THE HOUSEWORK AND THE HOME AS FACTORS IN THE NEUROSIS
One of the most remarkable of the traits of man is the restless
advancement of desire,--and consequently the never-ending search for
contentment. What we look upon as a goal is never more than a rung in
the ladder, and pressure of one kind or another always forces us on to
further weary climbing.
This is based on a great psychological law. If you put your hand in warm
water it _feels_ warm only for a short time, and you must add still
warmer water to renew the stimulus. Or else you must withdraw your hand.
The law, which is called the Weber-Fechner Law, applies to all of our
desires as well as to our sensations. To appreciate a thing you must
lose it; to reach a desire's gratification is to build up new desires.
This is to be emphasized in the case of the housewife, but with this
additional factor: that how one reacts to being a housewife depends on
what one expects out of life and housekeeping. If one expects little out
of life, aside from being a housewife, then there is contentment. If one
expects much, demands much, then the housewife's lot leads to
discontent.
What is disagreeable is not a fixed thing, except for pain, hunger,
thirst, and death. The disagreeable is the balked desire, the obstructed
wish, the offended taste. It is a main thesis of this book that the
neurosis of the housewife has a large part of its origin in the
increasing desires of women, in their demands for a fuller, more varied
life than that afforded by the lot of the housewife. Dissatisfaction,
discontent, disgust, discouragement, hidden or open, are part of the
factors of the disease. Furthermore there is an increasing sensitiveness
of woman to the disagreeable phases of housework.
What are these phases that are attended with difficulty? 1. The status
of the house work.
It is an essential phase of housework that as soon as woman can afford
it she turns it over to a servant. Furthermore there is greater and
greater difficulty in getting servants, which merely means that even the
so-called servant class dislikes the work. No amount of argument
therefore leads away from the conclusion that housework must be
essentially disagreeable, in its completeness. There may be phases of it
that are agreeable; some may like the cooking or the sewing, but no one
likes these things plus the everlasting picking up; no one likes the
dusting, the dishwashing, the clothes washing and ironing, the work that
is no sooner finished than it beckons with tyrannical finger to be
begun. To say nothing of the care of the children!
I do not class as a housewife the woman who has a cook, two maids, a
butler, and a chauffeur,--the woman who merely acts as a sort of manager
for the home. I mean the poor woman who has to do all her own work, or
nearly all; I mean her somewhat more fortunate sister who has a maid
with whom she wrestles to do her share,--who relieves her somewhat but
not sufficiently to remove the major part of housewifery. After all,
only one woman in ten has any help at all!
It is therefore no exaggeration when I say that though the housewife
may be the loveliest and most dignified of women, her work is to a large
extent menial. One may arise in indignation at this and speak of the
science of housekeeping, of cleanliness, of calories in diet, of
child-culture; one may strike a lofty attitude and speak of the Home
(capital H), and how it is the corner stone of Society. I can but agree,
but I must remind the indignant ones that ditch diggers, garbage
collectors, sewer cleaners are the backbone of sanitation and
civilization, and yet their occupations are disagreeable.
"Fine words butter no parsnips." There are some rare souls who lend to
the humblest tasks the dignity of their natures, but the average person
frets and fumes under similar circumstances. In its aims and purposes
housekeeping is the highest of professions; in its methods and technique
it ranks amongst the lowest of occupations. We must separate results,
ideals, aims, and possibilities from methods.
All work at home has the difficulty of the segregation, the isolation of
the home. Man, the social animal who needs at least some one to quarrel
with, has deliberately isolated his household, somewhat as a squirrel
hides nuts,--on a property basis. There has grown up a definite,
aesthetic need of privacy; all of modesty and the essential family
feeling demand it.
This is good for the man, and perhaps for the children, but not for the
woman. Her work is done alone, and at the time her husband comes home
and wants to stay there, she would like to get out. Work that is in the
main lonely, and work that on the whole leaves the mind free, leads
almost inevitably to daydreaming and introspection. These are
essentials, in the housework,--monotony, daydreaming, and introspection.
Let us consider monotony and its effects. The need of new stimuli is a
paramount need of the human being. Solitary confinement is the worst
punishment, so cruel that it is prohibited in some communities. We need
the cheerful noises of the world, we need as releasers of our energies
the sights, sounds, smells of the earth; we must have the voices and the
presence of our fellows, not for education, but for the maintenance of
interest in living. For the mind to turn inward on itself is
pleasurable only in rare snatches, for short periods of time or for rare
and abnormal people. Man's mind loves the outside world but becomes
uneasy when confronted by itself.
The human being, whether male or female, housewife or industrial worker,
is a seeker of sensations. Without new sensations man falls into boredom
or a restless and unhappy state, from which the mind seeks freedom. It
is true that one may become a mere seeker of sensations, a restless and
fickle pleasure lover who passes from the normal to the abnormal, exotic
in his vain search for what is logically impossible,--lasting novelty.
Variety however is not the mere spice of life; it is the basis of
interest and concentrated purpose as well.
