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 deenergization. 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 cooperative; 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 sequelae 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.



CHAPTER V

REACTION TO THE DISAGREEABLE

A few preliminary words about the disagreeable in the housewife's lot will be of value.

We may divide the things, situations, and happenings of life into three groups,—the agreeable, the indifferent, and the disagreeable. No two men will agree in detail in judging what is agreeable, indifferent, or disagreeable. There are as many different points of view as there are people, and in the end what is one man's meat may literally be another man's poison. There are, however, only a few ways of reacting to what one considers the disagreeable. The agreeable things of life do not cause a neurosis, though they may injure character or impair efficiency. And we may neglect the theoretical indifferent.

1. A disagreeable thing may be so disastrous in our viewpoint as to cause fear. This fear may be expressed as flight, which is a normal reaction, or it may be expressed by a sort of paralysis of function, as the fainting spell, or the great weakness which makes flight impossible. Fear is a much abused emotion. People speak glibly about taking it out of life, on the ground that it is wholly harmful. "Children must not experience fear; it is wrong, it is immoral; they should grow up in sunshine and gladness, without fear." A whole sect, many minor religions, take this Pollyanna attitude toward reality.

As a matter of fact fear is a (I almost said the) great motive force of human life. Fear of the elements was the incentive to shelter; fear of starvation started agriculture and the storage of food; fear of disease and death gives medicine its standing; fear of the unknown is the backbone of conservatism, and fear of the rainy day is the source of thrift. Fear of death is not only the basis of religion, but of life insurance as well. Fear of the finger of scorn and the blame of our fellows is the great force in morality. And no amount of attempted unity with God will ever take the place of the injunction to fear Him!

2. While fear then is back of the constructive forces of life it works hand in hand with another emotion that is also greatly disparaged by sentimentalists,—anger. The disagreeable, by balking an instinct, by obstructing a wish or purpose, may arouse anger. The anger may blaze forth in a sudden destructive fury in an effort to remove the obstacle, or it may simmer as a patient sullenness, or it may link itself with thought and become a careful plan to overcome the opposition. It may range all the way from the blow of violence to burning indignation against wrong and injustice; it is the source of the fighting spirit. Without fear, purpose would never be born; without anger in some form or other it would never be fulfilled.

3. But while fear and anger work well in succession, or at different times, when both emotions are awakened by some disagreeable situation or thing, when there is a helpless anger, when the instinct to fight is paralyzed by fear, when doubt arises, then there is deenergization.

Thus a hostile situation, an intensely disagreeable situation, may be met with energy: viz. planning, constructive flight, destructive action, or it may be met with a deenergization, confusion, paralysis, hopeless anger. It may cause an intense inner conflict with high constant emotions, fatigue, incapacity to choose the proper action, and the peculiar agony of doubt.

This last type of reaction is a very common one in the housewife. For the situation is never clear-cut for decision—there is the ideal implanted by training, education, social pressure, and her own desire to live in conformity with this ideal; there is opposing it disgust, anger, weariness, lack of interest that her house duties bring with them. This conflict leads nowhere so far as action is concerned, for she can neither accept nor reject the situation.

This is to say: The human being needs primarily a definite point of view, a definite starting place for his actions. Some belief, some goal, some definite purpose is needed for the rallying of the energy of mind and body. Drifting is intolerable to the acute, active mind bent upon some achievement before death. Man is the only animal keenly aware of his mortality, and consequently he is the only one to fear the passing of time. This passing of time can be received equably by the one conscious of achievement, or who has some compensation in belief and purpose; it becomes intolerable to those in doubt.

Fundamentally one may say that neurasthenia and the allied diseases which we are here summing up as the nervousness of the housewife are reactions to the disagreeable. The fatigue, pains and aches, changes in mood and emotion are born of this reaction, except in those cases where they arise from definite bodily disease, and even here a vicious circle is established. The weakness and fatigue state, the consciousness of impaired power brought about by sickness, are reacted to in a neurasthenic manner. It is not often enough realized by physicians that a physical defect or a physical injury may be reacted to so as to bring about nervous and mental symptoms; may cause the emotions of fear, hopeless anger, and sorrow; may cause an agony of doubt.

With these few words on types of reactions to the disagreeable let us turn again to the disagreeable factors in our housewife's life which may cause her neurosis.

The child is the central bond of the home and is of course the biological reason for marriage. The maternal instinct has long been recognized as one of the great civilizing factors, the source of much of human sympathy and the gentler emotions. While the beautiful side of the mother-child relationship is well known and cannot be overestimated, the maternal instinct has its fierce, its jealous, its narrow aspect. Love and sympathy for one's own in a competitive world have often as their natural results injustice and hardness for the children of others. While the best type of mother irradiates her love for her own into love for all children, it is not uncommon for women to find their chiefest source of rivalry in the progress and welfare of their children.

