faculty, the instinctive action of firmness uncontrolled by reason or
conscience,--in common parlance, the being “_set in one’s way_.” It is
the _animal_ instinct of being “set in one’s way” which we mean by
self-will or persistence; and in domestic life it does the more mischief
from its working as an instinct unwatched by reason and unchallenged by
conscience.
In that pretty new cottage which you see on yonder knoll are a pair of
young people just in the midst of that happy bustle which attends the
formation of a first home in prosperous circumstances, and with all the
means of making it charming and agreeable. Carpenters, upholsterers, and
artificers await their will; and there remains for them only the
pleasant task of arranging and determining where all their pretty and
agreeable things shall be placed. Our Hero and Leander are decidedly
nice people, who have been through all the proper stages of being in
love with each other for the requisite and suitable time. They have
written each other a letter every day for two years, beginning with “My
dearest,” and ending with “Your own,” etc.; they have sent each other
flowers and rings and locks of hair; they have worn each other’s
pictures on their hearts; they have spent hours and hours talking over
all subjects under the sun, and are convinced that never was there such
sympathy of souls, such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reasonable,
perfect foundation for mutual esteem.
Now it is quite true that people may have a perfect agreement and
sympathy in their higher intellectual nature,--may like the same books,
quote the same poetry, agree in the same principles, be united in the
same religion,--and nevertheless, when they come together in the
simplest affair of every-day business, may find themselves jarring and
impinging upon each other at every step, simply because there are to
each person, in respect of daily personal habits and personal likes and
dislikes, a thousand little individualities with which reason has
nothing to do, which are not subjects for the use of logic, and to which
they never think of applying the power of religion,--which can only be
set down as the positive ultimate facts of existence with two people.
Suppose a blue-jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During
courtship there may have been delightful sympathetic conversation on the
charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue summer
air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in comparing the
discordant screech of his own note with the warbling tenderness of Miss
Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business relations. He is
firmly convinced that a nest built among the reeds of a marsh is the
only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should die
there in a month of damp and rheumatism. She never heard of going to
housekeeping in anything but a nice little pendulous bag swinging down
from under the branches of a breezy elm; he is sure he should have water
on the brain before summer was over, from constant vertigo, in such
swaying, unsteady quarters,--he would be a sea-sick blue-jay on land,
and he cannot think of it. She knows now he don’t love her, or he never
would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy nest where she is sure
she shall have the chills; and _he_ knows she doesn’t love him, or she
never would want to make him uncomfortable all his days by tilting and
swinging him about as no decent bird ought to be swung. Both are
dead-set in their own way and opinion; and how is either to be convinced
that the way which seemeth right unto the other is not best? Nature
knows this, and therefore, in her feathered tribes, blue-jays do not
mate with orioles; and so bird-housekeeping goes on in peace.
But men and women as diverse in their physical tastes and habits as
blue-jays and orioles are wooing and wedding every day, and coming to
the business of nest-building, _alias_ housekeeping, with predilections
as violent, and as incapable of any logical defence, as the oriole’s
partiality for a swing-nest and the jay’s preference of a nest among the
reeds.
Our Hero and Leander, there, who are arranging their cottage to-day, are
examples just in point. They have both of them been only
children,--both the idols of circles where they have been universally
deferred to. Each in his or her own circle has been looked up to as a
model of good taste, and of course each has the habit of exercising and
indulging very distinct personal tastes. They truly, deeply esteem,
respect, and love each other, and for the very best of reasons,--because
there are sympathies of the very highest kind between them. Both are
generous and affectionate,--both are highly cultured in intellect and
taste,--both are earnestly religious; and yet, with all this, let me
tell you that the first year of their married life will be worthy to be
recorded as _a year of battles_. Yes, these friends so true, these
lovers so ardent, these individuals in themselves so admirable, cannot
come into the intimate relations of life without an effervescence as
great as that of an acid and alkali; and it will be impossible to decide
which is most in fault, the acid or the alkali, both being in their way
of the very best quality.
