The Marriage Book (75 page)

How to Treat a Wife—

First, get a wife; secondly, be patient. You may have great trials and perplexities in your business with the world; but do not, therefore, carry to your home a cloudy or contracted brow. Your wife may have many trials, which, though of less magnitude, may have been as hard to bear. . . . You encounter your difficulties in open air, fanned by heaven’s cool breezes; but your wife is often shut in from these healthful influences, and her health fails, and her spirits lose their elasticity. But O! bear with her; she has trials and sorrows to which you are a stranger; but which your tenderness can deprive of all their anguish. Notice kindly her efforts to promote your comfort. Do not take them all as a matter of course, and pass them by, at the same time being very sure to observe any omission of what you may consider duty to you. Do not treat her with indifference, if you would not scar and palsy her heart, which, watered by kindness, would, to the last day of your existence, throb with constant and sincere affection. Sometimes yield your wishes to hers. She has preferences as strong as you, and it may be just as trying to her to yield her choice as to you. Do you think it hard to yield sometimes? Think you it is not as difficult for her to give up always? If you never yield to her wishes, there is danger that she will think you are selfish, and care only for yourself; and with such feelings she can not love as she might. Again, show yourself manly, so that your wife may look up to you, and feel that you will act nobly, and that she can confide in your judgment.

C. H. FOWLER AND W. H. DE PUY

HOME AND HEALTH AND HOME ECONOMICS
, 1880

For background on Fowler and De Puy, see
Why
.

Many a noble man toils early and late to earn bread and position for his wife. He hesitates at no weariness for her sake. He justly thinks that such industry and providence give a better expression of his love than he could give by caressing her and letting the grocery bills go unpaid. He fills the cellar and pantry. He drives and pushes his business. He never dreams that he is actually starving his
wife
to death. He may soon have a
woman
left to superintend his home, but his
wife
is dying. She must be kept alive by the same process that called her into being. Recall and repeat the little attentions and delicate compliments that once made you so agreeable, and that fanned her love into a consuming flame. . . . It is good work for a husband to cherish his wife.

“DON’TS FOR HUSBANDS”

DETROIT FREE PRESS
, 1891

Don’t think your wife is a servant.

Don’t forget that your wife was once your sweetheart.

Don’t try to run the household your way.

Don’t think your wife can’t keep your secrets.

Don’t imagine you are a superior person.

Don’t neglect to compliment your wife whenever opportunity offers.

Don’t withhold your confidence.

Don’t dole out a dollar as if it were a tax.

Don’t stay out late at night.

Don’t grumble at your wife and the work she does.

Don’t think love has come to stay anyhow.

DORA SUTTON

HOUSEHOLD COMMANDMENTS, 1902

The case of Dora Sutton, a resident of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, drew attention from numerous papers around the country. Fed up with the behavior of her husband, Byron, she left him, then sent him the following list with the note: “If you want to live with me, you must comply with these rules.” Byron refused. Dora had him arrested and charged with desertion. Byron argued that she was the one who had left him. The judge agreed with Byron, and he was let off.

1. Get up at 5 without my calling you.

2. Provide material for one cake a week.

3. Provide material for pies each week.

4. Twenty-five cents worth of beef Tuesdays and Saturdays.

5. Clothes for you that will make you look attractive and clean.

6. You will not use vulgar or profane language at all.

7. You will go to church and Sunday-school . . . and not make my life a burden to get you there in time.

8. Remove all mother’s things and her cow, as I cannot tend the latter.

9. Buy us one quart of milk a day.

10. Will you take a bath all over once a week?

11. Ruth must not peddle, buy or carry things.

12. Wipe your feet clean when you come into the house.

BLANCHE EBBUTT

DON’TS FOR HUSBANDS
, 1913

A selection of the hundreds of “don’ts” included in the companion book to Ebbutt’s pre–World War I
Don’ts for Wives
(see
Food
;
Husbands, How to Keep
).

Don’t sit down to breakfast in your shirt-sleeves in hot weather on the ground that “only your wife” is present. She is a woman like any other woman. The courtesies you give to womankind are her due, and she will appreciate them.

Don’t be too grave and solemn. Raise a bit of fun in the home now and then.

Don’t keep all your best jokes for your men friends. Let your wife share them.

Don’t shelter her from every wind that blows. You will kill her soul that way, if you save her body.

Don’t rush out of the house in such a hurry that you haven’t time to kiss your wife “good-bye.” She will grieve over the omission all day.

Don’t belittle your wife before visitors. You may think it a joke to speak of her little foibles, but she will not easily forgive you.

Don’t keep your wife outside your business interests. It is foolish to say that she knows nothing about the business, and therefore it can’t interest her. You will often find, too, that her fresh mind will see a way out of some little difficulty that has not occurred to you.

Don’t expect to understand every detail of the working of your wife’s mind. A woman arrives at things by different ways, and it is useless to worry her with “Why?” does she think this or that.

Don’t think you can live your lives apart under the same roof and still be happy. Marriage is a joint affair, and cannot comfortably be worked along separate lines.

Don’t insist upon having the last word. If you know when to drop an argument, you are a wise man.

Don’t throw your mother’s perfections at her head, or you needn’t be surprised if she suggests that you might as well return to your mother’s wing.