Maternal devotion is largely its own reward. The child takes the maternal sacrifices for granted, and after the first few years the interests of parent and child diverge. There is a never-ending struggle between the rising and the receding generations, which is inherent in the nature of things and will always exist wherever the young are free. All the world honors the mother, but few children return in anything like equality the love and sacrifices of their own mother.

Is the maternal instinct waning in intensity in this period of feminization? There have always been some bad, careless, selfish mothers; has their number increased? Probably not, yet the maternal instinct now has competition in the heart of the modern woman. The desire to participate in the world's activity, the desire to learn, to acquire culture, engenders a restless impatience with the closed-in life of the mother-housewife. This interferes with single-minded motherhood, brings about conflict, and so leads to mental and bodily unrest. Of course this interferes little or not at all with some, probably most of the present-day mothers, but is a factor of importance in the lives of many.

The nervous housewife has several difficulties in her relations to her children. These are of importance in understanding her and have been touched on before this, but it will be of advantage to consider them as a group.

We have said that the opinion of obstetricians is that the modern woman has more difficulty in delivering herself than did her ancestress. If this is true (and we may be dealing with the fact that obstetricians are often the ones to see the difficult cases, or that these stand out in their memories) there are several explanations.

First, women marry later than they did. It may be said that the first child is easiest born before the mother is twenty-five years of age, and that from that time on a first child is born with rapidly increasing difficulty. The pelvis, like all the bony-joint structures of the body, loses plasticity with years, and plasticity is the prime need for childbearing. Similarly with the uterus, which is of course a muscular organ, but possesses an elastic force that diminishes as the woman grows older.

Second, the vigor of the uterine contractions upon which the passage of the baby depends is controlled largely by the so-called sympathetic nervous system, though glands throughout the body are very important factors as well. This part of the nervous system and these glands are part of the mechanism of emotion as well as of childbearing, and emotion plays a role of importance in childbearing. The modern woman fears childbearing as her ancestress did not, partly through greater knowledge, partly through her divided attitude towards life.

Having a harder time in childbearing means a slower convalescence, a need for more rest and care. Then nursing becomes somehow more difficult, more wearing to the mother; she rebels more against it, and yet, knowing its importance, she tries to "keep her milk." It often seems that the more women know about nursing, the less able they are to nurse, that the ignorant slum-dweller who nurses the child each time it cries and drinks beer to furnish milk does better than her enlightened sister who nurses by the clock and drinks milk as a source of her baby's supply.

The feeling of great responsibility for her child's welfare that the modern woman has acquired, as a result of popular education in these matters, undoubtedly saves infants' lives and is therefore worth the price. A secondary result of importance, and one not good, is the added liability to fatigue and breakdown that the mother acquires. This factor we meet again in the next phase of our subject, the education and training of children.

Though the number of children has conspicuously decreased, the care and attention given them has increased in inverse proportion. The woman with six children or more turned over the younger children to the older ones, so that her burden, though heavy, was much less than it may seem. Further, though she loved and cared for them, she knew far less of hygiene than her descendant; she did not try to bring them up in a germless way; and her household activities kept her too busy to allow her to notice each running nose, or each "festering sore." Not having nearly so much knowledge of disease, she had much less fear and was spared this type of deenergization. Her daughter views with alarm each cough and sneeze, has sinister forebodings with each rash; pays an enormous attention to the children's food, and through an increasing attention to detail in her child's life and actions has a greater liability to break under the greater responsibility and conscientiousness.

It must be remembered that the feeling of responsibility and apprehensive attention is not merely "mental." It means fatigue, more disturbance of appetite, and less restful sleep. These are things of great importance in causing nervousness; in fact, they constitute a large part of it.

Perhaps another generation will find that hygiene can be taught without producing fussiness and fear. Certainly popular education has its value, but it has a morbid side that now needs attention. This morbid side is not only bad for the mother but is unqualifiedly bad for the child.

For the child of to-day, the center of the family stage in his attention, is often either spoiled or made neurasthenic by his treatment. Either he is frankly indulged, or else an over-critical attitude is taken toward him. "Bad habits must not be formed" is the actuating motive of the overconscientious parents, for they do not seem to know that the "trial and error" method is the natural way of learning. Children take up one habit after another for the sake of experience and discard them by themselves. For a child to lie, to steal, to fight, to be selfish, to be self-willed is not at all unnatural; for him to have bad table manners and to forget admonition in general and against these manners in particular is his birthright, so to speak.

Yet many a mother of to-day torments her child into a bad introspection and self-consciousness, herself into neurasthenia, and her husband into seething rebellion, because of her desire for perfection, because of her fear that a "bad act" may form into a habit and thence into a vicious character.

