Up to the age of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a
foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the
_feminisms_ of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman
becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old
woman, it is another old woman.
Some diplomats have attempted on more than one occasion the diabolical
task of gaining over the dowagers who opposed their machinations; but if
they have ever succeeded it was only after making enormous concessions
to them; for diplomats are practiced people and we do not think that you
can employ their recipe in dealing with your mother-in-law. She will be
the first aid-de-camp of her daughter, for if the mother did not take
her daughter’s side, it would be one of those monstrous and unnatural
exceptions, which unhappily for husbands are extremely rare.
When a man is so happy as to possess a mother-in-law who is
well-preserved, he may easily keep her in check for a certain time,
although he may not know any young celibate brave enough to assail her.
But generally husbands who have the slightest conjugal genius will find
a way of pitting their own mother against that of their wife, and in
that case they will naturally neutralize each other’s power.
To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in
Paris, and vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too
rarely meets with.
What of making mischief between the mother and the daughter?--That may
be possible; but in order to accomplish such an enterprise he must have
the metallic heart of Richelieu, who made a son and a mother deadly
enemies to each other. However, the jealousy of a husband who forbids
his wife to pray to male saints and wishes her to address only female
saints, would allow her liberty to see her mother.
Many sons-in-law take an extreme course which settles everything,
which consists in living on bad terms with their mothers-in-law. This
unfriendliness would be very adroit policy, if it did not inevitably
result in drawing tighter the ties that unite mother and daughter. These
are about all the means which you have for resisting maternal influence
in your home. As for the services which your wife can claim from her
mother, they are immense; and the assistance which she may derive from
the neutrality of her mother is not less powerful. But on this point
everything passes out of the domain of science, for all is veiled in
secrecy. The reinforcements which a mother brings up in support of a
daughter are so varied in nature, they depend so much on circumstances,
that it would be folly to attempt even a nomenclature for them. Yet you
may write out among the most valuable precepts of this conjugal gospel,
the following maxims.
A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.
A husband ought to study all the reasons why all the celibates under
forty who form her habitual society are so closely united by ties of
friendship to his mother-in-law; for, if a daughter rarely falls in love
with the lover of her mother, her mother has always a weak spot for her
daughter’s lover.