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2.如果婚姻是场交易,浪漫价值几何?

So, what is any respectably girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fantasy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him as if a marriage ceremony made any difference in the right or the wrong of the thing

Ah, the hypocrisy of the world makes me sick

That's Mrs. Warren from Shaw's 1893 play

Mrs. Warren's profession

She's an ex-prostitute and brothel keeper and when her Girton educated daughter finds out and is horrified by this she confronts her with the below living standard wages and atrocious working conditions, that women face and says, so the only trade in effect that society allows to women is being kept by a man, pleasing a man and living of his money

And whether that's inside or outside of marriage she says, makes no difference at all

That argument became a central tenet of feminist campaigns and suffrage campaigns through the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th centuries

So for example Cicely Hamilton a leading suffragist beginning of the 20th century wrote in her polemic

Marriage as a Trade in 1909

For a woman, who has always been far more completely excluded than man from direct access to the necessities of life who has often been barred both by law and custom from the possession of property one form of payment was demanded and one only

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