Especially is this true of the overaesthetic, overconscientious types described in Chapter III. I have seen women who made the dinner table less a place to eat than a place where a child was pilloried for his manners,—pilloried into sullen, appetiteless state.

So, too, an unfortunate publicity given to child prodigies brought with it for a short time an epidemic of forced intellectual feeding of children, that produced only a precocious neurasthenia as its great result. Similarly the Montessori method of child training which made every woman into a kindergarten teacher did a hundred times more harm than good, despite the merits of the system. That a child needs to experiment with life himself means that it will be a long time before the average mother will know how to help him.

A factor that tends to perplex the mother and hurts the training of the child is her doubt as how "to discipline." Shall it be the old-fashioned corporal punishment of a past generation, the appeal to pain and blame? Shall it be the nowadays emphasized moral suasion, the appeal to conscience and reason? With all the preachers of new methods filling her ear she finds that moral suasion fails in her own child's case, and yet she is afraid of physical punishment.

This is not the place to study child training in any extensive manner, yet it needs be said that praise and blame, pleasure and pain, are the great incentives to conduct. One cannot drive a horse with one rein; neither can one drive a child into social ways, social conformity by one emotion or feeling. Corporal punishment is a necessity, sparingly used but vigorously used when indicated. Of course praise is needed and so is reward.

What is here to be emphasized is that a sense of great responsibility and an over-critical attitude toward the children is a factor of importance in the nervous state of the modern housewife. Increasing knowledge and increasing demand have brought with them bad as well as good results. Here as elsewhere a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a more serious difficulty is this,—though fads in training arise that are loudly proclaimed as the only way, there is as yet no real science of character or of character growth.

The tragedy of illness is acute everywhere, and the sick child is in every household. In many cases I have traced the source of the housewife's neurosis to the care and worry furnished by one child. There are truly delicate children who "catch everything", who start off by being difficult to nurse, and who pass from one infection to another until the worried mother suspects disease with every change in the child's color. A sick child is often a changed child, changed in all the fundamental emotions,—cranky, capricious, unaffectionate, difficult to care for. A sick child means, except where servants and nurses can be commanded, disturbed sleep, extra work, confinement to the house, heavy expense, and a heightened tension that has as its aftermath, in many cases, collapse. The savor of life seems to go, each day is a throbbing suspense.

With recovery, if the woman can rest, in the majority of cases no marked degree of deenergization follows. But in too many cases rest is not possible, though it is urgently needed. The mother needs the care of convalescence more than does the child.

There is an extraordinary lack of provision for the tired housewife. True there are sanataria galore, with beautiful names, in pretty places, well equipped with nurses and doctors to care for their patients. But these are prohibitive in price, and at the present writing the cheapest place is about forty dollars per week. This rate puts them out of the reach of the great majority who need them.

Moreover, where there are small children and where there is no trusty servant or some kindly relative or friend it seems impossible for the housewife to leave the home. Her husband must work daily for their bread and unless they are willing to turn to the charitable organizations, it is necessary for the housewife to carry on, despite her fatigue. So at the best she gets an hour or two extra rest a day, takes a "little tonic" from the family doctor and gets along with her pains, her aches, and moods as best she can.

But the sick do not always recover. Fortunately, the average human being grieves a while over death, but the life struggle soon absorbs him, and the bereavement itself becomes a memory. But now and then one meets mothers whose griefs and deprivations seem without end. No religion, no philosophy can bring them back into continuity with their lives. They go about in a sorrowful dream, hugging their affliction, resenting any effort to comfort or console; without interest in the daily task or in those whom they should love. They offer the severest problem in readjustment, in reenergization, for they actively resent being helped. Sometimes one believes their grief is an effort to atone for neglect real or fancied, a self-punishment which is not remitted until full atonement has been made.

Aside from the physical difficulties in the bearing and rearing of children, and in addition to the ordinary mental difficulties, such as judging what discipline to use, there are especial problems of some importance. Men vary in character from the saint to the villain, in ability from the genius to the idiot. The children they once were vary as much. There are children who go through the worst of homes, the worst of environments, the worst of trainings,—and come out pure gold, with characters all the better for the struggle. There are others whom no amount of love, discipline, training, and benefits help; they are despicable from the ordinary viewpoint from the first of life to the last. Some children, adversely situated as to poverty and health, become geniuses, and their reverse is in the poor child whom heredity, early disease, or some freak of nature dooms to feeble-mindedness.

The heart of the mother is in her child; she glories in its progress, and she refuses to see its defects until they glare too brightly to be overlooked. Then she has a heartbreak all the more bitter for her maternal love.

It is the incorrigibly bad child and the mentally deficient child who evoke the severest, most neurasthenic reaction on the part of the housewife. Not only is pride hurt, not only is the expanded self-love injured, but such children are a physical care and burden of such a nature as to outbalance that of three or four normal children.

