying he did the couple became husband and wife.
”
”
Anthony Everitt (Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician)
“
But won’t creation come to an end if there is no bond of marriage?’
‘Why would it come to an end, Sita? Many creatures take birth and grow in this forest. They have no marital bonds, do they? There are people of different tribes whose customs are different from yours.’
‘Does that mean human beings should live like animals, uncivilized?’
‘Why do you look down upon animals, Sita? We should love animals and nature. We should worship them. We should befriend them. That’s the duty of humans. Ignoring that basic duty, you think what is written in books is civilization. Is that right? You have come to the forest from the city. Why insist so much on the civilization of the cities? Isn’t nature the best teacher?’
‘I don’t understand your words. I feel they will cause harm to women.’
‘They certainly won’t. When a child belongs to its mother, there is no harm in that. A situation where children ask their mother who their father is or where a husband asks his wife who fathered her children comes only in the lives of some women, Sita. Think of the predicament of those women, and you’ll understand my words.’
‘Just because something happened to someone, somewhere, should people remain without marrying and bear children outside wedlock? Does it happen anywhere? Is that good conduct?’ asked Sita resentfully.
‘I don’t know if it is good conduct or not—I speak of what I know. It is only through experience that one understands the truth. And whatever you understand, you tell others.
”
”
Volga (The Liberation of Sita)
“
Of Enoch it is written that he lived sixty-five years, and begat a son. After that he walked with God three hundred years. During these earlier years Enoch had loved and feared God and had kept his commandments. He was one of the holy line, the preservers of the true faith, the progenitors of the promised seed. From the lips of Adam he had learned the dark story of the Fall, and the cheering one of God’s grace as seen in the promise; and he relied upon the Redeemer to come. But after the birth of his first son, Enoch reached a higher experience; he was drawn into a closer relationship with God. He realized more fully his own obligations and responsibility as a son of God. And as he saw the child’s love for its father, its simple trust in his protection; as he felt the deep, yearning tenderness of his own heart for that first-born son, he learned a precious lesson of the wonderful love of God to men in the gift of his Son, and the confidence which the children of God may repose in their heavenly Father. The infinite, unfathomable love of God through Christ became the subject of his meditations day and night; and with all the fervor of his soul he sought to reveal that love to the people among whom he dwelt. [85] Enoch’s walk with God was not in a trance or vision, but in all the duties of his daily life. He did not become a hermit, shutting himself entirely from the world; for he had a work to do for God in the world. In the family and in his intercourse with men, as a husband and father, a friend, a citizen, he was the steadfast, unwavering servant of the Lord.
”
”
Ellen Gould White (Patriarchs and Prophets)
“
And once they have children, the most difficult times will seem to them happy, so long as there is love and courage. Even toil will be a joy, you may deny yourself bread for your children and even that will be a joy. They will love you for it afterward; so you are laying by for your future. As the children grow up you feel that you are an example, a support for them; that even after you die your children will always keep your thoughts and feelings, because they have received them from you, they will take on your semblance and likeness. So you see this is a great duty. How can it fail to draw the father and mother nearer? People say it’s a trial to have children. Who says that? It is heavenly happiness! Are you fond of little children, Liza? I am awfully fond of them. You know—a little rosy baby boy at your bosom, and what husband’s heart is not touched, seeing his wife nursing his child! A plump little rosy baby, sprawling and snuggling, chubby little hands and feet, clean tiny little nails, so tiny that it makes one laugh to look at them; eyes that look as if they understand everything. And while it sucks it clutches at your bosom with its little hand, plays. When its father comes up, the child tears itself away from the bosom, flings itself back, looks at its father, laughs, as though it were fearfully funny, and falls to sucking again. Or it will bite its mother’s breast when its little teeth are coming, while it looks sideways at her with its little eyes as though to say, ‘Look, I am biting!’ Is not all that happiness when they are the three together, husband, wife and child? One can forgive a great deal for the sake of such moments. Yes, Liza, one must first learn to live oneself before one blames others!
