belief that men have in the indestructibility of women’s love.
They visualize the feminine heart as a sort of perpetual-motion
machine that, once they press the button and set it to work, goes on
automatically pumping up affection for them as long as they live,
and they think that nothing they do or say ever interferes with its
functioning. In a word, they believe that if a man wins a woman’s love
it is his for keeps. He can’t lose it or mislay it. The poor thing
has no choice but to go on adoring him to the end, because she is
built that way. It is a comfortable and consoling theory, and men take
liberties with it, but the trouble is that it isn’t true. In reality,
women are just as fickle as men are, and just as few women as men
are capable of a deep and abiding love. Women’s fancies are just as
unstable as men’s. They are just as much lured by a handsome face and
fall as easily for a smooth line of soft talk. And there are just as
many wives who get tired of their husbands as there are husbands who
are weary of their wives.
The only difference between the sexes in the matter is that women face
the situation, while men shut their eyes to it and refuse to recognize
that it exists. Every woman knows that because a man was in love with
her when he married her is no indication that he is going to remain in
love with her to the end of the chapter. She knows that if she keeps
her husband’s affection she has to be up and doing, and on the job.
That is why there are millions of women undergoing all the agonies of
slow starvation trying to maintain a girlish figure; why millions are
boiled alive and thumped and scalped in beauty parlors, and why the
nation spends more a year for face paint than it does for house paint,
and why, wherever we go, we see fat, middle-aged, bread-and-butter
wives attempting to look like flappers and acquire the technique of the
vamp in order to keep their husbands nailed to their own firesides.
Apparently, however, it never occurs to a man that there is the
slightest necessity to make any effort to keep his wife fascinated and
to prevent her eyes from roaming around in search of a sheik. He may
be bay-windowed and bald, but if he reduces it is only on his doctor’s
orders, and not because he wants to look boyish to his wife. And he
never buys a toupee until after he becomes a widower and begins to take
notice again. The idea that his wife might cease to love him actually
never crosses the average man’s mind. He is convinced that she couldn’t
do it. It is some peculiarity of the feminine constitution that makes
a woman go on loving what has become unlovable. Now, with a man it is
different, of course. He realizes that he couldn’t stay very long in
love with a woman who was slouchy, and sloppy, and untidy looking, who
came to breakfast in a dirty kimono and run down at the heel slippers.
Nor would he take much interest in kissing a cheek smeared with cold
cream.
But he doesn’t see why his wife shouldn’t still regard him as a
romantic figure when he goes around in a soiled shirt and a rumpled
collar, with grease spots on his coat and trousers that bag at the
knees, and offers to her lips a countenance with a two days’ stubble of
beard on it.
A man knows well enough that, as far as he is concerned, the only way
to keep the love fires burning is to keep piling the fuel on it and
pouring over it the oil of flattery and praise. But he thinks that
you don’t have to put any more fuel on the fire of a woman’s heart,
because it is a flame that miraculously replenishes itself. So after he
marries he never bothers to show her any attention, or to pay her any
compliments, or to tell her that he loves her, or give any indication
that he regards her as anything but a piece of useful household
furniture. If any woman ever treated him that way his affection
would mighty soon starve to death, but he never has the slightest
apprehension that his wife’s love will perish on the same meager
rations.
There are men who abuse their wives, who swear at them, and curse them,
and speak to them as if they were dogs. There are men whose wives live
in trembling fear of their tempers. There are men who are stingy and
who do not give to their wives, who spend their lives slaving for them,
the poorest wage of an ill-paid servant. Yet these men go on believing
that their wives still love them because they loved them in the days of
courtship, when they were handsome, gallant, and neat, and attractive,
and loving, and flattering, and generous, and considerate swains.
Such men befool themselves by thinking that they cannot kill a woman’s
love. Never was there a greater mistake. A woman’s love is as delicate
and as fragile a thing as a flower that you can crush with a finger.
And it takes never-ending skill, and care, and cherishing to keep it
alive. You can kill it with disgust. You can kill it with unkindness.