The bad child, egoistic, undisciplinable, destructive, and quarrelsome, or the child who cannot be taught honesty, or the one who continually runs away, is an unending source of "nervousness" to his mother. As time goes on and the difficulty is seen to be fundamental, a battle between hostility and love springs up in the mother's breast that plays havoc with her strength and character. The very worst cases of housewife neurosis are seen in such mothers; the most profound interference with mood, emotion, purpose, and energy results.

Similarly, with the mother of the feeble-minded child. At first the child is viewed as a bit slow in walking, talking, in keeping clean, and the mother explains it all away on this ground or that. A previous illness, a fall in which the head was hurt, difficulty with the teething, diet, etc., all receive the blame. Alas! In the course of time the child goes to kindergarten and the terrible report comes back that "the child cannot learn, is clumsy, etc.", and the teacher thinks he should be examined. Then either through the examination or through the pressure of repeated observations mother love yields to the truth and feeble-mindedness is recognized.

There are plenty of women who, with this fact established, adjust themselves, make up their minds to it. But others find that it takes all the pleasure out of their lives, become morbid, and do not enjoy their normal children. For with all due respect to eugenics and statistics I am convinced that the most of feeble-mindedness is accidental or incidental, and not a matter of heredity. Once a mother gets imbued with the notion that the condition is hereditary, she falls into agonies of fear for her other children. In my mind there is a thoroughly reprehensible publicity given to half-baked work in heredity, mental hygiene, and the like that does far more harm than good and interferes with the legitimate work.

There is no offhand solution for the case of the incorrigible boy or girl. Of course the largest number sooner or later reform, sometimes overnight, and in a way to remind one of the religious conversions that James speaks of in his "Varieties of Religious Experiences." So long as a child has a social streak in his make-up, so long as he at least is responsive to the praise and blame of others and understands that he does wrong, so long may one hope for him. But the child to whom the opinion of others seems of no value, who follows his own egoism without check or control by the accepted standard of conduct, by the moral law, by the praise and blame of those near to him, is almost hopeless. Some day intelligence may keep him out of trouble, but by itself it cannot change his nature.

It is not sufficiently realized that while there has been a rise of feminism there has also been a great change in the status of children, a change that makes their care far more difficult than in the past. They have risen from subordinate figures in the household, schooled in absolute obedience, "to be seen and not heard," to the central figures in the household. One of the strangest of revolutions has taken place in America, taken place in almost every household, and without the notice of historians or sociologists. That is because these professional students of humanity have their attention focused on little groups of figures called the leaders, and not nearly enough on that mass which gives the leaders their direction and power.

The age of the child! His development parallels that of women, in that an individualization has taken place. In the past education and training took notice of the child-group, not of the individual child. But child-culture has taken on new aspects, punishment has been largely superseded, individual study and treatment are the thing. Personality is the aim of education, especial aptitudes are recognized in the various types of schools that have arisen: commercial, industrial, classical; yes, and even schools for the feeble-minded.

All this is admirable, and in another century will bring remarkable results. Even to-day some good has come, but this is largely vitiated by other influences.

Aside from the fact that the attention paid the child often increases his self-importance and makes his wishes more capricious, there are factors that tend to rob him of his naivete.

These factors are the movies, the newspapers, and the spread of luxurious habits amongst children.

The movies are marvelous agents for the spread of information and misinformation. Because of the natural settings they give to the most absurd and unnatural stories, their essential falsity and unreality is often made the more pernicious. Their possibilities for good are enormous, their actual performance is conspicuously to lower the public taste, to create a habit which discourages earnest reading or intelligent entertainment. For children they act as a stimulant of an unwholesome kind, acquainting them with realistic crime, vice, and vulgarity, giving them a distaste for childlike enjoyment. One sees nowadays altogether too often the satiated child who seeks excitement, the cynical, overwise child filled with the lore of the movies.

In similar fashion the "comic" cartoons of the newspapers have an extraordinary fascination for children. Every child wants to read the funny page, though the funny page is not for childish reading. The humor is coarse, slangy, and distinctly vulgar; very clever frequently and thoroughly enjoyable to those whom it cannot harm.

If the historians of, say, 4500 A.D. were by chance to get hold of a few copies of our newspapers of 1920 they might legitimately conclude that the denizen of this remote period expressed surprise by falling backward out of his shoes, expressed disagreement by striking the other person over the head with a brick or a club; that women were always taller than their mates and usually "beat them up"; that all husbands, especially if elderly, chased after every young and pretty girl. They might conclude that the language of the mass of the people was of such remarkable types as this: "You tell them Casket, I'm Coffin", or "the Storm and Strife is coming; beat it!"

