The Nervous Housewife Part 7

The s.e.x relationship is the basis of marriage. The famous couplet of Rosalind still holds good. The s.e.x instinct (or rather instincts, for coupled with s.e.x-desire is love of beauty, admiration, joy of possession, triumph, etc.) has the unique place of being more regulated by law and custom than any other basic instinct. The law holds that no marriage is consummated until the s.e.x act has taken place, regardless of the words of preacher or State official. The happiness of the first year or years of married life is mostly in its voluptuous bonds, for companionship and comradeship have really not yet arisen. Complementary to this it may be said that much of married misery, especially for the woman, arises from the first marital embrace.

This last is because of the ignorance of men and women, an ignorance wholly due to prudery. The majority of women have been chaste before marriage; the majority of men have not. One would expect therefore knowledge of men, the knowledge of experience. But the experience has been gained with women of a certain type and has not equipped the man to deal with his wife. Though most women know in advance what is expected of them, some are even ignorant of the most elemental facts of s.e.x, and even those who know are unprepared for reality.

Too frequently the man regards himself as a Grand Seigneur with a paramount "Jus Primis Noctis." True, the majority of men are abashed in the presence of innocence and deal gently with it,--but others follow in a repellent way their instinct of possession. Any neurologist of experience has cases where s.e.xual frigidity and neurasthenia in a woman can be traced back to the shock of that all-important first night.

There are savage races in which preparation for marriage is an elementary part of education. We need not follow them into absurdity, but more than the last silly whispered words to bride and groom at the ceremony is necessary. A formal antenuptial enlightenment, frank and expert, is needed by our civilization.

The s.e.x appet.i.te varies as widely as any other human character.

Generally speaking, it is believed that s.e.xual pa.s.sion in women is more episodic than in men, often relating to the menstrual period. In many cases it does not develop as a conscious factor in the woman's life until after marriage, and sometimes not until the first child is born.

Certainly desire in the girl is a more generalized, less local, less conscious excitement than it is in the boy who cannot misunderstand his feelings. I think it may safely be said that allowing for the freedom of boys and men, there is native to the male a more urgent pa.s.sion than to the female. This would be biologically necessary, since upon him devolves not only courtship but the fundamental activity in the s.e.xual act. A pa.s.sionless woman may have s.e.xual relation, a pa.s.sionless man cannot.

The disparity in s.e.x desire between a husband and wife may be slight or great. No statistics on the subject will ever be gathered, from the very nature of the facts, but it is safe to say that much more disparity exists than is suspected. And likewise it causes more trouble than is suspected. Where the virility of the mate is inadequate there breeds a subtle dissatisfaction that may corrode domestic happiness and bring about conflict on subjects quite remote from the real issue.

Contrariwise, to have relations forced or coaxed on one where desire is lacking brings about disgust, nervous reactions, fatigue of marked nature.

A woman s.e.xually well mated often clings beyond reason to an unworthy mate. Many an inexplicable marriage, many a fantastic loyalty of a good woman to a bad man has its origin where it is least expected, in the s.e.x attachment. Demureness of appearance, refinement of manner, n.o.ble ideals are not at all inconsistent with powerful s.e.x feeling. There is no reason why strong, well-controlled pa.s.sion should be considered anything but a virtue, why the pleasure of the s.e.xual field should, under the social restriction, be regarded as impure.

Too often the latter is the case. Fantastic puritanical ideas often govern both men and women. I have in mind several couples who desired to live continent until such time as children were desired. The biological reasons for the s.e.xual relations seemed to them the only "pure" reasons.

Needless to say the resolution broke down under the intimacy of one roof, but meanwhile a conflict was engendered that took some vigorous counsel to dissipate.

This purely occidental idea that s.e.xual pleasure is somehow unworthy is responsible for a disparity of a further kind. There are parts of the physical side of love in which the majority of men need education, though in the well-adjusted married life the proper knowledge comes.

Nature has not completely adjusted the s.e.xes to one another; it is the part of the man to bring about that adjustment. This part of the adjustment need not here be detailed; the books of Havelock Ellis are explicit on the matter. Certainly no small share of the difficulties of our housewife result, for it is a law that excitement without gratification brings about nervous instability.

