_Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After Seven Years of Married Life_
I have read your letter with care. I can readily understand that you
would not appeal to your wife's mother in this matter upon which you
write me, as she has been the typical mother-in-law,--the woman who
never gets along well with her children, and who never wants others to
succeed where she fails. I recollect your telling me how she marred the
wedding ceremony, by weeping and fainting, after having nagged her poor
daughter during twenty years of life, and interfered with her
friendships, through that peculiar jealousy which she misnamed "devoted
love."
And now you are afraid that your wife is developing the same
propensity, and you ask me to use my influence to cure her of it in its
incipiency. You think I stand closer to Edna than any other friend.
"It is only during the last two or three years that Edna has shown this
tendency," you say. "Until then she seemed to me the most sensible and
liberal-minded of women, always admiring the people I liked, and even
going out of her way to be courteous and cordial to a woman I praised.
Of late she has seemed so different, and has often been sarcastic, or
sulky, or hysterical, when I showed the common gallantries of a man fond
of the society of ladies."
You think it is her inherited tendency cropping out, and that she is
unconscious of it herself.
Well now permit me, my dear Mr. Gordon, to be very frank with you.