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from the Underground)
“
My mother was the alcoholic in my life. I was the eldest of four children and always had the duties of taking care of my brothers and sisters, the house, and my dad. I resented my mother for this. But my dad praised me so much and gave me so much special attention for being the “little mother” around the house for him, that eventually I didn’t seem to mind my mother’s alcoholism. My dad would always let me sit in his lap at night for being “his girl,” comb my hair, and do special things for me. Something didn’t feel right about it, but it was the only attention I got. As an adult, I seemed to have everything going for me and seemed in control. But my husband confronted me one day and said he was dissatisfied with my difficulties in being intimate with him. He wanted changes or a divorce. I was stunned. That’s when I discovered that growing up in an alcoholic family affected my ability to be intimate. I figured if I dealt with my feelings and issues about my mother, things would be fine. After all, she was the alcoholic. Well, I did deal with her, but things weren’t fine. I came to realize that all that special attention from my dad was really a source of pain and the real culprit behind my difficulty in being close to my husband. Now I realize that I’ve lived my life for him. I chose my husband because I thought my father would approve. The career and family I built were intended to win my father’s admiration and love. Even as an adult, I went to him with intimate details of my life, which he invited. God, I began to feel icky all over again. I was scared and guilt-ridden. I knew I had to stop being “Daddy’s girl” if I was going to save myself and my marriage. It was the most difficult decision I ever had to make about my life: separating from the man who had been the only source of comfort while I was growing up. Yet it was also the most freeing decision I ever made.
”
”
Kenneth M. Adams (Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners)
“
It would be wrong to say that love produces quarrels; but love does produce those intimate relations of which quarrelling is too often one of the consequences,—one of the consequences which frequently seem to be so natural, and sometimes seem to be unavoidable. One brother rebukes the other,—and what brothers ever lived together between whom there was no such rebuking?—then some warm word is misunderstood and hotter words follow and there is a quarrel. The husband tyrannizes, knowing that it is his duty to direct, and the wife disobeys, or “only partially obeys, thinking that a little independence will become her,—and so there is a quarrel. The father, anxious only for his son's good, looks into that son's future with other eyes than those of his son himself,—and so there is a quarrel. They come very easily, these quarrels, but the quittance from them is sometimes terribly difficult. Much of thought is necessary before the angry man can remember that he too in part may have been wrong; and any attempt at such thinking is almost beyond the power of him who is carefully nursing his wrath, lest it cool! But the nursing of such quarrelling kills all happiness. The very man who is nursing his wrath lest it “cool,—his wrath against one whom he loves perhaps the best of all whom it has been given him to love,—is himself wretched as long as it lasts. His anger poisons every pleasure of his life. He is sullen at his meals, and cannot understand his book as he turns its pages. His work, let it be what it may, is ill done. He is full of his quarrel,—nursing it. He is telling himself how much he has loved that wicked one, how many have been his sacrifices for that wicked one, and that now that wicked one is repaying him simply with wickedness! And yet the wicked one is at that very moment dearer to him than ever. If that wicked one could only be forgiven how sweet would the world be again! And yet he nurses his wrath.
”
”
Anthony Trollope (The Last Chronicle of Barset (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #6))
“
He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry?
Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself?
There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube97 were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there 96 Cheated or frustrated himself. 97 The London subway. 64 smiling.
"You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr. Tansley?" she asked.
Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life. But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him.
"Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.
”
”
Virgina Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
“
It is true, a woman’s highest duty is to her home, but that is just as true of man. But what an absolutely crazy and absurd proposition would it not be to argue that he would be a better father and a more loyal husband if we take away from him the right to vote. American manhood would resent as an insult any serious mention of such a theory. It is just as much an insult to American womanhood to say that giving her the full right of citizenship will interfere with a mother’s devotion to her children and her home.