No one I think enjoys the comic page more than the present writer,—yet it spreads a demoralizing virus amongst children. Of what use is it to teach children good English when the newspaper deliberately teaches them the cheapest slang? Of what use is it to teach them manners and kindliness when the newspaper constantly spreads boorishness and "rough house" conduct? Of what use is it to raise taste when this is injured at the very outset of life by giving bad taste a fascinating attraction?

Throughout the community there is a stir and excitement that is reflecting on the children. There are so many desirable luxuries in the world now, so many revealed by movie and symbolized by the automobile, the cabaret, the increasing vulgarity of the theater (the disappearance of the drama and the omnipresent girl and music show), a restless search for pleasure throughout the community even before the War, have not missed the child.

All these things make the lot of the housewife harder in so far as the training of her children is concerned. She is dealing with a more alert, more sophisticated, more sensuous child,—and one who knows his place and power. The press and the theater both have knowledge of this and a recent witty play dealt with the sins of the children, paraphrasing of course the classic of a bygone day, "Sins of the Fathers." And a wise old gentleman said to his grandson recently, when the lad complained about his mother, "Of course you are right. Every son has a right to be obeyed by his mother."

I am by no means a pessimist. Every forward step has its bad side, but nevertheless is a forward step. It is in the nature of things that we shall never reach a millennium, though we may considerably improve the value and dignity of human life. Democracy has a role in the world of great importance,—but the spread of education and opportunity to the mass may make it more difficult for the best ideals and customs to survive in the avalanche of mediocrity that becomes released by the agencies that profit by appealing to the mass. So, too, the rise of the woman and child bring us face to face with new problems, which I think are less difficult problems than those they have superseded and replaced, but which are yet of importance.

And a great problem is this: how to individualize the child and keep from spoiling him; how to give him freedom and pleasure, and keep him from sophistication.



CHAPTER VI

POVERTY AND ITS PSYCHICAL RESULTS

In the story of Buddha it is related that it was the shock of learning of the existence of four great evils which aroused his desire to save mankind. These evils were Old Age, Sickness, Death, and Poverty. Theologians and the sentimentalists are unanimous in their praise of poverty,—the theologians because they seek their treasure in heaven, and the sentimentalists because they are incorrigible dodgers of reality, because they cannot endure the existence of evil. But Buddha knew better, and the common sense of mankind has shown itself in the desperate struggle to reach riches.

We have spoken of the part played by the physical disadvantages of poverty in causing the nervousness of the housewife. It is not alleged or affirmed that all poor housewives suffer from the neurosis,—that would be nonsense. But poor food, poor housing, poor clothing, the lack of vacations, the insufficient convalescence from illness and childbirth are not blessings nor do they have anything but a bad effect, an effect traceable in the conditions we are studying.

Furthermore, the woman who does all her own housework, including the cooking, scrubbing, washing, ironing, and the multitudinous details of housekeeping, in addition to the bearing and rearing of children, does more than any human being should do. It is very well to say, "See what the women of a past generation did," but could we look at the thing objectively, we would see that they were little better than slaves. That is the long and short of it,—the Emancipation Proclamation did not include them.

Aside from the physical effects of poverty on the housewife, there are factors of psychical importance that call for a hearing. After all, what is poverty in one age is riches in another; what is poverty for one man is wealth to his neighbor. More than that, what a man considers riches in anticipation is poverty in realization. Here again we deal with the mounting of desire.

The philosophical, contented woman, satisfied with her life even though it is poor, is exempted from one great factor making for breakdown. Contentment is the great shield of the nervous system, the great bulwark against fatigue and obsession. But contentment leads away from achievement, which springs from discontent, from yearning desire. Whether civilization in the sense of our achievements is worth the price paid is a matter upon which the present writer will not presume to pass judgment. Whether it is or not, Mankind is committed to struggle onward, regardless of the result to his peace of mind.

There are two principal psychical injuries with poverty—fear and worry—and we must pass to their consideration as factors in the neuroses of some women.

Worry is chronic fear directed against a life situation, usually anticipated. Man the foreseeing must worry or he dies,—dies of starvation, disease, disaster. It is true that worry may be excessive and directed either against imaginary or inevitable ills; ills that never come, ills that must come, like old age and death.

Men in comfortable places cry "Why worry?" meaning of course that the most of worry is about ills that are never realized. That is true, but the person living just on the brink of disaster, ruined or made dependent on charity by unemployment, a long illness, or any failure of power and strength, cannot be as philosophical as the man fortified by a nice bank account or dividend-paying investments. These well-to-do advisers of the poor remind one of the heroes of ancient fables who, having magic weapons and impenetrable armor, showed no fear in battle. One wonders how much courage they would have had if armed as their foemen were.

For the poor housewife who sees no escape from poverty, whose husband is either a workman or a struggling business man always on the edge of failure, life often seems like a wall closing in, a losing battle without end.