The reason of it all is, that both are intensely “_set in their way_,”
and the ways of no two human beings are altogether coincident. Both of
them have the most sharply defined, exact tastes and preferences. In the
simplest matter both have _a way_,--an exact way,--which seems to be
dear to them as life’s blood. In the simplest appetite or taste they
know exactly what they want, and cannot, by any argument, persuasion, or
coaxing, be made to want anything else.
For example, this morning dawns bright upon them, as she, in her tidy
morning wrapper and trimly laced boots, comes stepping over the bales
and boxes which are discharged on the verandah; while he, for joy of his
new acquisition, can hardly let her walk on her own pretty feet, and is
making every fond excuse to lift her over obstacles and carry her into
her new dwelling in triumph.
Carpets are put down, the floors glow under the hands of obedient
workmen, and now the furniture is being wheeled in.
“Put the piano in the bow-window,” says the lady.
“No, not in the bow-window,” says the gentleman.
“Why, my dear, of course it must go in the bow-window. How awkward it
would look anywhere else! I have always seen pianos in bow-windows.”
“My love, certainly you would not think of spoiling that beautiful
prospect from the bow-window by blocking it up with the piano. The
proper place is just here, in the corner of the room. Now try it.”
“My dear, I think it looks dreadfully there; it spoils the appearance of
the room.”
“Well, for my part, my love, I think the appearance of the room would be
spoiled, if you filled up the bow-window. Think what a lovely place that
would be to sit in!”
“Just as if we couldn’t sit there behind the piano, if we wanted to!”
says the lady.
“But then, how much more ample and airy the room looks as you open the
door, and see through the bow-window down that little glen, and that
distant peep of the village-spire!”
“But I never could be reconciled to the piano standing in the corner in
that way,” says the lady. “_I insist_ upon it, it ought to stand in the
bow-window: it’s the way mamma’s stands, and Aunt Jane’s, and Mrs.
Wilcox’s; everybody has their piano so.”
“If it comes to _insisting_,” says the gentleman, “it strikes me that is
a game two can play at.”
“Why, my dear, you know a lady’s parlor is her own ground.”
“Not a married lady’s parlor, I imagine. I believe it is at least
equally her husband’s, as he expects to pass a good portion of his time
there.”
“But I don’t think you ought to insist on an arrangement that really is
disagreeable to me,” says the lady.
“And I don’t think you ought to insist on an arrangement that is really
disagreeable to me,” says the gentleman.
And now Hero’s cheeks flush, and the spirit burns within, as she says,--
“Well, if you insist upon it I suppose it must be as you say; but I
shall never take any pleasure in playing on it”; and Hero sweeps from
the apartment, leaving the victor very unhappy in his conquest.
He rushes after her, and finds her up-stairs sitting disconsolate and
weeping on a packing-box.
“Now, Hero, how silly! Do have it your own way. I’ll give it up.”
“No,--let it be as you say. I forgot that it was a wife’s duty to
submit.”
“Nonsense, Hero! Do talk like a rational woman. Don’t let us quarrel
like children.”
“But it’s so evident that I was in the right.”
“My dear, I cannot concede that you were in the right; but I am willing
it should be as you say.”
“Now I perfectly wonder, Leander, that you don’t see how awkward your
way is. It would make me nervous every time I came into the room, and it
would be so dark in that corner that I never could see the notes.”
“And I wonder, Hero, that a woman of your taste don’t see how shutting
up that bow-window spoils the parlor. It’s the very prettiest feature of
the room.”
And so round and round they go, stating and restating their arguments,
both getting more and more nervous and combative, both declaring
themselves perfectly ready to yield the point as an oppressive exaction,
but to do battle for their own opinion as right and reason,--the animal
instinct of self-will meanwhile rising and rising and growing stronger
and stronger on both sides. But meanwhile in the heat of argument some
side-issues and personal reflections fly out like splinters in the
shivering of lances. He tells her, in his heat, that her notions are
formed from deference to models in fashionable life, and that she has
no idea of adaptation,--and she tells him that he is domineering, and
dictatorial, and wanting to have everything his own way; and in fine,
this battle is fought off and on through the day, with occasional
armistices of kisses and makings-up,--treacherous truces, which are all
broken up by the fatal words, “My dear, after all, you must admit _I_
was in the right,” which of course is the signal to fight the whole
battle over again.
