THE DOMESTIC WOMAN
I once heard a woman, whose only care in life was the effect she produced on her social surroundings, contemptuously describe Mrs. Hearthside as “a dull person who sits at home making flannel petticoats for the children, gives her husband his slippers, and has an egg with her afternoon tea.” And, it is true, she does all this, and more. But I knew Mrs. Hearthside before domestic drudgery claimed her for its own; when she was a young romantic girl, to whom life presented a symphony of sweet possibilities.
She was the youngest of five daughters, and all had their admirers. To her the rivalry of the youths, who were proud to consider themselves her slaves, was a constant source of flattering amusement, but her heart remained untouched. If she saw any sign of real feeling on the part of any one of her swains, she was sorry, and her pity would perhaps incline her to some show of tenderness, which was really but the expression of her womanly sensibility, but it would flatter the poor youth into fictitious hopes. And then the comradeship being disturbed by an intrusion of sentimentality, she would discontentedly ask, “Why cannot we be chums, without you pretending to be in love and talking nonsense about marriage?” And he would sulkily answer that he loved her, and insist on knowing if she cared for any one better. When she replied that she did not care for any one at all in that way, he was not satisfied, but would sulk and reproach her for not loving him, which irritated her. Then she would take to avoiding the love-sick youth altogether, which would make him moody and disagreeable; and, her first pity having given place to disappointment, she would seek to enjoy herself with newer “slaves,” who had not entered the sentimental stage. But it was always the same thing over again, they all went through the various stages of comradeship, love, false hope, despondency, and jealous moodiness, until she came to the conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. She was romantic, keenly susceptible to sentiment, but her heart was still unmoved, sentimentality bored her, passion was quite unknown to her, and she had an ideal of love, born of day-dreams rather than of actual experience. Her love episodes had hitherto been pastimes, and the score had always counted “one love.”
But the days of her boy-lovers passed over, and, to their despair, she ceased to take interest in any of them, for a man’s love had taken possession of her soul, and opened the floodgates of feeling. The sweet, latent passion of a pure woman’s nature was awakened by this love, and herself became revealed to her, amazing her by the infinite range of feeling that lay open. And yet life became narrowed to her, for all the various interests of her earlier years were now absorbed in the one great passion that made it appear a divine blessing to be alive. Nothing seemed to matter except that which concerned her lover, or herself in relation to him. Her love was her life; and that fact comprised all that it was needful to know.
But he fell grievously ill and died, and she was left with only the sad memory of their love. She fully intended never to marry; but circumstances were too strong for her. The other girls did not “go off,” and a family of five girls is a heavy responsibility for a father with a limited income. Something had to be done, and after all Dr. Hearthside was in a fair practice, and would certainly prove “an excellent husband.”
Of course, ideas vary with regard to the essentials of an “excellent husband.” With many persons the desideratum is reached when the tradesmen’s bills are punctually paid, and there is no conjugal quarrel over the dressmaker’s account. With some the model husband is he who belongs to no club, and always stays at home in the evenings; while others there are who consider that connubial perfection consists in the husband going his own way, and allowing his wife to go hers and find her own amusements quite irrespective of him. But there is really no fixed standard of excellence in husbands. The temperament, and even the temper, of the wife must determine this in each separate case.
Now, Dr. Hearthside was spoken of as an “excellent husband” in embryo, and many mothers angled for him, and their daughters encouraged hopes. He was a ladies’ doctor, and his ways with women were soft and tender, his voice was musical and sympathetic, and his manner seemed to invite confidence and promise protection. Yet he was before everything professional. Tenderly as he seemed to treat them, women were to him interesting cases, psychologically as well as medically, and his lover-like methods were part and parcel of his practice. He knew women, and knew that personal confidence is half the battle in successful medical practice. Women always like to feel that a man is a possible lover, if even they only require his services as a doctor. They do not admit this to themselves, of course, but it is the case, for all that. Dr. Hearthside was deceptive; his tender manner with women covered merely a spirit of scientific investigation. When he was specially attentive to a woman—and his attention meant a sort of respectful devotion—he was deeply diagnosing her mental, moral, and physical condition; but she most probably thought he was making love to her. Mrs. Hearthside had been attracted to him in this manner. He found her melancholy, and she interested him as a study in disappointed love. He drew her out by speaking constantly to her about love, and she gave herself up gradually to his persuasive influence. She had hungered for love since death, by taking from her the man in whom her soul was wrapped up, had made life empty for her. She fed her heart on the memories of her love; but her soul had been awakened, and it yearned again for loving communion such as it had once known. Dr. Hearthside suggested the possibilities of love to her. When he analysed sentiment to her in quite a scientific way, her heart responded with emotion, for she thought he was pouring out his own feelings before her. So she consented to marry him, because she believed he could love, and love was the pressing need of her soul; while he, finding her a sympathetic and ready listener, and being pleased with her looks and her manners, thought she would make an excellent doctor’s wife, and help him to enlarge his practice through her social qualities. So these two married, and the love-dream of the girl died in the arms of the husband.
How many ideals are shattered by the intimacy of marriage, simply because the antenuptial love has been based upon fiction and misunderstanding. If only a man and woman made their several motives for marrying quite clear to one another, and were not so anxious to preserve a veneer of romance up to the very altar, matrimony would not be the terrible iconoclast it too often is. Unless it supplies the true complement to a single life, of what value is it? It is all very well to talk about individualism, but everything in the world is relative. The wife is what the husband makes her, and vice versâ; but the former is the more important consideration, since woman is more dependent. Pray forgive me, ye Amazons of the platform, ye of the Emancipated Sisterhood!
