XLII
BEING A GOOD WIFE
“I want to be a good wife, the kind of a wife like that lady in the Bible whose price was above rubies,” said a little bride to me the other day. “What shall I do to be a real helpmeet to my husband?”
“Well, my dear,” I replied, “there are three general counts on which every wife must make good in order to help her husband, and then the job becomes the work of an expert, and varies according to the temperament of the man. To begin with, every woman who is an asset instead of a total loss to her husband, must make him a comfortable home and feed him properly. When a man marries, he practically turns over his stomach and his nerves and his brains to his wife’s care, and she can keep him at the peak of efficiency by giving him a quiet, restful place to come to at night, and a good dinner to eat, or she can sabotage the whole works by throwing in quarrels and heavy biscuit and tough meat.
“There is practically no limit to the amount of work a man can do whose wife takes care of him, and who has a happy home life. The men who break down with nervous prostration are the men who, after the struggle and anxiety and worries of a business day, go home to strife and wrangles and recriminations and nagging and to food that would kill an ostrich. No nerves and no digestion will stand it. A breakfast of flabby cakes and muddy coffee, that make him take a dyspeptic and despairing view of things, and see the world through blue spectacles, has made many a man turn down a good proposition that would have carried him on to fame and fortune. A spat with his wife that left his nerves on edge, and his soul filled with bitterness, has made many a man quarrel with his partner and insult his best client or customer.
“So, my dear, if you want to help your husband succeed, you must begin by making him a home wherein his tired body and frazzled nerves may refresh themselves, so that he may go forth with new strength to battle with the world. You must make him happy, for there is nothing that happy people may not achieve. The next item is to keep on cutting bait. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking that because you have captured your man he will stay captive. It is a job that has to be done over again every morning.
“You know the arts and wiles with which you lured him into matrimony. You recall the pretty dresses you wore, the glad, sweet smile with which you met him. The pleasure you showed you took in his society. A man doesn’t put on blinders when he gets married. He still has an eye out for a pretty woman in a gay frock, and he likes to feel that his wife still cares enough for him to want to make herself attractive to him and that his coming home is the big event of the day to her.
“Item three in being a good wife is to be a loving wife. Women are always talking about being heart-hungry and seem to think that it is an exclusively feminine complaint, but there are just as many men starving for affection as there are women. Don’t expect your husband to take it for granted that you still love him because you haven’t applied for a divorce. Tell him so. Give him a kiss now and then that isn’t just a peck on the cheek. But love with discretion. Don’t smother your husband with affection. Don’t surfeit him on it. Keep your love as a sweetener for matrimony. Don’t make it the whole diet. Remember that the most-loved husband in the world said: ‘Feed me with apples, stay me with flagons, for I am SICK of love.’
“The fourth item in being a good wife is not to expect the impossible of your husband. Don’t demand that he be a demigod. Accept him as a poor, faulty human being, even as you are. Don’t have hysterics every time he topples off of the pedestal on which you have placed him. Help him up, dust him off and give him a seat beside you. Humor him in his funny little ways. Sidestep his little prejudices. Don’t argue with him when your opinions clash. Laugh at his blunders and sympathize with him when he makes mistakes, and he will make you his confidant and tell you the truth, which is the finest tribute that any man ever pays his wife.
“Item five in being a good wife is to be appreciative. When the average man gets married he sells himself into bondage to his family. The remainder of his life he spends toiling to keep his wife and children soft and safe. And whether all this work and sacrifice is worth the price and is a glorious reward depends altogether on his wife’s attitude. If she takes it as nothing but her due, it is slavery. But if she lets him see every day in every way that she thinks that he is the finest and noblest man that ever lived, and that no be-medaled warrior has anything on him in heroism, it makes it all worth while and causes him to feel that being a husband and father is the finest career on earth.
“Item six in being a good wife is to keep yourself good-natured. Tho you have all other virtues, yet are a high-tempered virago or a nagger, you will be a failure as a wife and your husband will curse the day he married you.
“Item seven is to be a good sport. To take the bad with the good of matrimony without whining. Not to welch on your part of the work and sacrifices. To be willing to go where your husband’s fortunes call him. To fight the battle with him shoulder to shoulder and never to give up the ship.
“The next way to help your husband is by keeping yourself cheerful and optimistic. Nothing breaks down a man’s morale so quickly as having a wife who is whining and complaining, who reproaches him with not making as much money as other men do, and who lets him see that she does not believe in him. Now we can only do the things we think we can do, and when we kill a man’s faith in himself we have slain his ability to succeed. Ninety-nine husbands out of a hundred live up to their wives’ expectations of them. If their wives are always knocking them and discouraging them and wet-blanketing their every plan and prophesying failure, they fail. But if their wives are cheerful and optimistic; if they encourage them; if they believe in them, and make them believe in themselves, they succeed. They simply have to make good because their wives expect it. Most wives write their husbands’ price tags. Price yours high, and your husband will deliver the goods.
“The next point in being a good wife is for the wife deliberately to make herself her husband’s best friend. That means that you must interest yourself in whatever interests him. First and foremost, you must take an interest in his business. Practically all men like to talk shop, but they can’t do it to women who yawn in their faces and who never take the trouble to learn the technique of the business out of which they get their living. A woman can help her husband not only by taking an interest in his business, but by making friends for him. Many a man is advertised into success by his charming wife, and many a man is bankrupted by his disagreeable and ill-mannered spouse. A woman can help her husband by using a little common sense in her attitude toward his business, and by being willing to make the sacrifices necessary to his success.
“The woman who always speaks of her husband’s office as ‘that old office,’ and who resents his interest in his business and the time he devotes to it; the woman who will not let her husband leave a poor job with no future to it, to take a better one in which he could make his fortune, because it would take her away from mother and the girls and Main Street; the doctors’ and dentists’ wives who are jealous of their husbands’ patients, and the lawyer’s wife who blabs, are all first aids to their husbands’ failure. Only a man of superhuman talent can succeed against the handicap of such a wife.
“Then come the two specific ways in which a wife can help her husband, and which depend on the individual man. Some men have talent, but lack backbone. They are brilliant but weak. They get easily discouraged and need to be bucked up and flattered and admired continually. They are prone to give up, and they need a wife who will hold them to their purpose when they falter and waver. A wife can help this type of man best by being a little hard and very ambitious, by bracing him up with her own strength and literally pushing him on to success. The clinging vine, helpless sort of women bring out the best that is in other men. If their wives could stand on their own feet, their husbands would let them do it, but because their wives can do nothing but hang around their necks, they feel that they must fight to the death for them.
“This is the reason that for the wife to be thrifty and saving is not always the best way to help a man. Because many a man has had to hustle to meet the demands of an extravagant wife he has made the effort that turned him into a millionaire.
“But mostly, my dear, if you want to help your husband, just love him enough. Perhaps that is the best way of all.”