THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS
The problems of life are not all sexual, and in fact even in the
relations of men and women there are more important factors. After all,
as Spencer pointed out in a marvelous chapter, love itself is a
composite of many things, some, of the earth, earthy, and some of the
finest stuff our human life holds. The aspirations, the ideals, the
yearnings of the girl attach themselves to some man as their
fulfillment; the chivalrous feelings, the desire to protect and cherish,
the passion for beauty of the man lead to some girl as their goal. There
are few for whom the glow and ardor of their young love bring no
refinement of their passion; there are few who have not felt a pulsating
unity with all that love and live, at least for some ecstatic moments.
Something of what James has so beautifully designated as the "aura of
infinity that hangs over a young girl" also lingers over the love of men
and women.
All the cynics and epigram makers in the world agree that love ends with
marriage, and this not only in modern times but even back into those
days of the French Court of Love, when Margaret de Valois decided that
the lover had more claims than the husband. Romance dies with marriage
is the plaint of poet and novelists; the charm of woman disappears with
her mystery, with possession. And the typical humorist speaks of the
curl papers and kimono of the wife, the snores and unshaven beard of the
husband. "Familiarity is the death of passion" is the theme of countless
writers who bemoan its passing in the matrimonial state.
How much harm the romantic tales have done to marriage and the
sober-satisfying everyday life, no one can estimate, no one can
overestimate. Romanticism, which extols sex as the prime and only thing
of life, prudery which closes its eyes to it and makes sour faces, need
special places in Dante's Inferno. Neither has dealt with
reality,--reality, which is satisfying and pleasant unless examined
with the prejudices instilled by the hypersexual romance writer and the
perverted sexuality of the prude.
Nevertheless that two people brought up entirely differently, and having
different attitudes towards love and life, should come into sharp
conflict is to be expected. Further, that disillusionment follows after
the excitement and heightened expectation of courtship is inevitable.
Marriage at the best includes a settlement to routine; it carries with
it an adjustment to reality, a getting down to earth that is painful and
disappointing to minds fed to expect thrill and passion with each
moment.
The idealization of the mate--the man or woman--gives way to a gradually
increasing knowledge of imperfection and common clay. Common sense,
earnestness of purpose, willingness to adjust, and a sense of humor save
the situation and change the love of the engaged period into a more
solid, robust affection which gains in durability and wearing quality
what it loses in intensity.
Unfortunately, in many cases to a great extent and in all to some
extent, there arises dissension natural wherever two human beings meet
on anything like equal terms.
In times past (and in many countries at the present time), the
patriarchal household prevailed. The Head of the House was the father, a
sovereign either stern or indulgent according to his nature. Perhaps his
wife ruled him through his love for her, as women have ruled from the
beginning of things, but if she did it was not by right but by
privilege.
America has changed all that, so say all native and foreign observers.
Here the woman rules; here she drags her husband after her like a tail
to a kite; here she is mistress and he obeys, though nominally still
head of the household. All the humorists emphasize this, and the
novelist depicts it as the common situation. The husband is represented
as yoked to the wheel of his wife's whims, tyrannized over by the one he
works for.
This is surely a gross exaggeration, though it furnishes excellent
material for satire. The man still makes the main conditions of life for
both; his name is taken, his work sustains the household, his purse
supplies the means of existence, his industrial business situation
determines the residence, his social standing is theirs. This does not
prevent him from being "henpecked" in many cases, but on the whole it
assures his superior status.
Nevertheless it is true that the American woman of whatever origin has a
will of her own as no other woman has. Since the expression of will is
one of the chief sources of human pleasures, one of the chief, most
persistent activities, man and wife enter into a contest for supremacy
in the household. It may be settled quietly and without even recognizing
its existence, on the common plan that the woman shall have charge of
the home and the man of his business; it may rage with violence over the
fundamental as well as the trivial things of home. After all, it is not
the importance of a thing that determines the size of the row it may
raise; men have killed each other over a nickel because defeat over even
this trifle was intolerable.
