The Nervous Housewife Part 8

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 deenergization.

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 hyperaesthetic 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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 const.i.tuted 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.

CHAPTER IX

THE SYMPTOMS AS WEAPONS AGAINST THE HUSBAND

Throughout life, two great trends may be picked out of the intricacy of human motives and conduct. The one is (or may be called) the Will to Power, the other the Will to Fellowship. The will to power is the desire to conquer the environment, to lead one's fellows, to acc.u.mulate wealth (power), to write a great book (influence or power), to become a religious leader (power), to be successful in any department of human effort. In every group, from a few tots playing in the gra.s.s to gray-headed statesmen deciding a world's destinies, there is a struggle of these wills to power. In the children's group this takes the trivial (to us) form as to who shall be "policeman" or "teacher", in the statesmen it takes the "weighty" form as to which river shall form a boundary line and which group of capitalists shall exploit this or that benighted country. The will to power includes all trends which inflate the ego,--love of admiration, pride, reluctance to admit error, desire for beauty, l.u.s.t for possession, cruelty, even philanthropy, which in many cases is the good man's desire for power over the lives of his fellows.

Side by side with this group of instincts and purposes, interplaying and interweaving with it, modifying it and being modified by it, is the group we call the will to fellowship. This is the social sense, the need of other's good will, the desire to help, sympathy, love, friendly feeling, self-sacrifice, sense of fair play, all the impulses that are essentially maternal and paternal, devotion to the interests of others.

This will to fellowship permeates all groups, little and big, old and young, and is the cement stuff of life, holding society together.

There are those who find no difference between the _egoism_ of the will to power and the _altruism_ of the will to fellowship. They a.s.sert that if egoism is given a wider range, so that the ego includes others, you have altruism, which therefore is only an egoism of a larger ego.

However true this may be logically, for all practical purposes we may separate these two trends in human nature.

In each individual there goes on from cradle to grave a struggle between the will to power and the will to fellowship. The teaching of morality is largely the government, the subordination of the will to power; the teaching of success and achievement is largely the discovery of means by which it is to be gained. However we may disguise it to ourselves, power is what we mainly seek, though we may call our goal knowledge, science, benevolence, invention, government, money.

Without the will to fellowship the will to power is tyranny, harshness, cruelty, autocracy, and men hate the possessor of such a character.

Without the will to power, the will to fellowship is sterile, futile, and the owner becomes lost in a world of striving people who brush him aside. The two must mingle. And a curious thing becomes evident in the life of men, which in itself is simple enough to understand. When men who have been ruthless, concentrated on success, specialists in the will to power, reach their goal, they often turn to the thwarted will to fellowship for real satisfaction in life, become philanthropists, world benefactors, etc. On the other hand those who start out with ideals of altruism and service, specialists in the will to fellowship, generally lose enthusiasm for this and turn slowly, half reluctantly, to the will for power. In life's cycle it is common to see the egotist turn philanthropist, and the altruist, the idealist, lose faith and become an egotist.

How does this apply to the nervous housewife? Simply this, that there are various ways of seeking power, of gaining one's ends.

There is first the method of force, directly applied. The strong man disdains subtlety, persuasion, sweeps opposition aside. "Might is right"

is his motto; he beats down opposition by fist, by sword, by thundering voice, or look. Men who use this method are little troubled by codes; they follow the primitive line of direct attack.

There is second the method of strategy, the disguise of purpose, the disguise of means. The effort is to shift the attention of the opponent to another place and then to walk off with the prize. "Possession is nine points of the law" say these folk. And a straight line is _not_ the shortest way for strategy. Or exchange with your opponent, give what _seems_ valuable for what _is_ valuable and then fall back on the adage, "A fair exchange is no robbery."

Third, there is persuasion. Here, by stirring your opponent into friendliness, he talks matters over, he aligns his interest with yours.

Compromise is the keynote, cooperation the watchword. "'Tis folly to fight, we both lose by battle; whose is the gain?"

Fourth is the method of the weak, to gain an end through weakness, through arousing sympathy, by parading grief, by awakening the discomfort of unpleasant emotion in an opponent who is of course not an implacable enemy. This has been woman's weapon from time immemorial; tears and sobs are her sword and gun. Unable to cope with man on an equal plane, through his superior physical strength, his intrenched social and legal position, she took advantage of her beauty and desirability, of his love; if that failed, she fell back on her grief and sorrow by which to plague him into submission, into yielding.

Children use this weapon constantly; they cry for a thing and develop symptoms in the face of some disagreeable event, such as a threatened punishment. In their day-dreams the idea of dying to punish their cruel parents is a favorite one.

This appeal to the conscience of the stronger through a demonstration of weakness may be called "Will to Power through Weakness." It has long been known to women that a man is usually helpless in the presence of woman's tears, if it is apparent that something he has done has brought about the deluge. And in the case of some housewives, certain similarities between tears and the symptoms appear that show that in these cases, at least, the symptoms of nervousness appear as a subst.i.tute for tears in the marital conflict.

Not that this is a deliberate and fully conscious process, nor that it causes the symptoms. On the contrary, it is a use for them!

Such a conclusion of course is not to be reached in those cases where the symptoms arise out of sickness of some kind, or where they follow long and arduous household tasks. But every one knows that the woman who gets sick, has a nervous headache, weakness, a loss of appet.i.te, or becomes blue as soon as she loses in some domestic argument, or when her will is crossed; these symptoms persist until the exasperated but helpless husband yields the point at issue. Then recovery takes place almost at once.

In some of the severer cases of neurasthenia in women such a mechanism can be traced. There is a definite relation between the onset of the attacks and some domestic difficulty, and though the recovery does not take place at once, an adjustment in favor of the wife causes the condition to turn soon for the better.

I do not claim that the above is an original discovery. True, the medical men have not formulated it in their textbooks, but every experienced pract.i.tioner knows it to occur. And the humorists and the satirists of the daily press use the theme every day. The favorite point is that the brutal husband is forced to his knees through the disabilities of his wife, and that cure takes place when--he gets her the bonnet or dress she wants, when the trip to Florida is ordered, etc.

etc.

Discreditable to women? Discreditable to those women who use it? Men would do the same in the face of superior force. In the battle of wills that goes on in life the weak must use different weapons than the strong. Doubtless the women of another day, trained otherwise than our present-day women and having a different relationship to men, will abandon, at least in larger part, the weapons of weakness. Wherever women work with men on a plane of equality they ask no favors and resort to no tears. They play the game as men do, as "good sports." But where the relationship is the one-sided affair of matrimony, a certain type uses her tears, her aches and pains, her moods, and her failings to gain her point.