”
”
Veda Boyd Jones (American Progress: Battling Fear, Discrimination, and the Great Depression (Sisters in Time))
“
Marriage was a particularly high-stakes proposition for women because the English common law at least theoretically gave men virtually limitless power within their households. Under the common-law doctrine of coverture, a wife's legal rights and duties – including her control of property and liability for debts and other contractual obligations – were subsumed by those of her husband; by law and custom, fathers also governed their children with near-absolute authority. Because men's powers within marriage derived in part from the belief that women and children were inherently weak and inferior, they were also at least notionally tied to men's corresponding responsibility to protect and provide for their domestic dependents. In reality, however, both law and custom less rigorously enforced men's protective obligations than the authority they wielded over their wives and other subordinates.
”
”
Cynthia A. Kierner (The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America (The Revolutionary Age))
“
We do not, in thinking about our own lives, simply ask what minimum effort is required of us and then content ourselves with that. In our better moments we try to go beyond that, to exceed the standard, to stretch ourselves and thereby become better people.
We do this as fathers and husbands and mothers and wives. We do this as Christians and Jews and Moslems and Buddhists and Hindus, in our duties to one another and to conscience. We do it in our work and careers, whatever that calling may be. We do it as friends and neighbors. We do it simply as human beings trying to leave our mark in the world, to spread a little love and goodwill where we can. Why should we not also do it as stewards of the earth, the caretakers of creation?
”
”
Matthew Scully (Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy)
“
We do not, in thinking about our own lives, simply ask what minimum effort is required of us and then content ourselves with that. In our better moments we try to go beyond that, to exceed the standard, to stretch ourselves and thereby become better people.
We do this as fathers and husbands and mothers and wives. We do this as CHristians and Jews and Moslems and Buddhists and Hindus, in our duties to one another and to conscience. We do it in our work and careers, whatever that calling may be. We do it as friends and neighbors. We do it simply as human beings trying to leave our mark in the world, to spread a little love and goodwill where we can. Why should we not also do it as stewards of the earth, the caretakers of creation?
”
”
Matthew Scully (Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy)
“
the northern part of the city, where a women’s college stood upon a hill, its windows dark. Claimed to be the first in the world to grant a degree to a woman, the future Wesleyan College had its roots in Ellen’s father’s work, too, in a female seminary he had helped found. At the school’s first baccalaureate address, its president—a preacher well known to Ellen’s enslaving family—was exultant as he exhorted, “Woman can do more! It is her province, her right, her duty.… “Come forth and live!” he urged. “Let your understandings swell out to the fullness of their native dimensions, and walk abroad majestic in thought.
”
”
Ilyon Woo (Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom)
“
In the United States, the typical caregiver in the family suffers from depression, is usually stressed out and exhausted, physically and mentally. The emotional toll on members of the family who take care of husbands or wives, mothers or fathers, or grandparents is always high. Taking for instance in Washington, it was once reported that more than half of the caregivers in that state were found to be extremely depressed. A caregiving expert has opined that family caregivers are possibly the most depressed individuals in the United States.