What are the chief sources of conflict? For to name them all would be
simply to name every possible source of difference of opinion that
exists. Let us take as an example Extravagance.
This is a new development. In the former days the bulk of purchases was
made by the husband, in whose hands the purse strings were tightly
clutched. With the growth of the cities and industry, the development of
the department store and rise of shopping as an institution, the man
gave place to his wife largely because industry would not let him off
during the daytime. So the housewife disbursed most of the funds of her
home,--and there arose one of the fiercest and most persistent of
domestic conflicts.
Despite the fact that most American husbands turn over their purses to
their wives, they still regard the money as their own. The desire to
"get ahead" is an insistent one, returning with redoubled force after
each expenditure. He finds his entire income gone each week or month, or
finds less left than he expected. "Where does it all go?" is his cry;
"Must we spend as much as we do?" "How do people get along who get less
than we do?"
To this his wife has the answer, "We must have _this_, and we _must_
have that. We must live as our neighbors do."
Here is the keynote to the situation. There has been a democratization
of society of this nature; there has been a spread throughout the
community of aristocratic tastes. The woman of even the poor and the
middle classes must have her spring and autumn suits, her dresses for
summer, her summer and winter hats. Her husband too must change his
clothes with each shift of the season. For this the enterprise of the
clothing trade, the splendid display of the department stores are
responsible, awakening desire and dissatisfaction.
While the man accuses the woman of extravagance, he is as guilty as she.
He too spends money freely,--on his cigars and cigarettes, on every
edition of the newspapers, on the shine which he might easily apply
himself, on a thousand and one nickels that become a muckle. The
American is lavish, hates to stint, detests being a "piker", says, "Oh,
what's the difference; it will all be the same in a hundred years," but
kicks himself mentally afterwards.
Meanwhile he quarrels with his wife, who really is extravagant. In this
battle the man wins, even if he loses, for he rarely broods over the
defeat. But it brings about a sense of tension in his wife; it brings
about a disunion in her heart, because she wants to please her husband,
and at the same time she wants to "keep up" with her neighbors and
friends. And who sets the pace for her, for all of her group; who
establishes the standard of expenditure? Not the thrifty, saving woman,
not the one who mends her clothes and makes her own hats, but the
extravagant woman, the rich woman perhaps of recently acquired wealth
who cares little for a dollar. Against her better judgment the woman of
the house enters a race with no ending and becomes intensely
dissatisfied, while her husband becomes desperate over the bills.
This disunion in her spirit does what all such disunions do,--it
predisposes her to a breakdown. It makes the housework harder; it makes
the relations with her husband more difficult. It takes away pleasure
and leaves discontent and doubt,--the mother-stuff of nervousness.
While most American husbands are generous, there are enough stingy ones
to set off their neighbors. To these men the goal of life is the
accumulation of money, as indeed it is with the majority. But to them
that goal is to be reached by saving every penny, by denying themselves
and theirs all expenditures beyond the necessities.
The woman who marries such a man is humiliated to the quick by his
attitude. That a man values a dollar more than he does her wish is an
insult to the sensitive woman. There ensues either a never-ending battle
with estrangement, or else a beaten woman (for the stingy are stubborn)
accepts her lot with a broken spirit, sad and deënergized. Or perhaps,
it should be added, a third result may come about; the woman accepts the
man's ideal of life and joins with him in their scrimping campaign. With
this agreement life goes on happily enough.
It is not of course meant that all or a great majority of American women
have difficulties with their husbands over money. But I have in mind
several patients who would be happy if this never-ending problem were
settled. The struggle "gets on the nerves" of the partners; they say
things they regret and act with an impatience that has its root in
fatigue.
This difficulty over money and its spending gets worse in the late
thirties and early forties, for it is then the man realizes with a
startled spirit that he is getting into middle age, that sickness and
death are taking their toll of his friends, and that he has not got on.
The sense of failure irritates him, depresses him. He finds that he and
his wife look at the money situation from a different angle.
"If you loved me," says she, "you would see things a little more my
way."
