I
Corinna had always objected to her mother’s attitude toward her
father—to the attitude of other women she knew toward their husbands.
She spoke frequently to her mother about it, even when she was a young
girl.
“Ma,” she had said, “I don’t see why you slave so over Pa. Your whole
life is made up of worrying over him and about him. He doesn’t pay
any attention except to sort of expect it and take it for granted.
You spend hours getting dinner and having it on the table hot, the
minute he gets home. He never notices, unless something goes wrong. He
just eats. You’re always picking out things he likes or that are good
for him, and having those instead of what _you_ like. First thing in
the morning you scurry around the kitchen and make me help, getting
breakfast, and you hurry home afternoons to get dinner. You don’t dare
ask people to the house evenings, like Miss Herron, if he doesn’t
like them. You treat him so carefully, always trying not to worry him
or annoy him—always telling me ‘your Pa won’t like that,’ when I do
things. I wouldn’t live like you, you bet.”
Mrs. Ferguson was a nervous, round little woman, full of quick,
meaningless little movements. She had a large, rather flat face, full
of small but not disfiguring wrinkles. She had always smiled patiently,
at Corinna.
“You don’t know your Pa,” she’d say, “or men. Men have got to be
waited on, got to be treated right. Wait until you’re grown up and
married—you’ll find out. Men have got to have their meals on time and
got to have the house the way they want it, neat if they are neat, full
of people if they like things lively. You don’t know men.”
“Huh,” Corinna had sneered, “you bet I’ll never make a slave of myself
for any man. If I ever marry, the man’ll do what _I_ want. I shan’t be
always worrying for fear I’m doing the wrong thing.”
Yet, looking among her mother’s acquaintances and at the parents of her
own friends, she noticed the existence of this same state of affairs
that so annoyed her in her own family. The man was always being catered
to. When he was at home, if at no other time, the house had to move
along with an outward smoothness. Little unpleasant things were hidden
away. All of the plans of the household were for amusing, entertaining,
the man. If he liked to play cards, the cards were brought out
immediately after dinner and one game followed another. The man could
quarrel with the plays of the others, if he wanted to, grumble at his
own ill-luck, at the playing of his partners—it was all accepted with
an assumed merriment as part of life. If the man liked to read, his
chair, the most comfortable in the house, was drawn up before the best
light, and the children, when there were children, had to talk quietly
so as not to disturb him.
“The man, the man, always the man,” thought Corinna. “Just because he
brings home the money. The women pretend to joke about being home on
time, about slaving for him, but they do it just the same. You bet
when I’m married things won’t be like that. This is a newer generation.
It’s about time to quit worshipping the man, making such a fuss over
him, slaving for him.”
Corinna, who was, in her way, thoughtful, somewhat of a philosopher,
worried a little over it. She didn’t like to think that, in each
household, one person—the male head of the house—should govern things
so thoroughly, blindly. She didn’t believe especially in woman’s
suffrage, she wasn’t interested in voting, she knew women couldn’t
invent things—at least she knew _she_ couldn’t; she wasn’t interested
in science or art, things like that. She just didn’t like the idea of
being subservient to—cowed by—a man. Why—she knew men.
In spite of her mother, she realized that men weren’t superior people,
after all. They were rather more stupid than women, on the whole, a bit
heavy, with a thick sense of humour. Men were ashamed to show emotions,
easy victims to flattery. Of course they were all right to marry. A
girl ought to marry. An old maid sort of admits that she can’t get a
man. Being married gives one a sense of being somebody. Marriage was
all right—only married women ought to learn—oughtn’t to be such fools,
making themselves servants and slaves and an admiring audience, all in
one. She wouldn’t.