”
”
Sophia A. Beren (CAREGIVER STRESS SOLUTONS: Resolving Stress While in Healthcare Duty (Family and Relationships))
“
76. five relationships: (oryun) One of the central concepts of Confucian philosophy, it refers to the five essential and sacred relationships that bind a society together. They were enumerated by the philosopher Mengzi—“love between father and son, duty between ruler and subject, distinction between husband and wife, precedence of the old over the young, and faith between friends” (Book III, Part A, 4). Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin Classics, 2005), 60. 77
”
”
Heo Gyun (The Story of Hong Gildong)
“
his…demands?” And then she had held her breath as if seriously expecting Isabel to answer. And last night as Isabel passed a half-open bedroom door, she had overheard a fellow guest speaking to her maid. “I do so admire Lady Isabel for not feeling the need to bow to the demands of fashion,” the woman had said. “She dresses instead in what is comfortable even if it is not in the first stare. Though I find it no wonder her husband has strayed.” Isabel had gritted her teeth and gone on down to dinner, where she smiled and flirted and silently dared anyone to comment to her face that her dress was at least two years old. If only her early departure wouldn’t cause so much comment, she would call for her carriage and go home right now. But that was impossible. For one thing, she didn’t have a carriage, for she had come up from London with a fellow guest. Too short of funds to afford a post-chaise, she was equally dependent on her friend for transport back to the city when the hunting party broke up. And secondly, of course, there were only two places she could go—Maxton Abbey, or the London house—and her husband might be at either one. Unless, with her safely stashed at the Beckhams’, he had accepted yet another of the many invitations he received. But she couldn’t take the chance. After little more than a year of marriage, the pattern was ingrained—wherever one of the Maxwells went, the other took pains not to go. She could not burst in on her husband; what if he were entertaining his mistress? Better not to know. She might go to the village of Barton Bristow, descending on her sister. But Emily’s tiny cottage was scarcely large enough for her and her companion, with no room for a guest—and Mrs. Dalrymple’s constant chatter and menial deference was enough to set Isabel’s teeth on edge. In fact, the only nice thing Isabel could say about being married was that at least she wasn’t required to drag a spinster companion around the countryside with her to preserve her reputation, as Emily had to do. Isabel turned her borrowed mount over to the stable boys and strode across to the house, where the butler intercepted her in the front hall. “A letter has just been delivered for you, Lady Isabel, by a special messenger. He said a post-chaise will call for you tomorrow.” She took the folded sheet with trepidation. Who could be summoning her? Not her husband, that was certain. Her father, possibly, for yet another lecture on the duties of a young wife? She broke the seal and unfolded the page. My dearest Isabel, You will remember from happier days that I will soon celebrate my seventieth birthday… Uncle Josiah. But her moment of relief soon
”
”
Leigh Michaels (The Birthday Scandal)
“
If husband does his duty towards his wife then his wife will make their family proud, if father does his duty towards his children then his children's future will flourish, if a leader does his duty towards his country, then his countrymen will reap the benefit' - Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka
”
”
Ravi Sathasivam
“
But what is the church here on earth for? It is here to proclaim the love of God, to bear witness to what He has done for us. Our duty as wives is to help our husbands. Part of that duty is to help our husbands love our children. Let me hasten to clarify that last little bit. I don’t mean that you are to help him love the kids your way. I mean that you are to help him convey his love to them. When your husband goes off to work, he is loving his family. When he brings home a paycheck, he is loving his family. But if there is no mother taking that paycheck and translating it into a hot meals, into clothes for the children, into the comfort of home, then the children may very well not feel that love from their father. It is a mother’s job to communicate the love that the father has towards his children. It is our job to translate. When we take the work that our husband does and turn it into fellowship around the table, he is able to enjoy both the fruit of his work and the enjoyment of his love. He provided for us, and we are rejoicing in that.
”
”
Rachel Jankovic (Fit to Burst: Abundance, Mayhem, and the Joys of Motherhood)
“
This is the great gift that God has given to women,” she said, “and women alone.” She smoothed her skirt and blanket over her legs. “Following the glory of Jesus’s example, we suffer with the greatest gifts we receive. This is something that a man will never understand in the way a woman will. Certainly a man’s seed is essential, but the creation of life is within us. For them it is outside. They are our fathers, husbands and our sons, and it’s your duty to honor and respect them, but this they will always be standing outside of.