You can kill it with injustice. You can kill it with neglect, and it
would surprise many a man who still believes that his wife loves him in
spite of the way he has treated her, in spite of his indifference to
her, to know that her love for him has been dead so long that she has
almost forgotten that she ever cared for him at all.
So I warn you, Mr. Man, not to put any faith in the theory that you
can’t kill a woman’s love. Women are like men; they only love the
lovable. And if you wish to retain your wife’s affections, you have got
to continue after marriage the same tactics you used in winning her.
XLVIII
THE LURE OF THE MARRIED MAN
A man wants to know why married men have such a fascination for girls,
and wherein a benedict’s wooing differs from that of a bachelor. The
first part of this double-barreled question was answered by Eve in the
Garden of Eden, and every girl takes after her greatest grandmother.
Married men are forbidden fruit, and that alone whets the appetite of
the foolish little Evelyns for them, and makes them seem the prize
pippins of the whole matrimonial orchard. The thing that a woman cannot
have, that she has no right to have, and especially the thing that some
other woman possesses, is always the thing that she wants most. If
you have ever watched women fight over a commonplace and unattractive
article on a bargain table, where each was determined to have it just
because the others desired it, you have the psychological explanation
of why a girl falls for a married man that she wouldn’t look at if he
were single.
Also, women are the adventurous sex. They love to play with danger as a
child plays with fire, and a large part of the lure of the married man
consists in the fact that a girl knows that when she has an affair with
one, she is risking every shred of her reputation, and gambling with
her happiness, and that any minute she may be cited as a corespondent,
and dragged into the slime of the divorce courts.
Also, the average girl is simply slopping over with romance, and
somehow she gets more kick out of being wooed under the rose than she
does in an above board, honest-to-God courtship. There is something
about the secrecy of a love intrigue with a married man, about the
surreptitious letters, about the stolen rendezvous, that thrills her to
the core of her being. It makes her feel so desperately wicked, like
one of the grand passion heroines of her favorite novels, who cried
“All for love, and the world well lost” as she chucked her bonnet over
the windmill.
It is because the married man is the only man in the world who is out
of her reach, and whom she has no right to try to grab; it is because
some other woman has set her seal of approval on him by marrying him;
it is because an illicit love episode is a streak of lurid romance in
her drab days, that the little Totties and Flossies are able to see
the hero of their girlish dreams in the fat, bald-headed, middle-aged
men for whom they work, and the Mauds and Gwendolyns imagine that they
have found their affinities in some ordinary commonplace married man,
who would bore them to tears if his wedding ring had not given him a
fictitious value in their eyes.
Add to this, vanity and cruelty. In the man hunt, women look on the
married man as big game, and when they bring one down they feel as if
they had captured an elephant instead of having shot a tame rabbit.
There are girls who boast of their conquests among married men, and
who have so little heart that they delight in watching the agonies of
jealousy that they inflict on the poor defenseless wife. Many young
women are likewise gold-diggers, and these virtually confine their
attentions to married men, as wealthy bachelors are few and well-to-do
middle-aged married men are plentiful and easy.
Why the married man who starts out as a Lothario is an easy winner
of feminine hearts is perfectly obvious. To begin with, he has the
same advantage that the widower has over the single man. He is a
professional, so to speak, instead of an amateur lover. He has the
education in women that only marriage can give a man, for he has had a
wife and, like the wise man of Kipling’s poem, he “learned about women
from her.” He has found out that all women are so hungry for love that
they will swallow any soft talk without examining its quality. He has
found out that you can jolly a woman into anything. He has found out
that women melt down into a mush that you can do with as you will,
under a little understanding and sympathy. He has found out that if you
remember an anniversary, and a woman’s taste in two or three things,
she will believe it an absolute proof of undying devotion.
The married man knows that there is one sure short cut to virtually
every woman’s heart. It is pity. And so he begins his love-making by
telling the girl that his wife does not understand him, that she is
not his real soul-mate, that they have nothing in common, and that his
home is bleak, and barren, and unhappy. Generally he accuses his wife
of being a human iceberg, while he is a perfect geyser of love and
tenderness. And then he moans: “Oh, why did we not meet in time?” And
the poor little idiot of a girl undertakes the consolation rôle.