One such prolonged struggle is the parent of many lesser ones,--the
aforenamed splinters of injurious remark and accusation, which flew out
in the heat of argument, remaining and festering and giving rise to
nervous soreness; yet, where there is at the foundation real, genuine
love, and a good deal of it, the pleasure of making up so balances the
pain of the controversy that the two do not perceive exactly what they
are doing, nor suspect that so deep and wide a love as theirs can be
seriously affected by causes so insignificant.
But the cause of difficulty in both, the silent, unwatched, intense
power of self-will in trifles, is all the while precipitating them into
new encounters. For example, in a bright hour between the showers, Hero
arranges for her Leander a repast of peace and good-will, and compounds
for him a salad which is a _chef d’œuvre_ among salads. Leander is also
bright and propitious; but after tasting the salad, he pushes it
silently away.
“My dear, you don’t like your salad.”
“No, my dear; I never eat anything with salad oil in it.”
“Not eat salad oil! How absurd! I never heard of a salad without oil.”
And the lady looks disturbed.
“But, my dear, as I tell you, I never take it. I prefer simple sugar and
vinegar.”
“Sugar and vinegar! Why, Leander, I’m astonished! How very _bourgeois_!
You must really try to like my salad"--(spoken in a coaxing tone).
“My dear, I _never_ try to like anything new, I am satisfied with my old
tastes.”
“Well, Leander, I must say that is very ungracious and disobliging of
you.”
“Why any more than for you to annoy me by forcing on me what I don’t
like?”
“But you would like it, if you would only try. People never like olives
till they have eaten three or four, and then they become passionately
fond of them.”
“Then I think they are very silly to go through all that trouble, when
there are enough things that they do like.”
“Now, Leander, I don’t think that seems amiable or pleasant at all. I
think we ought to try to accommodate ourselves to the tastes of our
friends.”
“Then, my dear, suppose you try to like your salad with sugar and
vinegar.”
“But it’s so _gauche_ and unfashionable! Did you ever hear of a salad
made with sugar and vinegar on a table in good society?”
“My mother’s table, I believe, was good society, and I learned to like
it there. The truth is, Hero, for a sensible woman, you are too fond of
mere fashionable and society notions.”
“Yes, you told me that last week, and I think it was very unjust,--_very
unjust, indeed_"--(uttered with emphasis).
“No more unjust than your telling me that I was dictatorial and
obstinate.”
“Well, now, Leander, dear, you must confess that you are rather
obstinate.”
“I don’t see the proof.”
“You insist on your own ways and opinions so, heaven and earth won’t
turn you.”
“Do I insist on mine more than you on yours?”
“Certainly, you do.”
“I don’t think so.”
Hero casts up her eyes and repeats with expression,--
“O, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!”
“Precisely,” says Leander. “I would that prayer were answered in your
case, my dear.”
“I think you take pleasure in provoking me,” says the lady.
“My dear, how silly and childish all this is!” says the gentleman. “Why
can’t we let each other alone?”
“You began it.”
“No, my dear, begging your pardon, I did not.”
“Certainly, Leander, you did.”
Now a conversation of this kind may go on hour after hour, as long as
the respective parties have breath and strength, both becoming secretly
more and more “set in their way.” On both sides is the consciousness
that they might end it at once by a very simple concession.
She might say,--“Well, dear, you shall always have your salad as you
like”; and he might say,--“My dear, I will try to like your salad, if
you care much about it”; and if either of them would utter one of these
sentences, the other would soon follow. Either would give up, if the
other would set the example; but as it is, they remind us of nothing so
much as two cows that we have seen standing with locked horns in a
meadow, who can neither advance nor recede an inch. It is a mere
deadlock of the animal instinct of firmness; reason, conscience,
religion, have nothing to do with it.