”
”
Eugenia Kim (The Calligrapher's Daughter: A Novel)
“
… that our King-in-Waiting Chivalry is not at all the son whom King Shrewd supposed him to be. As you can well imagine, this has grieved my good husband beyond telling, but as ever, Prince Regal has done all in his power to be a comfort to his beloved father. It was my sad duty to inform both my lord and our wayward prince that in light of his besprinkling the countryside with bastards (for where there is one, can we doubt there are others?) my Dukes of the Inland Duchies have expressed doubt of Chivalry’s worthiness to follow his father as king. In light of that, Chivalry has been persuaded to step aside. I have been less successful in persuading my lord that the presence of this by-blow at Buckkeep Castle is an affront to myself and every true married woman. He maintains that if the child is restricted to the stable and the stableman’s care, it should not concern the rest of us that this physical evidence of Lord Chivalry’s failing is ever flaunted before us. I have begged in vain for a more permanent solution … —LETTER FROM QUEEN DESIRE TO LADY PEONY OF TILTH
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”
Robin Hobb (Fool's Fate (Tawny Man, #3))
“
But the proto-lexicon contains much more, including clusters of words, suggesting that the speakers of PIE inherited their rights and duties through the father’s bloodline only (patrilineal descent); probably lived with the husband’s family after marriage (patrilocal residence); recognized the authority of chiefs who acted as patrons and givers of hospitality for their clients; likely had formally instituted warrior bands; practiced ritual sacrifices of cattle and horses; drove wagons; recognized a male sky deity; probably avoided speaking the name of the bear for ritual reasons; and recognized two senses of the sacred (“that which is imbued with holiness” and “that which is forbidden”). Many of these practices and beliefs are simply unrecoverable through archaeology.
”
”
David W. Anthony (The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World)
“
According to the code of dharma, women had only one duty: obey the father when unmarried, the husband when married and the son when widowed. For men, duty was determined by varna, station in society, and ashrama, the stage in life.
”
”
Devdutt Pattanaik (Myth = Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology)
“
Stop doing this,” she cried fiercely. “You’ll drive me mad. You want to behave as if I belong to you, but I don’t, and I never will. Your worst nightmare is becoming a husband and father, and so you seem determined to form some kind of lesser attachment that I do not want. Even if I were pregnant and you felt duty-bound to propose, I would still refuse you, because I know it would make you as unhappy as it would make me.”
Devon’s intensity didn’t lessen, but it changed from anger into something else. He held her with a gaze of hot blue infinity.
“What if I said I loved you?” he asked softly.
The question drove a spike of pain through her chest. “Don’t.” Her eyes smarted with tears. “You’re not the kind of man who could ever say that and mean it.”
“It’s not who I was.” His voice was steady. “But it’s who I am now. You’ve shown me.”
For at least a half minute, the only sound was the crackling, shivering fire on the hearth.
She didn’t understand what he truly thought or felt. But she would be a fool to believe him.
“Devon,” she eventually said, “when it comes to love…neither you nor I can trust your promises.”
She couldn’t see through the glittering film of misery, but she was aware of him moving, bending to pick up the coat he had tossed aside, rummaging for something.
He came to her, catching her arm lightly in his hand, drawing her to the bed. The mattress was so high that he had to fit his hands around her waist and hoist her upward to sit on it. He set something on her lap.
“What is this?” She looked down at a small wooden box.
His expression was unfathomable. “A gift for you.”
Her sharp tongue got the better of her. “A parting gift?”
Devon scowled. “Open it.”
Obeying, she lifted the lid. The box was lined with red velvet. Pulling aside a protective layer of cloth, she uncovered a tiny gold pocket watch on a long chain, the casing delicately engraved with flowers and leaves. A glass window on the hinged front cover revealed a white enamel dial and black hour and minute markers.