Of course, all of this effective love play is more or less impossible
to the bachelor. He lacks the technique of the married man. He cannot
appeal to a woman’s sympathies, or pose before her in the rôle of a
martyr. He can only make love in the commonplace old way, and it cramps
his style. But the real reason that the married man is a devil among
women is just the same old reason that made Eve listen to the serpent.
XLIX
FORGET IT
Every day some girl writes me that she is young, quite as pretty as the
other girls about her, that she dresses as well, and makes as good an
appearance as they do, and strives to please, but that no man ever pays
her the slightest attention, or asks her to step out with him of an
evening. Then this girl goes on to say that she is a business girl, but
she doesn’t make a very good salary, and she is discouraged, and blue,
and wants to know what to do.
My advice to a girl in this situation—and there are millions of her—is
to forget men. Give up the struggle to attract them. Quit trying to
catch one. Renounce romance. Throw away all thoughts of marriage. Just
accept the fact that nature did not put you in the vamp class, and play
your game of life from that angle.
This counsel will be a bitter pill for the girl to swallow, but she
will find it good medicine that will work a speedy and permanent cure,
if she will try it on herself. Why certain women are magnets that draw
every man they meet to them, and why nothing in trousers except upon
compulsion ever goes near other women just as good looking, just as
charming in every way, is one of the mysteries nobody has ever solved.
Nor has anyone ever been able to suggest a remedy for this state of
affairs.
The fast steamship, the lightning express, the aeroplane, have
annihilated distance, but human ingenuity has failed to invent any
device to make a boy go to see the girl next door if he doesn’t want
to go. Science has torn its secrets from the earth, but it cannot find
out what quality it is in woman that attracts men. It has invented
chemicals that work magic in the physical world, but it has never
discovered a reliable love philter.
So that’s that. And it is a wise girl who has the courage to look
herself in the face, and see whether she has the “come hither” look in
her eye, and if she hasn’t, to recognize the fact, and devote herself
to a more promising occupation than chasing men, who, in the end,
always make their getaway, unless they desire to be caught.
Therefore, I would urge the girl who does not make a spontaneous hit
with men, to quit wasting her time and her energies in the vain attempt
to decoy them into noticing her, and to put all that lost motion and
force into her work, where she will get better results.
Believe me, if the girl who does not attract men, tried as hard to
sell herself to her job as she does to sell herself socially, she would
not have to complain long of holding a small position. She would be a
highly paid secretary, or buyer, or department manager.
If the girl who does not attract men, studied her employer’s moods and
tenses as earnestly as she does those of some little jellybean, and
if she was as anxious to please her employer as she is to please the
jazz hounds and cakeaters she meets, she would find herself one of the
valued employees who are always spoken of reverentially as “our Miss
So-and so.”
If the girl who never has a date would put in one hundredth part of
the intensive study on her work that she gives to the technique of the
popular girl, and to trying to find out something about the psychology
of customers or the history of the goods she handles, or the details of
the business she is employed in, she would have employers fighting over
her.
In a word, if the girl who is not popular with men would concentrate
her thoughts, her interests, and her ambitions, on getting ahead in the
occupation she has chosen, instead of wasting her time and energies in
a fruitless attempt to charm men, she would be a success instead of a
failure; she would be happy instead of miserable.
As it is now she falls between the stools. She is a poor makeshift in
her job, who gets nowhere, because her one desire, her one ambition,
her one aim in life is to attract men and catch a husband, and she is
miserable, and discouraged, and bitter, and disgruntled, because she
is balked in that attempt. And she is a siren without allure who never
arrives at the altar, so she fails both as a business woman, and in her
effort to catch a husband.
This is a great pity, because while love and marriage are highly
desirable blessings to come into a woman’s life, they are not the whole
of life. The world is full of such a lot of things besides sentiment.
There is independence, the freedom to come and go as one pleases. There
is the exhilarating sport of climbing up the ladder of success, which
has a million thrills for every round. There is the solid satisfaction
of achievement. There is the good job that keeps one on one’s tiptoes
so that one never has a dull moment. There is the happiness that comes
of being employed in constructive work. There is one’s own home, with
one’s own pots, and pans, and doilies, if one wants them.