The questions debated in this style by our young couple were
surprisingly numerous; as, for example, whether their favorite copy of
Turner should hang in the parlor or in the library,--whether their pet
little landscape should hang against the wall, or be placed on an
easel,--whether the bust of the Venus de Milos should stand on the
marble table in the hall, or on a bracket in the library; all of which
points were debated with a breadth of survey, a richness of imagery, a
vigor of discussion, that would be perfectly astonishing to any one who
did not know how much two very self-willed argumentative people might
find to say on any point under heaven. Everything in classical
antiquity,--everything in Kugler’s “Hand-Book of Painting,"--every
opinion of living artists,--besides questions social, moral, and
religious,--all mingled in the grand _mêlée_: because there is nothing
in creation that is not somehow connected with everything else.
Dr. Johnson has said,--“There are a thousand familiar disputes which
reason never can decide; questions that elude investigation, and make
logic ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little
can be said.”
With all deference to the great moralist, we must say that this
statement argues a very limited knowledge of the resources of talk
possessed by two very cultivated and very self-willed persons fairly
pitted against each other in practical questions; the logic may indeed
be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero and Leander find no cases
under the sun where something is to be done, yet where little can be
said. And these wretched wranglings, this interminable labyrinth of
petty disputes, waste and crumble away that high ideal of truth and
tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies and actual worth of their
characters entitled them to form. Their married life is not what they
expected; at times they are startled by the reflection that they have
somehow grown unlovely to each other; and yet, if Leander goes away to
pass a week, and thinks of his Hero in the distance, he can compare no
other woman to her; and the days seem long and the house empty to Hero
while he is gone, both wonder at themselves when they look over their
petty bickerings, but neither knows exactly how to catch the little fox
that spoils their vines.
It is astonishing how much we think about ourselves, yet to how little
purpose,--how very clever people will talk and wonder about themselves
and each other, and yet go on year after year, not knowing how to use
either themselves or each other,--not having as much practical
philosophy in the matter of their own characters and that of their
friends as they have in respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or
the management of their water-pipes.
“But _I_ won’t have any such scenes with _my_ wife,” says Don Positivo.
“I won’t marry one of your clever women; they are always positive and
disagreeable. _I_ look for a wife of a gentle and yielding nature, that
shall take her opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes to mine.”
And so Don Positivo goes and marries a pretty little pink-and-white
concern, so lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite sure she
cannot have a will of her own. She is the moon of his heavens, to shine
only by his reflected light.
We would advise our gentlemen friends who wish to enjoy the felicity of
having their own way not to try the experiment with a pretty fool; for
the obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of
folly and inanity.
Let our friend once get in the seat opposite to him at table a pretty
creature who cries for the moon, and insists that he don’t love her
because he doesn’t get it for her; and in vain may he display his
superior knowledge of astronomy, and prove to her that the moon is not
to be got. She listens with her head on one side, and after he has
talked himself quite out of breath, repeats the very same sentence she
began the discussion with, without variation or addition.
If she wants darling Johnny taken away from school, because cruel
teachers will not give up the rules of the institution for his pleasure,
in vain does Don Positivo, in the most select and superior English,
enlighten her on the necessity of habits of self-control and order for a
boy,--the impossibility that a teacher should make exceptions for their
particular darling,--the absolute, perishing need that the boy should
begin to do something. She hears him all through, and then says, “I
don’t know anything about that. I know what I want; I want Johnny taken
away.” And so she weeps, sulks, storms, entreats, lies awake nights, has
long fits of sick-headache,--in short, shows that a pretty animal,
without reason or cultivation, can be, in her way, quite as formidable
an antagonist as the most clever of her sex.
Leander can sometimes vanquish his Hero in fair fight by the weapons of
good logic, because she is a woman capable of appreciating reason, and
able to feel the force of the considerations he adduces; and when he
does vanquish and carry her captive by his bow and spear, he feels that
he has gained a victory over no ignoble antagonist, and he becomes a
hero in his own eyes. Though a woman of much will, still she is a woman
of much reason; and if he has many vexations with her pertinacity, he is
never without hope in her good sense; but alas for him whose wife has
only the animal instinct of firmness, without any development of the
judgment or reasoning faculties! The conflicts with a woman whom a man
respects and admires are often extremely trying; but the conflicts with
one whom he cannot help despising, become in the end simply disgusting.