Especially in the middle-aged, in those approaching fifty, does this happen. Aside from the condition produced by "change of life", the so-called involution period, there is a reaction of the "time of life" that is found very commonly. For old age is no longer far off on the horizon; it is close at hand, around the corner, and the looking-glass proclaims its coming. The woman wonders whether her husband will long be able to keep up,—and then "what will become of us?"

To be thrown on the benevolence of children is a sad ending to independent natures, to people of experience. Crudely put, those who have been dependents are now sustainers; those who have been led now guide; the inferiors are the superiors. This is not cynicism, for with the best intentions in the world, if the children are also poor, the care of the parents is a burden that they cannot help showing, sooner or later.

Looking forward to such an ending to the hard work and struggle of a lifetime is part of the worry of poverty, to be classed with the fear of sickness and unemployment.

We may loudly proclaim that one honest man is as good as another, that character is the measure of worth, that success cannot be measured by money. These things are true; the difficulty is not to make people believe it, it is to make people feel it. Deeply ingrained in poverty is not alone to be deprived of things desired; more important is the feeling of inferiority that goes with the condition. Only in the Bohemia of the novelists do the poor feel equal to the rich.

One of the fundamental strivings of the human being is the enlargement of the self-feeling, which fundamentally is the wish to be superior, to have the admiration and homage of others. All daydreaming builds this air castle; all ambition has this as its goal. No matter how we disguise it to ourselves and others, the main ends of purpose are power and place. True, we may wish for power and place so as to help others; we may wish them as the result of constructive work and achievement, but the enlargement of self-feeling is the end result of the striving.

To be poor is to be inferior in feeling and applies equally to men and women. Man is a competitive-social animal and competes in everything, from the cleverness and beauty of his children to the excellence of his taste in hats. Money has the advantage of being the symbol of value, of being concrete and definite, and of having the inestimable property of purchasing power.

Now woman is as competitive as her mate. A housewife vies with her neighboring housewives in her clothes, her good looks, her youth, her husband, her children, her home, her housekeeping, her money,—vies with her in folly as well as in wisdom. How much of the extravagance of women (and here is a difficulty to be dealt with later) arises from rivalry only the tongues of women could tell, but it is safe to say that the greater part of it has this origin.

Jealousy and envy are harsh words, yet they stand for traits having a great psychological value. Part of the impetus for effort rises from these feelings, and an incredibly large part. Many a man who bends unremitting in his effort has in mind some man of whose success he is envious, or whose efforts he watches with a jealousy hidden almost from himself.

Upon women these feelings play with devastating force. One may be satisfied with what he has until some one else he knows gets more; that is to say, the causes of most of the dissatisfaction and discontent of the world are envy and jealousy. In many cases it may be a righteous sort of jealousy or envy. A woman, especially because she is a rival of her fellow-woman mainly in small things, becomes acutely miserable when she is outstripped by her neighbor and especially if she is passed by her relatives and intimate friends.

Poverty is especially hard on those intensely ambitious for their children. "They must have the education I did not have; they must have a good time in life which I never had; I don't want them to be poor all their lives like we are." Here is the woman who works herself to the bone, yet is content and well save for her fatigue, if her children respond to her efforts by success in study and by ambitious efforts of their own. But if the struggling mother is so unfortunate as to have drawn in Nature's lottery an unappreciative or a weak-minded child, then the breakdown is tragic.

A poor man is much more apt to be philosophical about poverty for his children than his wife is. He is willing to do what he can for them, but he is more apt to realize what mother love is blind to,—that the average child is unappreciative of the parents' efforts and takes them for granted. The man is more apt to think and say, "Let them stand on their own feet and make their own way; it will do them good." The mother usually longs to spare her children struggle, the father rarely shares this desire except in a mild way.

It may be that there was a time when classes were more fixed, that poverty had less of humiliation and blocked desire than it has at present. That society of all grades is restless with the desire for luxury seems without doubt. How profoundly the psychology of the masses is being altered by education, by the newspaper, the magazine, the movie, the automobile, the fashion changes that make a dress obsolete in a season and above all the department store and the alluring advertisement, no one can hope to even estimate. Modern capitalism reaps great wealth by developing the luxurious, the spendthrift tastes of the poor. It would be a peculiar poetic justice that will make that development into the basis of revolution.

The women of the poor are perhaps even more restless than the men. In fact, it is the women that set the pace in these matters. This is because to woman has fallen the spending of the family funds, a fact of great importance in bringing about discord in the house. As the shopper the poor woman now sees the beautiful things that her ancestors knew nothing of, since there were no department stores in those days. To-day desires are awakened that cannot be fulfilled; she sees other women buying what she can only long for, and an active discontent with her lot appears.