Take it from me, girls, the woman who espouses a career does not get
the worst husband there is. She has a life companion from whom she
never has to wheedle the pennies. She never has to listen to any back
talk or criticisms. She is never afraid of this companion getting tired
and running off after flappers. It is only the lucky women, who make
exceptional marriages, who are as well off as the business girls who do
not marry.
Furthermore, there is this comfort to be given the girl who quits
trying to attract men, and gets busy with her job. Men are contrary
creatures. Pursue them, and they flee from you. Lay traps, and
they walk wide of them. But let them alone, indicate that you are
indifferent to them; that you are concerned with your own affairs in
which they have no part; let them realize that you can get on quite
well without them, and it piques their interest. They come flocking
around of their own accord to see what manner of woman you are.
Also the girl who makes something of herself, and who rises high in her
profession is thrown with the men at the top, the men of brains, and
they are often attracted to her while the silly little boys with whom
she used to play about were not.
So I say again to the girls who are not attractive to men, stop wasting
your time in the useless attempt to vamp men. Put your heart and your
soul into your job. Work is the consolation prize God gives us when we
miss getting the thing we wanted most.
L
LOST LOVE
Many women ask me how they can regain the love of some man which they
have lost. Sometimes, a girl tells me, weeping, of a once ardent lover
who has become cold and neglectful, who no longer comes to see her, and
she wants to know how to bring him back, and make him once more crazy
about her.
Oftenest, however, it is a wife who seeks desperately for some magic
whereby she can light again the love fires in the heart of a husband
who has ceased to care for her, who is tired of her, and who does not
even take the trouble to hide from her the fact that he regards her as
a burden, of which he would rid himself if he could.
It is the tragedy of these women that they are doomed to love men
after the men no longer love them. Not even neglect, and insult, and
faithlessness, kill their affection for those on whom they have set
their foolish, doglike hearts. So they cling with desperate hands to
the men who are trying to break away from them, hoping against hope,
praying some miracle will happen that will give them back their lost
love.
But their prayers are never answered. The miracle never happens. No
sorcerer can teach a woman how to weave a spell a second time about
a man. The love potions that the credulous buy from fortune tellers,
never work, and though a woman conjure never so deftly, she cannot
bring back the heart that has slipped out of her keeping.
For of all dead things, nothing is so dead as dead love. No power can
breathe into it again the breath of life, and make it a vital thing
once more.
We do not know why we love. We do not know why some particular man or
woman makes a peculiar appeal that makes us prefer him or her to all
the other men and women in the world. We do not know why the touch
of certain hands thrill us; why the quirk of a smile, or the look in
an eye, draws us; why we have a sense of comradeship with certain
individuals; why some man or woman fascinates us; or why we desire
one man or woman more than another, who may be better looking, more
intelligent, more worthy in every way.
Nor do we any more know why we cease to love than we know why we love.
We do not know why the touch of the hand that has thrilled us ceases
to thrill; nor why the charm that was once so potent vanishes into
thin air, nor why the fascination flees, and the one who once held us
enthralled becomes a bore who wearies us to tears. It just happens,
and we are as helpless before one situation as before the other.
There are not many men who are cruel enough to find sport in breaking
a woman’s heart, and who deliberately win a girl’s love, and play with
it, and fling it away. There are not many husbands who would not remain
their wives’ eternal lovers, if it was in their power to control their
affections. That was their romantic dream when they married. That way
their happiness lay, and they would have kept their romance had it been
a matter of their own volition.
Unfortunately, the disillusion came. The glory and the circling wings
departed. Somehow their wives lost their allure for them, and strive
as they might, they could not see them again with the eyes of a lover,
or bring back their charm. Many a man would be just as glad to fall in
love again with his wife as she would be to have him fall in love with
her once more, but he cannot do it. You cannot fan dead ashes into a
flame.
