`As to that,' said Mrs Tulliver, stroking her dress down, `I've seen what riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got husbands as can afford to do pretty much what they like.But I think sometimes I shall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigation; and my sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don't know what it is to marry a man like your brother - how should they? Sister Pullet has her own way from morning till night.'
`Well,' said Mrs Moss, `I don't think I should like my husband if he hadn't got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him.It's deal easier to do what pleases one's husband than to be puzzling what else one should do.'
`If people come to talk o' doing what pleases their husbands,' said Mrs Tulliver, with a faint imitation of her sister Glegg, `I'm sure your brother might have waited a long while before he'd have found a wife that 'ud have let him have his say in everything as I do.It's nothing but law and erigation now, from when we first get up in the morning till we go to bed at night: and I never contradict him: I only say, "Well Mr Tulliver, do as you like; but whativer you do, don't go to law."'
Mrs Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over her husband.
No woman is: she can always incline him to do either what she wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were threatening to hurry Mr Tulliver into `law,' Mrs Tulliver's monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even be comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit of breaking the camel's back, though on a strictly impartial view the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight of feathers which had already placed the back in such imminent peril that an otherwise innocent feather could not settle on it without mischief.
Not that Mrs Tulliver's feeble beseeching could have had this feather's weight in virtue of her single personality; but whenever she departed from entire assent to her husband, he saw in her the representative of the Dodson family; and it was a guiding principle with Mr Tulliver, to let the Dodsons know that they were not to domineer over him , or - more specifically - that a male Tulliver was far more than equal to four female Dodsons, even though one of them was Mrs Glegg.