People of course vary greatly in what they regard as variety, and this
is often a constitutional matter as well as a matter of education. What
is new, striking and interest-provoking to the child has not the same
value to the adult; what is boredom to the city man might be of huge
interest to the country man. A person trained to a certain type of life,
taught to expect certain things, may find no need of other newer
things. In other words people accustomed to a wide range of stimuli need
a wide range, while people unaccustomed to such a range do not need it.
The most important stimuli are other _persons_, capable of setting into
action new thoughts, new emotions, new conduct. We need what Graham
Wallas calls "face to face associations of ideas",--ideas called into
being by words, moods, and deeds of others.
It is this group of stimuli that the busy housewife conspicuously lacks.
"She has no one to talk to," especially in the modern apartment life. It
is true she has her children to scold, to discipline, to teach, and to
talk _at_; but contact with child minds is not satisfying, has not the
flavor of companionship, is not reciprocal in the sense that adult minds
are. There therefore results introspection and daydreaming, both of
which may be of slight importance to some women but which are distinctly
disastrous to others.
If the married life is satisfactory the daydreaming and introspection
may be very pleasurable, as they usually are at the beginning of
marriage. The young bride dreams of love that does not swerve, of
understanding that persists, of success, of riches to come, of children
that are lovely and marvelous. And the happy woman also finds her
thoughts pleasant ones, and her castles in the air are mere enlargements
of her life.
But the dissatisfied woman, the unhappy woman, finds her daydreams
pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. She is constantly coming back
to reality; reality constantly obtrudes itself into her dreams. The
daydreaming is rebelled against as foolish, as puerile, as futile. A
struggle takes place in the mind; disloyal and disastrous thoughts creep
in which are constantly dismissed but always reappear. The profoundest
disgust and deënergization may appear, and fatigue, aches, pains, and
weariness of life often results.
One may compare interest to a tonic. How often does one see a little
group, who for the time being are not interesting to one another, sit
sleepy, tired, bored, yawning, restless. Then a new person enters, a
person of importance or of interest. The fatigue disappears like magic,
and all are bright, energetic, sparkling. The basis of club life is the
monotony of the home; man uses the saloon, the clubroom, the pool room,
the street corner, the lodge meeting, as an escape from the
unstimulating atmosphere of wife and family,--the hearth. But for the
housewife there is usually no escape, though she needs it more than her
husband does.
Furthermore the non-domestic type, the woman with especial ability, the
woman who has been courted, petted, and sought for before marriage is
the one who reacts most to the monotony of the home. There are plenty of
women who consider the home a refuge from a world they find more
strenuous, more fatiguing than they can stand, or who find in housework
a consecration to their ordained duty. Which type is the better woman
depends upon the point of view, but it is safe to say that feminism and
the industrial world are making it harder and harder for an increasing
number of women to settle down to home-keeping.
The housewife is _par excellence_ a sedentary creature. She goes to work
when she gets up in the morning, within doors. She goes to bed at night,
very frequently without having stirred from the home. A great many
women, especially those who have no help and have children, find it next
to impossible to get out of doors except for such incidental matters as
hanging out the clothes or going to the grocery.
It is true that some women so situated get out each day. But they are
possessed either of greater energy or skill or else own a less urgent
conscience. At least for many women it gets to be a habit to stay in. If
there is a moment of leisure, a chair or a couch, and a book or paper,
seem the logical way of resting up.
Now sedentary life has several main effects upon health and mood. It
tends quite definitely to lower the vigor of the entire organism.
Perhaps it is the poor ventilation, perhaps it is the lack of the
exercise necessary for good muscle tone that brings about this result.
Though the housewife may work hard her muscles need the tone of walking,
running, swimming, lifting, that our life for untold centuries before
civilization made necessary and pleasurable.
With this sedentary life comes loss of appetite or capricious appetite.
Frequently the housewife becomes a nibbler of food, she eats a bite
every now and then and never develops a real appetite. Nor is this a
female reaction to "food close-at-hand"; watch any male cook, or better
still take note of the man of the house on a Sunday. He spends a good
part of his day making raids on the ice chest, and it is a frequent
enough result to find him "logy" on Monday.
Furthermore, in the household without a servant, the housewife rarely
eats her meal in peace and comfort. She jumps up and down from each
course, and immediately after the meal she rarely relaxes or rests. The
dishes _must_ be cleared away and washed, and this keeps from her that
peace of mind so necessary for good digestion.
An increasing refinement of taste adds to these difficulties. If the
family eat in the dining room, have separate plates for each course, and
various utensils for each dish, have snowy linen instead of
oilcloth,--then there is more work, more strain, less real comfort. Much
of what we call refinement is a cruel burden and entails a grievous
waste of human energy and happiness.
An important result of the sedentary life is constipation. Woman, under
the best of circumstances, is more liable to this difficulty than her
mate, just as the human being is more liable to it than the four-legged
beast. Man's upright position has not been well adjusted by appropriate
structures. Childbearing, lack of vigorous exercise, the corset, and the
hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are
not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel. Indeed it is a cynicism
amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman is "a constipated
biped."
