Bred to submission, submit she must; and when she perceived a conflict of authorities, she prepared to accept the new order of things under which her children's future was to be formed; wherein she showed her native adaptability, the readiness to fall into line, which is one of the most charming traits of her gentle, self-effacing nature.
My father gave my mother very little time to adjust herself.

He was only three years from the Old World with its settled prejudices.
Considering his education, he had thought out a good deal for himself, but his line of thinking had not as yet brought him to include woman in the intellectual emancipation for which he himself had been so eager even in Russia.

This was still in the day when he was astonished to learn that women had written books--had used their minds, their imaginations, unaided.

He still rated the mental capacity of the average woman as only a little above that of the cattle she tended.

He held it to be a wife's duty to follow her husband in all things.