Part 6 (1/2)
In the story of Buddha it is related that it was the shock of learning of the existence of four great evils which aroused his desire to save mankind. These evils were Old Age, Sickness, Death, and Poverty.
Theologians and the sentimentalists are unanimous in their praise of poverty,--the theologians because they seek their treasure in heaven, and the sentimentalists because they are incorrigible dodgers of reality, because they cannot endure the existence of evil. But Buddha knew better, and the common sense of mankind has shown itself in the desperate struggle to reach riches.
We have spoken of the part played by the physical disadvantages of poverty in causing the nervousness of the housewife. It is not alleged or affirmed that all poor housewives suffer from the neurosis,--that would be nonsense. But poor food, poor housing, poor clothing, the lack of vacations, the insufficient convalescence from illness and childbirth are not blessings nor do they have anything but a bad effect, an effect traceable in the conditions we are studying.
Furthermore, the woman who does all her own housework, including the cooking, scrubbing, was.h.i.+ng, ironing, and the mult.i.tudinous details of housekeeping, in addition to the bearing and rearing of children, does more than any human being should do. It is very well to say, ”See what the women of a past generation did,” but could we look at the thing objectively, we would see that they were little better than slaves. That is the long and short of it,--the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation did not include them.
Aside from the physical effects of poverty on the housewife, there are factors of psychical importance that call for a hearing. After all, what is poverty in one age is riches in another; what is poverty for one man is wealth to his neighbor. More than that, what a man considers riches in antic.i.p.ation is poverty in realization. Here again we deal with the mounting of desire.
The philosophical, contented woman, satisfied with her life even though it is poor, is exempted from one great factor making for breakdown.
Contentment is the great s.h.i.+eld of the nervous system, the great bulwark against fatigue and obsession. But contentment leads away from achievement, which springs from discontent, from yearning desire.
Whether civilization in the sense of our achievements is worth the price paid is a matter upon which the present writer will not presume to pa.s.s judgment. Whether it is or not, Mankind is committed to struggle onward, regardless of the result to his peace of mind.
There are two princ.i.p.al psychical injuries with poverty--fear and worry--and we must pa.s.s to their consideration as factors in the neuroses of some women.
Worry is chronic fear directed against a life situation, usually antic.i.p.ated. Man the foreseeing must worry or he dies,--dies of starvation, disease, disaster. It is true that worry may be excessive and directed either against imaginary or inevitable ills; ills that never come, ills that must come, like old age and death.
Men in comfortable places cry ”Why worry?” meaning of course that the most of worry is about ills that are never realized. That is true, but the person living just on the brink of disaster, ruined or made dependent on charity by unemployment, a long illness, or any failure of power and strength, cannot be as philosophical as the man fortified by a nice bank account or dividend-paying investments. These well-to-do advisers of the poor remind one of the heroes of ancient fables who, having magic weapons and impenetrable armor, showed no fear in battle.
One wonders how much courage they would have had if armed as their foemen were.
For the poor housewife who sees no escape from poverty, whose husband is either a workman or a struggling business man always on the edge of failure, life often seems like a wall closing in, a losing battle without end.
Especially in the middle-aged, in those approaching fifty, does this happen. Aside from the condition produced by ”change of life”, the so-called involution period, there is a reaction of the ”time of life”
that is found very commonly. For old age is no longer far off on the horizon; it is close at hand, around the corner, and the looking-gla.s.s proclaims its coming. The woman wonders whether her husband will long be able to keep up,--and then ”what will become of us?”
To be thrown on the benevolence of children is a sad ending to independent natures, to people of experience. Crudely put, those who have been dependents are now sustainers; those who have been led now guide; the inferiors are the superiors. This is not cynicism, for with the best intentions in the world, if the children are also poor, the care of the parents is a burden that they cannot help showing, sooner or later.
Looking forward to such an ending to the hard work and struggle of a lifetime is part of the worry of poverty, to be cla.s.sed with the fear of sickness and unemployment.
