Part 7 (2/2)

THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS

The problems of life are not all s.e.xual, and in fact even in the relations of men and women there are more important factors. After all, as Spencer pointed out in a marvelous chapter, love itself is a composite of many things, some, of the earth, earthy, and some of the finest stuff our human life holds. The aspirations, the ideals, the yearnings of the girl attach themselves to some man as their fulfillment; the chivalrous feelings, the desire to protect and cherish, the pa.s.sion for beauty of the man lead to some girl as their goal. There are few for whom the glow and ardor of their young love bring no refinement of their pa.s.sion; there are few who have not felt a pulsating unity with all that love and live, at least for some ecstatic moments.

Something of what James has so beautifully designated as the ”aura of infinity that hangs over a young girl” also lingers over the love of men and women.

All the cynics and epigram makers in the world agree that love ends with marriage, and this not only in modern times but even back into those days of the French Court of Love, when Margaret de Valois decided that the lover had more claims than the husband. Romance dies with marriage is the plaint of poet and novelists; the charm of woman disappears with her mystery, with possession. And the typical humorist speaks of the curl papers and kimono of the wife, the snores and unshaven beard of the husband. ”Familiarity is the death of pa.s.sion” is the theme of countless writers who bemoan its pa.s.sing in the matrimonial state.

How much harm the romantic tales have done to marriage and the sober-satisfying everyday life, no one can estimate, no one can overestimate. Romanticism, which extols s.e.x as the prime and only thing of life, prudery which closes its eyes to it and makes sour faces, need special places in Dante's Inferno. Neither has dealt with reality,--reality, which is satisfying and pleasant unless examined with the prejudices instilled by the hypers.e.xual romance writer and the perverted s.e.xuality of the prude.

Nevertheless that two people brought up entirely differently, and having different att.i.tudes towards love and life, should come into sharp conflict is to be expected. Further, that disillusionment follows after the excitement and heightened expectation of courts.h.i.+p is inevitable.

Marriage at the best includes a settlement to routine; it carries with it an adjustment to reality, a getting down to earth that is painful and disappointing to minds fed to expect thrill and pa.s.sion with each moment.

The idealization of the mate--the man or woman--gives way to a gradually increasing knowledge of imperfection and common clay. Common sense, earnestness of purpose, willingness to adjust, and a sense of humor save the situation and change the love of the engaged period into a more solid, robust affection which gains in durability and wearing quality what it loses in intensity.

Unfortunately, in many cases to a great extent and in all to some extent, there arises dissension natural wherever two human beings meet on anything like equal terms.

In times past (and in many countries at the present time), the patriarchal household prevailed. The Head of the House was the father, a sovereign either stern or indulgent according to his nature. Perhaps his wife ruled him through his love for her, as women have ruled from the beginning of things, but if she did it was not by right but by privilege.

America has changed all that, so say all native and foreign observers.

Here the woman rules; here she drags her husband after her like a tail to a kite; here she is mistress and he obeys, though nominally still head of the household. All the humorists emphasize this, and the novelist depicts it as the common situation. The husband is represented as yoked to the wheel of his wife's whims, tyrannized over by the one he works for.

This is surely a gross exaggeration, though it furnishes excellent material for satire. The man still makes the main conditions of life for both; his name is taken, his work sustains the household, his purse supplies the means of existence, his industrial business situation determines the residence, his social standing is theirs. This does not prevent him from being ”henpecked” in many cases, but on the whole it a.s.sures his superior status.

Nevertheless it is true that the American woman of whatever origin has a will of her own as no other woman has. Since the expression of will is one of the chief sources of human pleasures, one of the chief, most persistent activities, man and wife enter into a contest for supremacy in the household. It may be settled quietly and without even recognizing its existence, on the common plan that the woman shall have charge of the home and the man of his business; it may rage with violence over the fundamental as well as the trivial things of home. After all, it is not the importance of a thing that determines the size of the row it may raise; men have killed each other over a nickel because defeat over even this trifle was intolerable.