Don’t forget to trust your wife in everything—in money matters; in her relations with other men; in her correspondence. Trust her to the utmost, and you will rarely find your trust misplaced.

WALTER GALLICHAN

HOW TO LOVE
, 1915

In his several dozen books, Walter Matthew Gallichan (1861–1946) wrote about fishing, travel, birds, health, and, most controversially, sex. In such volumes as
Modern Woman and How to Manage Her
,
Women Under Polygamy
, and
Sexual Apathy and Coldness in Women
, he was decidedly against women’s equality yet forward-thinking in his belief that women and men should be educated about one another. In the passage below, he suggested that husbands have a responsibility to keep their wives happy, if only by a kind of romantic noblesse oblige.

Gallichan outlived his first wife, was divorced by his second, and was outlived by his third.

True marriage based upon love and esteem is a prolongation courtship. . . .

. . . There is a conventional British view that making love is somewhat ridiculous after the honey-moon. Courtship is abandoned as a sort of necessary folly preliminary to complete union. . . .

The common use of the phrase “conjugal rights” shows that the reciprocal altruisms of wooing often tend to disappear in Western marriage. The husband is no longer the supplicant or pleader for privileges. He is a citizen with the law behind him, insisting upon “rights.” This conception of matrimony is a source of the deepest discontent among women. It entirely negates the art of marriage, and reduces the wife in theory, if not always in absolute practice, to the status of a serf. It annihilates the spiritual element in conjugal love, and fatally accentuates the masculine tendency to exert force in place of tender suasion.

There is no hope for widespread married happiness till men learn that love is the art of understanding and pleasing women. Wives in revolt are the natural result of man’s neglect of the art of courtship in marriage. It is the woman more often than the man who is disappointed in married life. After marriage it is the husband’s part to show his aptitude in arousing and maintaining the responsiveness of the wife.

OGDEN NASH

“ADVICE OUTSIDE A CHURCH,” 1935

For American author Ogden Nash (see
Conflict
), a master of joyously rhyming poetry that at times rose above nonsense and doggerel to good sense and even wisdom, marriage was a frequent topic. Nash wrote from experience; he married Frances Leonard in 1931 and remained married to her until his death forty years later.

Dear George, behold the portentous day

When bachelorhood is put away.

Bring camphor balls and cedarwood

For George’s discarded bachelorhood;

You, as the happiest of men,

Wish not to wear it ever again.

Well, if you wish to get your wish,

Mark well my words, nor reply “Tush-pish.”

Today we fly, tomorrow we fall,

And lawyers make bachelors of us all.

If you desire a noisy nursery

And a golden wedding anniversary,

Scan first the bog where thousands falter:

They think the wooing ends at the altar,

And boast that one triumphant procession

Has given them permanent possession.

They simply desist from further endeavor,

And assume that their wives are theirs forever.

They do not beat them, they do no wrong to them,

But they take it for granted their wives belong to them.

Oh, every trade develops its tricks,

Marriage as well as politics;

Suspense is silk and complacence is shoddy,

And no one belongs to anybody.

It is pleasant, George, and necessary

To pretend the arrangement is temporary.

Thank her kindly for favors shown:

She is the lender, and she the loan;

Nor appear to notice the gradual shift

By which the loan becomes a gift.

Strong are the couples who resort

More to courtship and less to court.

And I warn you, George, for your future good,

That ladies don’t want to be understood.

Women are sphinxes, Woman has writ it;

It you understand her, never admit it.

Tell her that Helen was probably beautifuller,

Call, if you will, Penelope dutifuller,

Sheba charminger, Guinevere grander,

But never admit that you understand her.

Hark to the strains of Lohengrin!

Heads up, George! Go in and win!

WORK

GUSTAV MAHLER

LETTER TO ALMA MAHLER, 1910

Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) was in Munich, preparing for the premiere of his Eighth Symphony, when he wrote this letter to his wife, Alma. The well-received work coincided, however, with his discovery of an affair between the alluring Alma and architect Walter Gropius. A distressed Mahler consulted Freud for advice and didn’t end the marriage.

Alma’s high-profile romantic adventures continued after Mahler died the following year. She married and divorced Gropius, then married writer Franz Werfel.

Today the first rehearsal. Went quite well and my physique held out quite gallantly. With every beat, I looked round and thought how lovely it would be if my divinity were seated down there and I could brush her dear face with a stolen glance—then I’d know what I was alive for and why I was doing it all.

GULIELMA ALSOP AND MARY M
C
BRIDE

SHE’S OFF TO MARRIAGE
, 1942

For background on Alsop and McBride, see
When
.

The girl who is interested in her work, in getting on in her chosen profession, should realize that there is no real and devastating choice between work and marriage. In the past, there was such a choice, and women thought they would have the leisure and opportunity to solve the problem on a high ethical and emotional plane; that they would be able to take their time to decide between being wonderful mothers and darling wives . . . and going on with their work. But only in very few instances is there a choice to be made, for that great power of our times, economic pressure, has decided the matter for most girls. If a girl wants a husband, home, and children, she has to do her part in getting and in keeping them, and in the majority of cases she will have to go on working after marriage. So a girl should not put off her decision to marry the man of the moment for reasons of economy.