Unphilosophical this, and severely to be deprecated as unworthy of woman. This has been done so often and so effectively(?) by divines, reformers, press, that a mere physician begs leave to remark that it is a natural sequence of the publicity luxury to-day has. The most successful commercial minds of America are in a conspiracy against the poor Housewife to make her discontented with her lot by increasing her desires; they are on the job day and night and invade every corner of her world; well, they have succeeded. The divines, etc., who thunder against luxury have no word to say against the department store and the advertising manager.



CHAPTER VII

THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HUSBAND

The husband differs from the wife in this fundamental,—that essentially he is not a house man as she is a house woman. For the man the home is the place where he houses his family and where he rests at night. Here also he spends his leisure time in amount varying with his domesticity. Man writes songs and books about the home, but the woman lives there. Perhaps that is why women have not written sentimental verse about it.

Marriage is variously regarded. "It is a sacrament, a religious sanction, and not to be dissolved by anything but Death." So say a very large group of our people. "It is a contract, governed by law, entered into under certain conditions and to be dissolved only by law." This is the attitude of practically all the governments of the world and rapidly is becoming the dominant point of view. Though the religious combat this conception of marriage, no marriage is legal on religious sanction alone, and the increase of divorce among those claiming to be Catholics is an undisputed fact.

It is only in the last century that the contract side of marriage has been emphasized and become dominant. There has resulted a conflict between the sacramental, sacred point of view and the secular. This conflict, like all other social conflicts, is a part of the inner life of most of the men and women of this generation, influencing their attitude toward marriage, the home, the mate.

For when we say a thing is part of the "spirit of the times" we mean merely that arising as a development of, or a change from, old ideas in the minds of leaders, it has become propagated among the mass. It has become part of their thought, incentive to their action, source of their energies.

Thus sentiment and religion proclaim the sacredness of marriage, its eternal nature, its indissolubility. The law asserts it to be a civil relationship, to be made or unmade by law itself; experience teaches that if it is sacred, then sacredness includes folly, indiscretion, brutality, and crime. Therefore the marriage relationship has become a source of conflict for our times, with opposing champions shouting out their point of view, with books, the movies, the press, the stage, with daily experience adducing cases. The scene of conflict is in the moods and emotions of all of us.

This divided view is particularly the attitude of women and becomes part of the neurosis of the housewife.

After all a woman does not marry an institution; she marries a man with whom she lives, sharing his life. In the natural course of events she becomes the mother of the children to whom he is father. We may dismiss as nonimportant the occasional freak marriage where a man and woman live apart, have no children and meet occasionally,—for obvious purposes. Such a marriage is not only sterile biologically, not only empty of the virtues of marriage, but encounters none of its difficulties.

This intimate individual relationship makes marriage when complete and successful the happiest human experience. Soberly speaking, it is then the flower of existence, satisfying biologically and humanly, giving peace and satisfaction to body and mind. This is the ideal, the "happy ending" at which most romances, novels, plays, and all the daydreams of youth leave us. Warm, cozy, intense domesticity, where passion is legitimate and love and friendship eternal; where children play around the hearth fire; of which death only is the ending!

This ideal is not realized largely because no ideal is. How often is it closely approximated? Experience says seldom. That implies no reproach against marriage, for we are to judge marriage by the rest of life and not by an ideal. A world in which great wars occur frequently, in which economic conflict is constant, in which sickness and disaster are never absent; where education is occasional, where reason has yet to rule in the larger policies and where folly occupies the high places,—why expect marriage to be more nearly perfect than the life of which it is a part? To be reasonably comfortable and happy in marriage is all we may expect.

What are the difficulties confronting the partners which impede happiness and especially which bring the neurosis of the housewife? For after all we can only examine the field for our own purpose.

We may divide the difficulties as follows from the standpoint of the neurosis of the housewife:

1. Those that arise from the sex relationship itself.

2. Those that arise from conflicts of will, purpose, ideas.

3. Those that arise from the types of husbands.

4. Those that arise from the types of wives. (This has already been considered under the heading Types Predisposed to the Neurosis.)

Before we go on to the consideration of these various factors we must repeat what has been emphasized frequently in this book.

That the change in the status of woman implies difficulty in the marriage relationship. If only one will is expected to be dominant in the household, the man's, then there can arise no conflict. If the form of the household is unaltered, but if the woman demands its control or expects equality, then conflict arises. If a woman expects a man to beat her at his pleasure, as has everywhere been the case and still is in some places, if she considers it just, brutality exists only in extremes of violence. If she considers a blow, or even a rough word, an unendurable insult, then brutality arises with the commonest disagreement. In other words, it is comparatively easy to deal with a woman expecting an inferior position, whose individual tastes, wills, ideas, and ideals have never been developed,—the ancient woman; it is very much more difficult to deal with her modern sister.