What are the chief sources of conflict? For to name them all would be simply to name every possible source of difference of opinion that exists. Let us take as an example Extravagance.

This is a new development. In the former days the bulk of purchases was made by the husband, in whose hands the purse strings were tightly clutched. With the growth of the cities and industry, the development of the department store and rise of shopping as an inst.i.tution, the man gave place to his wife largely because industry would not let him off during the daytime. So the housewife disbursed most of the funds of her home,--and there arose one of the fiercest and most persistent of domestic conflicts.

Despite the fact that most American husbands turn over their purses to their wives, they still regard the money as their own. The desire to ”get ahead” is an insistent one, returning with redoubled force after each expenditure. He finds his entire income gone each week or month, or finds less left than he expected. ”Where does it all go?” is his cry; ”Must we spend as much as we do?” ”How do people get along who get less than we do?”

To this his wife has the answer, ”We must have _this_, and we _must_ have that. We must live as our neighbors do.”

Here is the keynote to the situation. There has been a democratization of society of this nature; there has been a spread throughout the community of aristocratic tastes. The woman of even the poor and the middle cla.s.ses must have her spring and autumn suits, her dresses for summer, her summer and winter hats. Her husband too must change his clothes with each s.h.i.+ft of the season. For this the enterprise of the clothing trade, the splendid display of the department stores are responsible, awakening desire and dissatisfaction.

While the man accuses the woman of extravagance, he is as guilty as she.

He too spends money freely,--on his cigars and cigarettes, on every edition of the newspapers, on the s.h.i.+ne which he might easily apply himself, on a thousand and one nickels that become a muckle. The American is lavish, hates to stint, detests being a ”piker”, says, ”Oh, what's the difference; it will all be the same in a hundred years,” but kicks himself mentally afterwards.

Meanwhile he quarrels with his wife, who really is extravagant. In this battle the man wins, even if he loses, for he rarely broods over the defeat. But it brings about a sense of tension in his wife; it brings about a disunion in her heart, because she wants to please her husband, and at the same time she wants to ”keep up” with her neighbors and friends. And who sets the pace for her, for all of her group; who establishes the standard of expenditure? Not the thrifty, saving woman, not the one who mends her clothes and makes her own hats, but the extravagant woman, the rich woman perhaps of recently acquired wealth who cares little for a dollar. Against her better judgment the woman of the house enters a race with no ending and becomes intensely dissatisfied, while her husband becomes desperate over the bills.

This disunion in her spirit does what all such disunions do,--it predisposes her to a breakdown. It makes the housework harder; it makes the relations with her husband more difficult. It takes away pleasure and leaves discontent and doubt,--the mother-stuff of nervousness.

While most American husbands are generous, there are enough stingy ones to set off their neighbors. To these men the goal of life is the acc.u.mulation of money, as indeed it is with the majority. But to them that goal is to be reached by saving every penny, by denying themselves and theirs all expenditures beyond the necessities.

The woman who marries such a man is humiliated to the quick by his att.i.tude. That a man values a dollar more than he does her wish is an insult to the sensitive woman. There ensues either a never-ending battle with estrangement, or else a beaten woman (for the stingy are stubborn) accepts her lot with a broken spirit, sad and deenergized. Or perhaps, it should be added, a third result may come about; the woman accepts the man's ideal of life and joins with him in their scrimping campaign. With this agreement life goes on happily enough.

It is not of course meant that all or a great majority of American women have difficulties with their husbands over money. But I have in mind several patients who would be happy if this never-ending problem were settled. The struggle ”gets on the nerves” of the partners; they say things they regret and act with an impatience that has its root in fatigue.

This difficulty over money and its spending gets worse in the late thirties and early forties, for it is then the man realizes with a startled spirit that he is getting into middle age, that sickness and death are taking their toll of his friends, and that he has not got on.

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