Perhaps if wives realized how impossible it is to resurrect a dead
love, they would guard the living love more carefully, and run fewer
risks of killing it. They would not take the chance of disillusioning
their husbands by going about sloppy and slovenly at home, and thus
presenting a fatal contrast to the trimly dressed women in their
offices, and the beautified ladies they meet in society. They would
reflect that no man would have much appetite for domestic kisses when
flavored with cold cream, and that if a wife wishes to be regarded as
a ladylove, she must look the part instead of resembling a sack of
potatoes.
And they would see to it that love is not assassinated on their
hearthstones by ceaseless, senseless quarrels, by whining, and
complaining, and nagging, and petty tyrannies. Nor would they permit
love to die of that commonest and most deadly ailment, boredom. For if
a woman can interest her husband enough before marriage to make him
pick her out from all the rest of the world for his life partner, she
can interest him enough to hold him until the end of the chapter if she
is willing to take the trouble and perform the labor necessary to do so.
If, though, a woman, through carelessness or ignorance, has lost the
love of the man she loves, there is absolutely no way in which she can
win it back. Through duty or a sense of honor she may hold his body,
but his soul has gone from her forever, and she is wise if she accepts
the inevitable.
If she is a girl, she should let the sweetheart who is tired of her go,
instead of trying to hold him. Some other man she may make love her,
but not the old one for whom she has lost her charm.
If she is a married woman whose husband has ceased to love her, let
her agonize no more over the impossible task of reviving his passion
for her. Let her fill her life with other interests and thank God that
there are so many other pleasant things in the world besides love.
For of this she may rest assured. There is no reviving of dead love.
When once we have lost our taste for a person everything is over. It is
finished, as the French say.
LI
THE SHOW WEDDING
The Turks have passed a law prohibiting elaborate and costly
marriage ceremonials, and forbidding the giving of expensive wedding
presents. What a pity that we cannot have such an edict issued in
this country! For there is no other one thing that would do more to
allay heartburnings and jealousies, prevent nervous prostration and
bankruptcy, and promote peace and thrift than to officially “can” the
show wedding.
In all fairness, we must admit that the display wedding is a feminine
vice. No man, probably, ever really yearned to make a public exhibition
of himself as he was being led as a lamb to the slaughter. But by the
time she is ten years old the average girl has begun planning her
wedding and deciding whether she will have a big church affair, with
ushers and flower girls and ring-bearers and maids and matrons of honor
and bridesmaids and a white satin dress and a real lace veil, and
all the other flubdubs, or whether she will be married at home under
a floral canopy, with an admiring audience fenced off from her by
white ribbons. And to realize this ten-minute splurge she is ready to
ruthlessly ruin her family and half kill herself. If she doesn’t get
it, she goes through life feeling that she has missed her big moment.
It is from this silly, dopey daydream that women should be rescued by
law, since few of them have the common sense and good taste to put it
aside themselves.
To begin with, it would do away with the disgraceful, barefaced holdups
that precede weddings. These are camouflaged under the appropriate
name of “showers,” for they cause every friend of an engaged girl to
shed salt and bitter tears at the realization of how much they will be
mulcted for in silk-stocking showers, and handkerchief showers, and
towel showers, and kitchen showers, and all the other showers that
go to make up a bridal deluge. It would also prevent that sinking
feeling at the pit of the stomach with which we are attacked at sight
of a large, thick white envelope in the mail. We know that it means a
“stand-and-deliver” present, which somehow always comes just at a time
when the rent is overdue, or a doctor bill has to be paid, or we had
saved up a little money by pinching economies to buy a new hat or suit.
It isn’t that we are stingy or mean, or that we begrudge a gift to a
friend. It is only that we would like to give when we can do so freely,
and enjoy the giving, instead of having to give at a time when it is
actually dishonest to bestow a present. Why, I have known people who
had to put off needed dental work or taking a sick child to the country
when three or four wedding presents fell together. The wedding gift
was a debt of honor. “They sent us a set of salad forks.” “She gave us
a clock when we were married,” and it had to be returned in kind. The
abolition of the show wedding would prolong the days of many a poor,
old, hard-worked father, whose daughter’s trousseau is the straw that
breaks the camel’s back.