Happily the day is passing when prudery governed the discussion of sex. Lewdness exists in concealment, suggestion is more provocatory than frankness. The morbidness of men who condemned themselves to celibacy has influenced the world; their fear of sex led to a misguided silence shrouding the wrecks of many a life.

The sex relationship is the basis of marriage. The famous couplet of Rosalind still holds good. The sex instinct (or rather instincts, for coupled with sex-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 sex 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 sex, 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 sexual 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 sex appetite varies as widely as any other human character. Generally speaking, it is believed that sexual passion 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 passion than to the female. This would be biologically necessary, since upon him devolves not only courtship but the fundamental activity in the sexual act. A passionless woman may have sexual relation, a passionless man cannot.

The disparity in sex 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 sexually 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 sex attachment. Demureness of appearance, refinement of manner, noble ideals are not at all inconsistent with powerful sex feeling. There is no reason why strong, well-controlled passion should be considered anything but a virtue, why the pleasure of the sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sexes 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 sexual 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 attitude, 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sex 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 sexual license or not it is difficult to say. The observers best qualified to comment think there has been a decrease in female chastity,—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-sexuality, 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 sex 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 titles 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 sexual 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 sexual relationship of modern marriage needs a candid examination. No drastic change is indicated, but education in sexual affairs for men and women is a need. Even the prudish admit the pleasure of the sex-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 sexually 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 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 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. 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 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.



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 accumulate 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 grass 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, lust 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 assert 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 substitute 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 appetite, 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 practitioner 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.



CHAPTER X

HISTORIES OF SOME SEVERE CASES

The cases that follow represent mainly the severe types of nervousness in the housewife. To every case that comes to the neurologist there are a hundred that explain their symptoms as "stomach trouble", "backache", etc., who remain well enough to carry on, and who think their pains and aches inevitably wrapped with the lot of woman.

It will be seen, upon reading these cases, that a rather pessimistic attitude is taken toward some of them. It would be nice to present a series of cases all of which recovered, and it would be easy to do that by picking the cases. Such a series would be optimistic in its trend; it would however have the small demerit of being false to life. Though the majority of women suffering from nervousness may be relieved or cured, a number cannot be essentially benefited. Some of them have temperaments utterly incompatible with matrimony, others have husbands of the incorrigible type, others have life situations to change which would make it necessary to change society. Therefore in these cases all a doctor can do is to relieve symptoms, relieve some of the distress and rest content with that.

I am essentially neither pessimist nor optimist in the presentation of these cases, nor do I seek to present the man or woman's case with prejudice. In life a realistic attitude is the best, for if we were to remove much of the sentimental self-deception at present so prevalent, huge reforms would occur almost overnight. Sentimentality decorates and disguises all kinds of horridness and makes us feel kindly toward evil. Strip it away, and we would immediately break down the evil.

There is always this danger in presenting "cases" to a lay public, that symptoms are suggested to a great many people. How deeply suggestible the mass of people can be is only appreciated when one sees the result of public health lectures and books. Many persons tend to develop all the symptoms they hear of, from pains and aches to mental failure. Even in the medical schools this is so, and every medical teacher is consulted each year by students who feel sure they have the diseases he has described.

So in presenting the following cases symptoms will be largely omitted. What will be presented is history and to a certain extent treatment. That part of treatment which is strictly medical can only be indicated.

It may be said that in obtaining the intimate history of a woman a difficulty is met with in the natural reluctance to telling what often seems to the patient painful and unnecessary details. To some people it seems inconceivable that fears, pains and aches, sleeplessness, etc., can arise out of difficulties like the monotony of housework, temperament, or troubles with the husband. Furthermore, though some women understand well enough the source of their conflicts, they are ashamed to tell and rest mainly on the surface of their symptoms. To obtain the truth it is necessary to see the patient over and over again, to get somewhat closer to her. This is especially easy to do after the physician has to a certain extent relieved the patient. In other words, except in the cases where the woman is quite prepared to tell of her intimate difficulties, it is best to go slowly from the medical to the social-psychological point of view.

Case I. The overworked, under-rested type of housewife.

Mrs. A.J., thirty years old, is a woman of American birth and ancestry. Her parents were poor, her father being a mechanic in a factory town of Massachusetts. She had several brothers and sisters, all of whom reached maturity and most of whom married.

Before marriage she was a salesgirl in a department store, worked fairly hard for rather small pay, but was strong, jolly, liked dancing and amusements, liked men and had her girl friends.

At the age of twenty-two she married a mechanic of twenty-four, a good, sober, steady man, devoted to her and very domestic. Unfortunately he was not very well for some time following a pneumonia in the third year of their marriage. They drew upon all their savings and fell seriously in debt. This meant borrowing and scrimping for several years,—a fact which had great bearing on the wife's illness later.