“It belonged to my mother,” she heard Devon say. “It’s the only possession of hers that I have. She never carried it.” Irony edged his voice. “Time was never important to her.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
“
God creates man and woman to cherish their shared equality while complementing their various differences..Most people view marriage as a means of self-fulfillment accompanied by sexual satisfaction..The husband is the head of his wife? Wives should submit to their husbands? Are you serious?.In our limited understanding, we hear [these] words and we recoil in disgust..As soon as we hear the word submission alongside the previous picture of headship, we immediately think in terms of inferiority and superiority, subordination and domination..God made clear from the start that men and women are equal in dignity, value and worth..[submission] means to yield to another in love..The three persons of the Trinity are equally diving..Yet the Son submits to the Father..this doesn't mean that God the Father is dominating and that God the Son is cruelly forced into compulsory subordination. Rather, the Son gladly submits to the Father in the context of close relationship..submission is not a burden to bear..Onlookers will observe a wife joyfully and continually experiencing her husband's sacrificial love for her..the world will realize that following Christ is not a matter of duty. Instead, it is a means to full, eternal, and absolute delight..the first sin occurred..as a response to a gender-specific test..the man sits silently by-- like a wimp..the man has the audacity to blame his wife..the first spineless abdication of a man's responsibility to love, serve, protect, and care for his wife..Sure, through a job a man provide[s] for the physical needs of his wife, but..that same job often prevents him from providing for her spiritual, emotional, and relational needs..He never asks how she feels, and he doesn't know what's going on in her heart. He may think he's a man because of his achievements at work and accomplishments in life, but in reality he's acting like a wimp who has abdicated his most important responsibility on earth: the spiritual leadership of his wife..The work of Satan in Genesis 3 is a foundational attack not just upon humanity in general but specifically upon men, women, and marriage..For husbands will waffle back and forth between abdicating their responsibility to love and abusing their authority to lead. Wives, in response, will distrust such love and defy such leadership. In the process they'll completely undercut how Christ's gracious sacrifice on the cross compels glad submission in the church..Headship is not an opportunity for us to control our wives; it is a responsibility to die for them..[Husbands], don't love our wives based upon what we get from them..Husbands, love your wives not because of who they are, but because of who Christ is. He loves them deeply, and our responsibility is to reflect his love..the Bible is not saying a wife is not guilty for sin in her own life. Yet the Bible is saying a husband is responsible for the spiritual care of his wife. When she struggles with sin, or when they struggle in marriage, he is ultimately responsible..If we are harsh with our wives, we will show the world that Christ is cruel with his people..God's Word is subtly yet clearly pointing out that God has created women with a unique need to be loved and men with a unique need to be respected..Might such a wife be buying into the unbiblical lie that respect is based purely upon performance? So wives, see yourselves in a complementary, not competitive, relationship with your husband..we cannot pick and choose where to obey God.
”
”
David Platt (A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography)
“
There’s a look of surprise on his face when he answers. Then his eyes dart away guiltily. “Vee . . . I thought . . . I thought you were still mad.”
“Oh, I am. Don’t think this visit means I’ve forgiven you.”
He swallows. “Well, I heard. About your . . .” He bites his lip, struggling to come up with the right words.
“Betrothal?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure my future husband will keel over our first time together. Before anything, you know, happens. Then I’ll have fulfilled my family duty.”
“Uh . . . right.” He wrinkles his nose. “Until your father makes another arrangement.”
“I’ll be in mourning. He won’t be able to arrange anything for at least another six months.”
“Well, as long as you have it all figured out.
”
”
Chelsea M. Campbell (Dragonbound (Dragonbound #1))
“
The basic duties of the husband were to provide for the welfare of his wife and children, to protect his household from any who would harm it, and to rule over his family and servants with a firm but just hand.” Ozment added, “Above all, the husband was supposed to rule. He alone was master of his house, the one on whom all domestic discipline and order finally depended.”1 However, the wife “was no maid or common servant of her husband,” but the husband was “father of the house,” and his wife “mother of the house”—“a position of high authority and equal respect.
”
”
Zachary M. Garris (Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers)
“
He had always done his duty, all his duty, his duty as a son, a husband, a father, a leader. He had also unhesitatingly demanded his rights: as a child, the right to be well brought up, in a united family, the right to inherit a spotless name, a prosperous business; as a husband, the right to be cared for, to be surrounded with tender affection; as a father, the right to be venerated; as a leader, the right to be obeyed without demur. For a right is never anything but the other aspect of a duty. His extraordinary success (the Pacômes are now the richest family in Bouville) could never have surprised him. He had never told himself that he was happy, and when he indulged in a pleasure, he must have done so in moderation, saying: ‘I am relaxing.’ Thus pleasure, likewise acquiring the status of a right, lost its aggressive futility. On the left, a little above his bluish grey hair, I noticed
”
”
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics))
“
Desdemona: My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education.
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are the lord of duty.
I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my
husband.
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Othello)