Let us look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith one evening when they are by
themselves, leaving the children entirely out of account. For in
addition to being father and mother, they are husband and wife. Not that
I wish to examine the whole institution of marriage--people who dare to
do so deserve the Victoria Cross! My concern is simply with the effects
of the organisation of the home--on marriage and other things.
Well, you see them together. Mr. Smith has done earning money for the
day, and Mrs. Smith has done spending it. They are at leisure to enjoy
this home of theirs. This is what Mr. Smith passes seven hours a day at
business for. This is what he got married for. This is what he wanted
when he decided to take Mrs. Smith, if he could get her. These hours
ought to be the flower of their joint life. How are these hours affected
by the organisation of the home?
I will tell you how Mrs. Smith is affected. Mrs. Smith is worried by
it. And in addition she is conscious that her efforts are imperfectly
appreciated, and her difficulties unrealised. As regards the directing
and daily recreation of the home, Mr. Smith’s attitude on this evening
by the domestic hearth is at best one of armed neutrality. His criticism
is seldom other than destructive. Mr. Smith is a strange man. If he went
to a lot of trouble to get a small holding under the Small Holdings
Act, and then left the cultivation of the ground to another person
not scientifically trained to agriculture he would be looked upon as a
ninny. When a man takes up a hobby, he ought surely to be terrifically
interested in it. What is Mr. Smith’s home but his hobby?
*****
He has put Mrs. Smith in to manage it. He himself, once a quarter,
discharges the complicated and delicate function of paying the rent.
All the rest, the little matters, such as victualling and
brightening--trifles, nothings!--he leaves to Mrs. Smith. He is not
satisfied with Mrs. Smith’s activities, and he does not disguise the
fact. He is convinced that Mrs. Smith spends too much, and that she is
not businesslike. He is convinced that running a house is child’s
play compared to what _he_ has to do. Now, as to Mrs. Smith being
unbusinesslike, is Mr. Smith himself businesslike? If he is, he greatly
differs from his companions in the second-class smoker. The average
office and the average works are emphatically not run on business lines,
except in theory. Daily experience proves this. The businesslikeness of
the average business man is a vast and hollow pretence.
Besides, who could expect Mrs. Smith to be businesslike? She was never
taught to be businesslike. Mr. Smith was apprenticed, or indentured, to
his vocation. But Mrs. Smith wasn’t. Mrs. Smith has to feed a family,
and doesn’t know the principles of diet. She has to keep children in
health, and couldn’t describe their organs to save her life. She has
to make herself and the home agreeable to the eye, and knows nothing
artistic about colour or form.
I am an ardent advocate of Mrs. Smith. The marvel is not that Mrs.
Smith does so badly, but that she does so well. If women were not more
conscientious than men in their duties Mr. Smith’s home would be more
amateurish than it is, and Mr. Smith’s “moods” more frequent than they
are. For Mrs. Smith is amateurish. Example: Mrs. Smith is bothered to
death by the daily question, What can we have for dinner? She splits
her head in two in order to avoid monotony. Mrs. Smith’s _répertoire_
probably consists of about 50 dishes, and if she could recall them all
to her mind at once her task would be much simplified. But she can’t
think of them when she wants to think of them. Supposing that in Mrs.
Smith’s kitchen hung a card containing a list of all her dishes, she
could run her eyes over it and choose instantly what dishes would suit
that day’s larder. Did you ever see such a list in Mrs. Smith’s kitchen?
No. The idea has not occurred to Mrs. Smith!
I say also that to spend money efficiently is quite as difficult as to
earn it efficiently. Any fool can, somehow, earn a sovereign, but to
get value for a sovereign in small purchases means skill and immense
knowledge. Mr. Smith has never had experience of the difficulty of
spending money efficiently. Most of Mr. Smith’s payments are fixed and
mechanical. Mrs. Smith is the spender. Mr. Smith chiefly exercises his
skill as a spender in his clothes and in tobacco. Look at the result.
Any showy necktie shop and furiously-advertised tobacco is capable of
hood-winking Mr. Smith.
*****
In further comparison of their respective “jobs” it has to be noted that
Mrs. Smith’s is rendered doubly difficult by the fact that she is always
at close quarters with the caprices of human nature. Mrs. Smith is
continually bumping up against human nature in various manifestations.
The human butcher-boy may arrive late owing to marbles, and so the
dinner must either be late or the meat undercooked; or Mr. Smith,
through too much smoking, may have lost his appetite, and veal out
of Paradise wouldn’t please him! Mrs. Smith’s job is transcendently
delicate.
In fine, though Mrs. Smith’s job is perhaps not quite so difficult as
she fancies it to be, it is much more difficult than Mr. Smith fancies
it to be. And if it is not as well done as she thinks, it is much better
done than Mr. Smith thinks. But she will never persuade Mr. Smith that
he is wrong until Mr. Smith condescends to know what he is talking about
in the discussion of household matters. Mr. Smith’s opportunities of
criticism are far too ample; or, at any rate, he makes use of them
unfairly, and not as a man of honour. Supposing that Mrs. Smith finished
all her work at four o’clock, and was free to stroll into Mr. Smith’s
place of business and criticise there everything that did not please
her! (It is true that she wouldn’t know what she was talking about; but
neither does Mr. Smith at home; at home Mr. Smith finds pride in not
knowing what he is talking about.) Mr. Smith would have a bit of a
“time” between four and six.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith are united by a genuine affection. But their secret
attitudes on the subject of home management cause that affection, by a
constant slight friction, to wear thin. It must be so. And it will be
so until (a) Mr. Smith deigns to learn the business of his home; (b) Mr.
Smith ceases to expect Mrs. Smith to perform miracles; (c) Mrs. Smith
ceases to be an amateur in domestic economy--i. e., until domestic
economy becomes the principal subject in the upper forms of the average
girls’ school.
At present the organisation of the home is an agency against the triumph
of marriage as an institution.