"If you loved me," says he, "you would not act to worry me so."
Here in the year 1920, the high cost of living is becoming the strain of
life. Capital and Labor are at each other's throats; men cry "profiteer"
at those whom good fortune and callous conscience have allowed to take
advantage of the world crisis. The air is filled with the whispers that
a crash is coming, though the theaters are crowded, the automobile
manufacturers are burdened with orders, and the shops brazenly display
the most gorgeous and extravagant gowns. That the marital happiness of
the country is threatened by this I do not see recorded in any of the
discussions on the subject. Yet this phase of the high cost of living is
perhaps its most important result.
The housewife's money difficulties are not confined to the question of
expenditure. For there is a factor not consciously put forward but
evident upon a little probing.
If a woman remains poor, either actually or relatively, she always knows
some man with whom she was familiar in her youth who became rich, or she
has a woman friend whose husband has become successful. A subtle sort of
regret for her marriage may and does arise in many a woman, a subtle
disrespect for her husband because of his failure. The husband becomes
aware of her decreased admiration, and he is hurt in his tenderest
place, his pride. One of the worst cases of neurasthenia I have seen in
a housewife arose in such a woman, who struggled between loyalty and
contempt until exhausted. For she came of a successful family, she had
married against their counsel and her husband, though good, was an
entire failure financially. Measuring men by their success, she found
her lowered position almost unendurable but was too proud to acknowledge
her error. Out of this division in feelings came a complete
deënergization.
Whether or not such a housewife deserves any sympathy in her trouble,
it is certain she presents a problem to every one connected with her.
While money and expenditure afford a fertile field from which
nervousness arises, there are others of importance.
Disagreement and disunion, conflict, arise over the training and care of
the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman--_e.g._ to
a boy's pranks--causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace
of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too
fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he
is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,--tough,
mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern father
who arouses the mother's concern for the child. If a frank quarrel
results, no definite neurotic symptoms follow. It is when the woman
fears to side against the husband and watches the discipline with
vexation and inner agony that she lowers her energy in the way
repeatedly described.
Next perhaps to actual disloyalty women feel most the cessation of the
attentions, courtesies, and remembrances of their unmarried life. Women
expect this to happen and usually they forgive it in the man who devotes
himself to his family, struggles for a livelihood or better, and helps
in the care of the children. It is the hyperæsthetic type of housewife
spoken of previously who weighs against her husband's devotion a minor
dereliction in courtesy.
For it is too common in women to let a momentary neglect or
absent-minded discourtesy outweigh a lifetime of devotion. This is part
of a feminine devotion to manner and form, of which men are,
comparatively speaking, innocent.
Aside from this phase of woman's character there are men who either
rapidly or gradually resume after marriage their bachelor freedom, to
the neglect of their wives. Though for some time after marriage they
give up their "freedom" to play consort and escort, sooner or later they
sink back into finding their recreation with their male friends,--at
club, lodge, saloon, pool room, etc. When night comes they are restless.
At first one excuse or another takes them out, later they break boldly
from the domestic ties and only occasionally and under protest do they
stay at home or escort the housewife to church, visiting, or the
theater.
(It needs be said at this point that in America married life often
proceeds too far in the domestication of the man, in his complete
separation from male companionship, in a never-broken companionship
between man and wife. This is distinctly unhealthy for the man, for he
requires in his recreation the sense of freedom from restraint that he
can have only in masculine company; where the difficult attitude of
chivalry can be discarded for an equality and a frankness impossible
even with his wife.)
The housewife, thus left alone, though wounded, may adjust herself. She
may build up a companionship for herself in church or amongst her
neighbors; she may leave her husband and get a divorce; she may become
unfaithful on the basis that turn about is fair play; she may devote
herself with greater zeal to her home and children and build up a serene
life against odds.