But the inquiry now arises, What shall be done with all the questions
Dr. Johnson speaks of, which reason cannot decide, which elude
investigation, and make logic ridiculous,--cases where something must be
done, and where little can be said?
Read Mrs. Ellis’s “Wives of England,” and you have one solution of the
problem. The good women of England are there informed that there is to
be no discussion, that everything in the _ménage_ is to follow the rule
of the lord, and that the wife has but one hope, namely, that grace may
be given him to know exactly what his own will is. “_L’état, c’est
moi_,” is the lesson which every English husband learns of Mrs. Ellis,
and we should judge from the pictures of English novels that this
“awful right divine” is insisted on in detail in domestic life.
Miss Edgeworth makes her magnificent General Clarendon talk about his
“commands” to his accomplished and elegant wife; and he rings the
parlor-bell with such an air, calls up and interrogates trembling
servants with such awful majesty, and lays about him generally in so
very military and tremendous a style, that we are not surprised that
poor little Cecilia is frightened into lying, being half out of her wits
in terror of so very martial a husband.
During his hours of courtship he majestically informs her mother that he
never could consent to receive as _his_ wife any woman who has had
another attachment; and so the poor puss, like a naughty girl, conceals
a little schoolgirl flirtation of bygone days, and thus gives rise to
most agonizing and tragic scenes with her terrible lord, who petrifies
her one morning by suddenly drawing the bed-curtains and flapping an old
love-letter in her eyes, asking, in tones of suppressed thunder,
“Cecilia, is this your writing?”
The more modern female novelists of England give us representations of
their view of the right divine no less stringent. In a very popular
story, called “Agatha’s Husband,” the plot is as follows. A man marries
a beautiful girl with a large fortune. Before the marriage, he discovers
that his brother, who has been guardian of the estate, has fraudulently
squandered the property, so that it can only be retrieved by the
strictest economy. For the sake of getting her heroine into a situation
to illustrate her moral, the authoress now makes her hero give a solemn
promise not to divulge to his wife or to any human being the fraud by
which she suffers.
The plot of the story then proceeds to show how very badly the young
wife behaves when her husband takes her to mean lodgings, deprives her
of wonted luxuries and comforts, and obstinately refuses to give any
kind of sensible reason for his conduct. Instead of looking up to him
with blind faith and unquestioning obedience, following his directions
without inquiry, and believing not only without evidence, but against
apparent evidence, that he is the soul of honor and wisdom, this
perverse Agatha murmurs, complains, thinks herself very ill-used, and
occasionally is even wicked enough, in a very mild way, to say
so,--whereat her husband looks like a martyr and suffers in silence; and
thus we are treated to a volume of mutual distresses, which are at last
ended by the truth coming out, the abused husband mounting the throne in
glory, and the penitent wife falling in the dust at his feet, and
confessing what a wretch she has been all along to doubt him.
The authoress of “Jane Eyre” describes the process of courtship in much
the same terms as one would describe the breaking of a horse. Shirley is
contumacious and self-willed, and Moore, her lover and tutor, gives her
“_Le Cheval dompté_” for a French lesson, as a gentle intimation of the
work he has in hand in paying her his addresses; and after long
struggling against his power, when at last she consents to his love, he
addresses her thus, under the figure of a very fierce leopardess:--
“Tame or wild, fierce or subdued, you are _mine_.”
And she responds:--
“I am glad I know my keeper and am used to him. Only his voice will I
follow, only his hand shall manage me, only at his feet will I repose.”
The accomplished authoress of “Nathalie” represents the struggles of a
young girl engaged to a man far older than herself, extremely dark and
heroic, fond of behaving in a very unaccountable manner, and declaring,
nevertheless, in awful and mysterious tones, that he has such a passion
for being believed in, that, if any one of his friends, under the most
suspicious circumstances, admits _one doubt_ of his honor, all will be
over between them forever.