Whether or not the American domestic life is too intimate, too constant, is an important question. For the majority of people, after the first ecstasy of the bridal year, separate rooms might be better than a single chamber occupied together. There are people to whom one bed and one room is symbolic of their close unity, of their joined lives, who find comfort and companionship in the knowledge that their life partner sleeps beside them. Where s.e.xual compatibility or adjustment exists, there is nothing but commendation for this arrangement. Where it does not exist, the separate chambers are better for obvious reasons.

A development of recent times is the rapidly increasing use of what are politely known as birth-control measures. This development is rapidly changing the number of births in the community to a figure below that necessary for the perpetuation of the race. We are not concerned here with the morality or immorality of these measures. Modern woman undoubtedly will continue to take the stand that childbearing should be voluntary, that involuntary motherhood is incompatible with her dignity and status as a person. In this, through the increasing cost of living as well as sympathy with her att.i.tude, she will be backed by her husband. I predict without fear that Church and State will have to adjust themselves to this situation.

The fear of pregnancy has brought about this situation, that many a woman undergoes an agony of symptoms which is only relieved when her monthly function appears. This fear makes the s.e.xual relationship a risk almost outweighing its pleasure. The notoriously "unsafe" character of the contraceptive measures has only diminished this fear, not completely allayed it.

Moreover the contraceptive measures, according to the law that every "solution" breeds new problems, have their place in causing nervousness.

Rarely do these measures replace the natural act in satisfaction.

Further, some are unable to conquer their repugnance and disgust and some are left excited and unsatisfied. Vasomotor disturbances, neurasthenic symptoms, obsessions, and hysterical phenomena occur in many women as well as in some men. One of the stock questions of the neurologists when examining a married man or woman complaining of neurasthenic symptoms relates to the contraceptive measures used. The channel of discharge of s.e.xual excitement is race old. And this new development blocks that channel. For many persons this is sufficient to deenergize the organism.

At the present time there are two trends in the s.e.x sphere, so far as women are concerned. There is the masculine trend, which is usually called feminism. Women tend to take up the work formerly exclusively belonging to men; they tend to dress more like men, with flat shoes, collars and ties, and tailor-made clothes. They take up the vices of men,--smoking, drinking,--are building up a club life, live in bachelor apartments, call each other by their last names, etc.

Whether with this goes a greater s.e.xual license or not it is difficult to say. The observers best qualified to comment think there has been a decrease in female chast.i.ty,--that the entrance of women in industrial life, the growth of the cities, the increase in automobiles, the greater freedom of women, the dropping of restraint in manner and speech, have brought women's morals somewhat nearer to men's.

The other trend, not entirely separate except for externals, is marked by a hyper-s.e.xuality, an emphasis of femaleness. This is by far the more common phenomenon and probably more widely spread through society. The dress of women in general is more daring, more designed for s.e.x allurement than for a century past. Women paint and powder in a way that only the demimonde did a generation ago, reminding one of the ladies of the French Court in the eighteenth century. Further, the plays of the day would be called mere burlesque a generation back; the girl and music show has the center of the stage, and the drama in America has almost disappeared. There is an epidemic of magazines that flirt with the risque; with t.i.tles that are sometimes much more clever than their contents.

Such eras have been with us before this, have come and gone. It is doubtful if they ever affected so large a number of people. The excitement of the daily life is increased in a s.e.xual way, and this brings an unrest that reacts on the anchor of the home, the housewife.

She too tugs at her moorings; life must be speeded up for her too as well as for the younger and unattached women. She becomes more dissatisfied and therefore more nervous.

Altogether the s.e.xual relationship of modern marriage needs a candid examination. No drastic change is indicated, but education in s.e.xual affairs for men and women is a need. Even the prudish admit the pleasure of the s.e.x-life, and that seems to be their fundamental aversion to it.

Most of the advice and injunctions in the past seem to have come from the s.e.xually abnormal. It is time that this was changed; in fact, it is being changed. The danger lies in a swing to extremes, in leaving the fields to those who think reform lies in the abolition of restraint, in the disregard of all social supervision and obligation. Free love is more disastrous if possible than prudery.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS

The problems of life are not all s.e.xual, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion; 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 pa.s.sion" is the theme of countless writers who bemoan its pa.s.sing 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 s.e.x 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 hypers.e.xual romance writer and the perverted s.e.xuality of the prude.

Nevertheless that two people brought up entirely differently, and having different att.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sures 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 inst.i.tution, 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 cla.s.ses 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 acc.u.mulation 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 att.i.tude. 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 deenergized. 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.