But often she does none of these things. Hurt in her pride, she
struggles to gain back her husband. Tears and reproaches fail, sickness
sometimes succeeds. If she is childless she becomes obsessed with the
belief that a child would hold her husband home. If she is failing in
the freshness of her beauty she makes a pathetic effort to hold her
indifferent mate through cosmetics and beauty specialists. Without the
courage and character to make or break the situation she falls into a
feeling of inferiority from which originates her headaches, her feelings
of unreality, her loss of enthusiasm, her depressed mind and body.
This type of woman, dependent upon the love and affection of her husband
for her health and strength, mental and physical, is the type that
woman's education and training, at least in the past, have tended to
make. She has not been taught, she has not the power, to stand in life
alone; she is the clinging vine to the man's oak, she is the traditional
woman. She is happy and well with the right man, but Heaven help her if
the marriage ceremony links her with a philanderer! For she has been
taught to accept as true and right that mischievous couplet:
Love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
We need for our womanhood a braver standpoint than that, one more
firmly based, less apt to bring failure and disaster. For neither man
nor woman should love be the whole existence. It should be a fundamental
purpose interwoven with other purposes.
Fortunately one source of domestic difficulty will soon pass from
America,--alcoholism. Politicians and theorizers may speak of the blow
to individual liberty and satirically prophesy that soon coffee and
tobacco will be legislated out also. They need to read Gilbert
Chesterton and learn that though "a tree grows upward it stops growing
and never reaches the sky." To see, as I do, the almost complete absence
of delirium tremens from the emergency and city hospitals, where once
every Sunday morning found a dozen or two of raving men; to witness the
disappearance of alcoholic insanity from our asylums, where once it
constituted fifteen per cent of the male admissions; to see cruelty to
children drop to one tenth of its former incidence; to know that former
drunkards are steadily at work to the joy of their wives and the good of
their own souls,--this is to make one bitterly impatient with the
chatter about the "joy and pleasure of life gone," etc. etc., that has
become the stock-in-trade of the stage and the press. Though alcoholism
did not cause all poverty, it stupefied men's minds so that they
permitted much preventable poverty; though it did not cause all
immorality, a few drinks often sent a good man to the brothel; and what
is more, many of the brothel inmates endured their life largely because
of the stupefying use of alcohol.
No one knows the evil of alcohol more than the poor housewife. Of course
the woman brought up to believe that drunkenness was to be expected in a
man--and who often drank with him--was a victim without severe mental
anguish, though her whole life was ruined by drink. But for the refined
woman who married a clean, clever young fellow only to have him come
home some day reeking of liquor,--silly, obscene, helpless,--_her_
contact with John Barleycorn took the joy and sweetness from her life.
She often adjusted herself, but in many cases adjustment failed, and a
chronic state of bruised and tingling nervousness resulted.
A future generation will not consider it possible that the people of a
century that saw the use of wireless, the airship, radium, and the
X-ray could think intoxication with its literal poisoning funny, could
make a stock humorous situation out of it, and could regard the
habit-forming drug that caused it a necessity.
After all is said and done, the fiercest domestic conflicts arise out of
the inherent childishness of men and women. Pride and the unwillingness
to concede personal error, overtender egoism, bossiness, and rebellion
against it, petty jealousies and stubbornness,--these are the basic
elements in discord. Children quarrel about trifles, children are
unreasonably jealous, children fight for leadership and seek constantly
to enlarge their ego as against their comrades. Any one who watches two
five-year-olds for an hour will observe a dozen conflicts. So with many
husbands and wives.
Unreason, petty jealousy, stubbornness over trifles, bossiness (not
leadership), overready temper and overready tears,--these cause more
domestic difficulty than alcohol and unfaithfulness put together. The
education of American women is certainly not tending to eradicate these
defects, which are not necessarily feminine, from her character. In the
domestic struggle the man has the major faults as his burden; the woman
has a host of minor ones. She claims equality for her virtues yet
demands a tender consideration for her weaknesses.
Dealing with petty annoyances, disagreeing over petty matters, with her
mind engrossed in her disillusions and grievances, many a woman finds
her disagreeables a burden too much for her "nerves." That a philosophy
of life would save her is of course obvious, but this is a matter which
we shall deal with later.