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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: but who would expect him, or think it possible to love her? And
unless 'youth, and genial years were flown,' it would be thought
equally unreasonable to insist, [under penalty of] forfeiting almost
every thing reckoned valuable in life, that he should not love
another: whilst woman, weak in reason, impotent in will, is required
to moralize, sentimentalize herself to stone, and pine her life
away, labouring to reform her embruted mate. He may even spend in
dissipation, and intemperance, the very intemperance which renders
him so hateful, her property, and by stinting her expences, not
permit her to beguile in society, a wearisome, joyless life; for
over their mutual fortune she has no power, it must all pass through
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