First Part Chapter 20

RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU
May.

If love be the life of the world, why do austere philosophers count it
for nothing in marriage? Why should Society take for its first law
that the woman must be sacrificed to the family, introducing thus a
note of discord into the very heart of marriage? And this discord was
foreseen, since it was to meet the dangers arising from it that men
were armed with new-found powers against us. But for these, we should
have been able to bring their whole theory to nothing, whether by the
force of love or of a secret, persistent aversion.

I see in marriage, as it at present exists, two opposing forces which
it was the task of the lawgiver to reconcile. "When will they be
reconciled?" I said to myself, as I read your letter. Oh! my dear, one
such letter alone is enough to overthrow the whole fabric constructed
by the sage of Aveyron, under whose shelter I had so cheerfully
ensconced myself! The laws were made by old men--any woman can see
that--and they have been prudent enough to decree that conjugal love,
apart from passion, is not degrading, and that a woman in yielding
herself may dispense with the sanction of love, provided the man can
legally call her his. In their exclusive concern for the family they
have imitated Nature, whose one care is to propagate the species.