We may loudly proclaim that one honest man is as good as another, that character is the measure of worth, that success cannot be measured by money. These things are true; the difficulty is not to make people believe it, it is to make people _feel_ it. Deeply ingrained in poverty is not alone to be deprived of things desired; more important is the feeling of inferiority that goes with the condition. Only in the Bohemia of the novelists do the poor feel equal to the rich.
One of the fundamental strivings of the human being is the enlargement of the self-feeling, which fundamentally is the wish to be superior, to have the admiration and homage of others. All daydreaming builds this air castle; all ambition has this as its goal. No matter how we disguise it to ourselves and others, the main ends of purpose are power and place. True, we may wish for power and place so as to help others; we may wish them as the result of constructive work and achievement, but the enlargement of self-feeling is the end result of the striving.
To be poor is to be inferior in feeling and applies equally to men and women. Man is a compet.i.tive-social animal and competes in everything, from the cleverness and beauty of his children to the excellence of his taste in hats. Money has the advantage of being the symbol of value, of being concrete and definite, and of having the inestimable property of purchasing power.
Now woman is as compet.i.tive as her mate. A housewife vies with her neighboring housewives in her clothes, her good looks, her youth, her husband, her children, her home, her housekeeping, her money,--vies with her in folly as well as in wisdom. How much of the extravagance of women (and here is a difficulty to be dealt with later) arises from rivalry only the tongues of women could tell, but it is safe to say that the greater part of it has this origin.
Jealousy and envy are harsh words, yet they stand for traits having a great psychological value. Part of the impetus for effort rises from these feelings, and an incredibly large part. Many a man who bends unremitting in his effort has in mind some man of whose success he is envious, or whose efforts he watches with a jealousy hidden almost from himself.
Upon women these feelings play with devastating force. One may be satisfied with what he has until some one else he knows gets more; that is to say, the causes of most of the dissatisfaction and discontent of the world are envy and jealousy. In many cases it may be a righteous sort of jealousy or envy. A woman, especially because she is a rival of her fellow-woman mainly in small things, becomes acutely miserable when she is outstripped by her neighbor and especially if she is pa.s.sed by her relatives and intimate friends.
Poverty is especially hard on those intensely ambitious for their children. ”They must have the education I did not have; they must have a good time in life which I never had; I don't want them to be poor all their lives like we are.” Here is the woman who works herself to the bone, yet is content and well save for her fatigue, if her children respond to her efforts by success in study and by ambitious efforts of their own. But if the struggling mother is so unfortunate as to have drawn in Nature's lottery an unappreciative or a weak-minded child, then the breakdown is tragic.
A poor man is much more apt to be philosophical about poverty for his children than his wife is. He is willing to do what he can for them, but he is more apt to realize what mother love is blind to,--that the average child is unappreciative of the parents' efforts and takes them for granted. The man is more apt to think and say, ”Let them stand on their own feet and make their own way; it will do them good.” The mother usually longs to spare her children struggle, the father rarely shares this desire except in a mild way.
It may be that there was a time when cla.s.ses were more fixed, that poverty had less of humiliation and blocked desire than it has at present. That society of all grades is restless with the desire for luxury seems without doubt. How profoundly the psychology of the ma.s.ses is being altered by education, by the newspaper, the magazine, the movie, the automobile, the fas.h.i.+on changes that make a dress obsolete in a season and above all the department store and the alluring advertis.e.m.e.nt, no one can hope to even estimate. Modern capitalism reaps great wealth by developing the luxurious, the spendthrift tastes of the poor. It would be a peculiar poetic justice that will make that development into the basis of revolution.
The women of the poor are perhaps even more restless than the men. In fact, it is the women that set the pace in these matters. This is because to woman has fallen the spending of the family funds, a fact of great importance in bringing about discord in the house. As the shopper the poor woman now sees the beautiful things that her ancestors knew nothing of, since there were no department stores in those days. To-day desires are awakened that cannot be fulfilled; she sees other women buying what she can only long for, and an active discontent with her lot appears.