Mrs. Hearthside went to her husband with a soul yearning for poetry, and he gave her the plainest prose. The soft speech and gentle ways were for his patients, not for his wife. His domestic manner was as brusque as his professional was persuasive and engaging. He had no time to show his wife any of those little tender attentions which had previously touched her, and had made her recognise that this man might realise for her the dream of happiness which another had revealed to her. On the contrary, he did not take long to teach her that life was a scientific fact, specially intended to prove the value of the medical profession, and of Dr. Hearthside in particular; that all emotion was ridiculous, except in so far as it concerned a professional diagnosis, and that the aim and end of domestic happiness was to keep a comfortable home, and make a respectable show to invite patients. And for this she had given up the freedom of her soul; for this she had stopped all supplies of the love her nature needed. Henceforth her heart must feed upon itself, for Mrs. Hearthside holds very select views with regard to a wife’s duties. If a husband do not answer all her spiritual longings, no other man must; if she cannot nestle her heart against his for warmth and comfort, her heart must go separate, cold, and lonely. Marriage has been a bitter disillusioning to her but she must bear with it, she must hide her romance away in the recesses of her memory, and live on the matter-of-fact of marriage, present a brave front, and pretend not to care, until in time, perhaps, she will delude herself into the belief that it is all the better so, at all events for her husband, and certainly for her children.
Happily, Mrs. Hearthside has several children, she has been a patient and considerate wife, and has contentedly accepted all the responsibilities of marriage. But when the children began to come Mrs. Hearthside’s life really began to change. The interests of individual sentiment became absorbed in the preponderating interest of the nursery, and the woman was mother before everything; for children satisfied a craving which had grown out of the unanswered longings for a man’s love.
So Mrs. Hearthside came to think of her children even before her husband; not that she ever neglects any one of his domestic comforts, or ceases to think of his professional interests—only his heart and hers have never mixed, whereas her children are part of herself. She feels that their lives are of her making, that their hearts are for her to feed with her own; that she is responsible for them, body and soul, and no nurse, no governess, could ever do for them all that she can. So she will spend her days with them in the nursery, see to every detail of their daily comfort, wash them, dress them, make clothes for them. If her husband wishes her to pay afternoon calls on patients whom he is particularly anxious to cultivate, she is sure to have to stop with Tommy, who shows signs of incipient whooping-cough; or to take Cissie out to buy a new hat; or to help Jack with his lessons. There is always something to be done for the children, or some housekeeping detail to be seen to which indirectly relates to them.
Dr. Hearthside is socially inclined; he likes to go out and to receive friends at home. It is professionally beneficial, and it is amusing. He had hoped his wife would have been a useful aid in this matter, for when he married her she sang charmingly, and was quite an acquisition at social gatherings. But she had found that her husband took interest in her musical talent merely from the social kudos he derived from the possession of an accomplished wife. He only asked her to sing when they were in company, never when they were alone—then he had always work to do, which music would only interrupt. So she has ceased to cultivate her singing; her voice became weaker after the birth of her babies, and now she only cares that it is strong enough to sing lullabies. And with the lessening interest in the artistic pleasures and emotional joys which had filled her girlhood comes an increase of interest in all the petty and prosy details of domestic life. She has gradually grown to think of nothing but her children, her husband’s creature comforts, and her house. With a numerous family—for the getting and rearing of children, and the keeping them healthy and clean, has become the ruling passion of her life—economic considerations have become necessary in the conduct of the household, and questions of housekeeping expenditure have now more interest for her than the title of the last new song. She knows the prices of butcher’s-meat, of groceries, of everything, and will talk about them; she will converse on servants by the hour, and so particular is she in regulating her household that she will visit the kitchen continually, with the result that she is obliged to change her servants much more frequently than her acquaintances of less domestic habits. But she has now become chronically domestic, and the effect is at times very trying, especially to her husband. She instinctively passes her hand over the banisters as she goes downstairs, to see that they are clean. She insists on putting up the clean curtains in the drawing-room herself, just at an hour, too, when the De Brownes are likely to call; and she always keeps a duster in the chiffonier for special use at socially inopportune moments. But, worst of all, she has become dowdy in her dress, and only cares that the children shall look nice.
Poor Dr. Hearthside, he never bargained for all this aggressive domesticity; but then, poor Mrs. Hearthside, she began married life with aspirations of a very different character. Her ideals are shattered, she has drifted into the purely domestic woman, simply because she married a man who misunderstood her, or rather who did not try to understand her at all after marriage. Women are very malleable creatures; Mrs. Hearthside might have been an ideal wife with another husband. As it is, to the many who see her only as she is now, she is simply an uninteresting specimen of a very common type—the domestic woman. Her soul is really only sleeping; let us hope that it will quite awaken again, when her daughters dawn into womanhood and her sons into manhood. Then her life will have new scope, and her own experience will stand them both in good stead. Will she strive that her daughters become not of this same type? Perhaps Mrs. Hearthside is happy in her way. Perhaps she considers her own state more enviable than that of a hopeless bachelor—like me, for instance. And perhaps it is; for in children we may live again. They are the resurrection of dead dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, and lost hopes. The domestic woman has this consolation, and so she has the better of us “who have free souls”—but no children.