While it is a lay habit to ascribe overmuch to constipation, it is also
true that it does definite harm. For many people a loaded bowel acts as
a mood depressant, as illustrated by the Voltaire story. For others it
destroys the appetite and brings about an uneasiness that affects the
efficiency. Whether there is a poisoning of the organism, an
autointoxication, in such a condition is not a settled matter. But the
importance of the constipation habit lies chiefly in its effect upon
mood and energy, in its relation to neurasthenia.
These factors, the nature of housework, monotony and the results of
sedentary life bear with especial weight upon the woman of little
means. It is absolutely untrue that nervousness is a disease of wealth.
There are cases enough where lack of purpose and lack of routine tasks,
as in the case of wealthy women, lead to a rapid demoralization and
deënergization. It is also true that the search for pleasure leads to a
sterile sort of strenuousness that breaks down the health, as well as
inflicting injury on the personality.
Poverty is picturesque only to the outsider. "It's hell to be poor" is
the poor man's summary of the situation. There are serious psychical
injuries in poverty which will demand our attention later, and still
more serious bodily ones. In the case of the housewife, poverty on the
physical side means (1) never-ending work; (2) no escape from drudgery
and monotony; (3) insufficient convalescence from the injuries of
childbearing; (4) a poor home, badly constructed, badly managed, without
conveniences and necessities.
That there are plenty of poor women who bear up well under their burdens
is merely a testimony to the inherent vitality of the race. A man would
be a wreck morally, physically, and mentally if he coped with his
wife's burdens for a month. Either that or the housekeeping would get
down to bare essentials. If a man kept such a house, dusting and
cleaning would be rare events, meals would become as crude as the needs
of life would allow, ironing and linen would be wiped off as
non-essential, and the children would run around like so many little
animals. In other words an integral part of what we call civilization in
the home would disappear.
Perhaps men would reorganize the home. The housekeeper of to-day is only
in spots coöperative; her social sense is undeveloped. Men might, and I
think likely would, arrange for a group housekeeping such as that which
they enjoy in their clubs.
This digression aside, there are debilitating factors in the housewife's
lot which need some amplification. We have referred to the insufficient
time for convalescence from childbirth. There are _sequelæ_ of
childbirth, such as varicose veins, flat feet, back strain, that render
the victim's life a burden. The rich woman finds it easy to secure rest
enough and proper medical attention. But the poor woman, not able to
rest, and with recourse either to her overbusy family doctor or to the
overburdened, careless, out-patient department of some hospital, drags
along with her troubles year in and year out, becomes old before her
time, and loses through constant pain and distress the freshness of
life.
It is impossible to separate the psychical factors from the physical,
largely because there is no separation. One of the aims of a woman's
life is to be beautiful, or at least good looking. From her earliest
days this is held out to her as a way to praise, flattery, and power. It
becomes a cardinal purpose, a goal, even an ideal.
Unlike the purposes of men this goal is attained early, if at all, and
then Nature or Life strip it away. The well-to-do woman or the
exceptional poor woman may succeed in keeping her figure and her facial
beauty for a relatively long time, though by the forties even these have
usually given up the struggle. For the poor woman the fading comes
early,--household work, bearing children, sedentary life, worry, and a
non-appreciative husband bringing about the fatal change.
I doubt if men see their youth slipping away with the anguish of women.
To men, maturity means success, greater proficiency, more
achievement,--means purpose-expanding. To women, to whom the main
purpose of life is marriage, it means loss of their physical hold on
their mate, loss of the longed for and delightful admiration of others;
it means substantially the frustration of purpose.
And I have noticed that the very worst cases of neurosis of the
housewife come in the early thirties, in women previously beautiful or
extraordinarily attractive. They watch the crows'-feet, the fine
wrinkles, the fat covering the lines of the neck and body with something
of the anguish that the general watches the enemy cutting off his lines
of communication or a statesman marks the rise of an implacable rival.
Popular literature, popular art, and popular drama, including in this by
a vigorous stretching of the idea the movie, are in a conspiracy against
reality. This is of course because of the tyranny of the "Happy Ending."
While the happy ending is psychologically and financially necessary, in
so far as the publishers, editors, and producers are concerned, what
really happens is that the disagreeable phases of life, not being
faced, persist. To have a blind side for the disagreeable does not rule
it out of existence; in fact, it thus gains in effect.
To say that housekeeping is looked upon essentially as menial, to say
that it is monotonous, that it is sedentary, and has the ill effects
that arise from these characteristics, is not to deny that it has
agreeable phases. It has an agreeable side in its privacy, its
individuality, and it fosters certain virtues necessary to civilization.
That I do not lay stress on these is because novelist, dramatist, and
scenario author, as well as churchman and statesman, have always dwelt
on these. The agreeable phases of the housewife's work do not cause her
neurosis; it is the disagreeable in her life that do. Or rather it is
what any individual housewife finds disagreeable that is of importance,
and it is my task to show what these things are, how they work, and
finally what to do about it.