320, 4 pp. Discusses social institutions related to sexuality, polygamy, free love, prostitution, chastity, marriage, birth control (calling it 'limitation of offspring'), and parenting. The author also makes controversial claims that non-consensual marital sex was a crime occurring frequently at the time. Duffey was a writer, artist, spiritualist, and feminist who advocated strongly for equal rights for women, debating Edward Hammond Clarke on the education of women after his publication of No Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls. Her work in general, and specifically this work and her response to Clarke's work, illustrated how changing ideas in science impacted society's views on once-popular opinions. She also wrote a book on automatic writing entitled Heaven Revised after becoming interested in spiritualism. This work appears to have been printed by several publishing houses in 1876: the title page lists Estill & Co. of New York, and also Nettleton and Co. of Chicago, while the copyright page states Wood & Holbrook (also of New York). Hoolihan/Atwater 994 mentions only the Wood & Holbrook imprint in 1876, and also notes an 1885 reprint (995) by M.L. Holbrook of New York. From that reference's description of the original: "'What a perplexing tangle do we find, when we take into our hands the meshes which society, and custom, and tradition, and false forms of religion, and ignorance, and human perverseness generally, have woven and knotted together!' Duffey's anxiety leads to her declamation: 'The times seem tending toward disintegration'. In this milieu Duffey attempts to establish the familial an social order on firmer foundations through an examination of the relations between the sexes, the significance of marriage, and the threats to these foundations of the 'social economy' from advocates of free-love, polygamy, state-regulated prostitution, etc. In discussing conjugal relations Duffey focuses on sexual behavior rather than sexual physiology or hygiene. Similarly, her chapter on 'The limitation of offspring' advocates family planning without explaining contraceptive mechanisms."
