THE MODERN WIFE AND THE OLD-FASHIONED HUSBAND
The old-fashioned husband is always older than his wife. If he is not old in years, he is old in character. His desires and instincts are aged. She is young because she is alive.
He wants to give her advice, but she will not listen. He desires to guide her, or he must think that he does so. He protects her. Thinks of her as young and precious and tender. He does not speak of certain things before her. He caresses her, he pays her bills, gives her presents, and treats her in the way, in which she has learnt not to treat her children.
For the old-fashioned husband is conservative and hopelessly romantic.
The fact is he ever seeks in his wife the image of his mother, the first woman whom he worshipped, and whose virtues remain as an unforgettable pattern, ever to be repeated. He sees her darning socks (horrible and useful occupation), making beds, dusting the china, arranging flowers, brushing her husband’s overcoat and smoothing his hat, fussing needlessly over everything. These pictures are always interfering with the image of his wife—the new woman of to-day, with her restless and noisy movements, her slang and violence, her knowledge, capable management and clearness of vision-that-look-you-straight-in-the-eyes air that belongs now to wives.
Why have women altered so greatly? Why have women gone on and left their husbands behind?
It is common to refer everything back to the war. Certainly the war did this—it sent both women and men into difficult schools but the men’s school was harder and quite different from that of the women.
If the war had a devastating effect, the peace has likewise had for women its revolutionary consequences. We all know what the war did. It took women out of their homes. The feminists rejoiced to see women in munition factories, on the platforms of trams, squeezed into government offices, hoeing and driving the plough. Then the peace threw them back; closed the open doors, cut off the day of financial prosperity, re-introduced them to their children, if they had any, and to their husbands.
And now what happened? What effect had this on the desires of women and men?
Why, the husbands yearned for the old order of home and wife and children. For the men had fought, they had experienced the uttermost bitterness of life. Their petrified imagination had had no new ideals. They wanted nothing changed. For them a terrible interlude was over, a nightmare passed, that must be forgotten. But the non-combatant women had not experienced war; they had only looked on. For many of them a glamour of patriotic achievement in various kinds of work, which they much preferred to the old domestic duties, added to the lure of high wages, had thrown a cloak of romance over the war-period. They had nothing to forget. The last thing they wanted was to go back, all their desire was set on going forward.
Here then, is the reason why to-day there are so many modern wives with old-fashioned husbands.
These war-trained women are very efficient; they impose their will on everyone; they are attractive and very honest, but sometimes rather aggressive with their assurance and massed information. They go to and fro from their homes, when they like and how they like. The husband knows almost nothing of his wife’s friends. He supposes it is all right. But he understands that he cannot stop her, cannot control her interests. She makes his house her home, is his friend and dear companion, but she does not stay in his charge. Often he feels like a stranger, helpless, not knowing what to do.
Wives are now almost more independent than husbands used to be. “I want to do it, therefore, I must do it,” is their acknowledged cry. They are on such good terms with life and with themselves that they cannot imagine another view—the old view of the woman sacrificing herself. There are quite a lot of things they won’t do; they are very simple and straightforward about them.
Nowadays it is not fashionable for even young unmarried girls to remain in the guarded shelter of the home. Old-fashioned fathers and brothers, are sometimes alarmed at the freedom of friendship allowed—the light-hearted pairing off. Life is a game, a dance, like the figure in the lancers where you “visit” and waltz away, but then come back to do the same thing with another partner. Yet these girls are not without hearts; but they realise that they must know men before they can choose the one man to whom they may give themselves. They have almost nothing in common with the boneless emotional heroines of the past. They are very practical and know that love will not pay the baker’s bills, and after realising all this, they have schooled themselves not to fall in love carelessly.
They look all life squarely in the face, understand their duties, what they will do and will not do, in a way that may be hard, but is admirably sane and admirably honest.
Here is an incident. An exceedingly modern girl was engaged by some ill-chance to an old-fashioned man. She came once to talk with him of her future and his. She was not fond of children and therefore, thought she ought not to have any. Gently he placed his hand over hers, “That will be as God wills, my darling.” She sprang from him, “It won’t, Ronald, that’s not true, it will be as I arrange.”
It used to be so different. The old-fashioned girl could never have spoken with such frankness. Wife or maid she was always younger than the man she loved. She studied him, listened to him, quoted him. She lived only in and through him. At least that is what he thought. He did not know that she did not really listen, was tired of his stories, not interested in his business or his friends. All her seeming submission and acceptance were used to hold him.
The opinions of the old-fashioned woman were quotations from authority; her motto was obedience, but her practice was sweet rebellion. Very rarely was she honest. Her eyes were so blinkered that she saw nothing that she did not wish to see.
No, I am not sorry for old-fashioned men. They remain so childishly blind. Let them grow up, or at least, conceal their paleolithic ideas.
The new types of modern women face the future with laughter and the present with quickly responsive feeling. They give still to the world the essential gift of the eternal feminine, though they are cutting away the worn-out unreasonable exaggerations of perverted femininity—the coldness of the vicious woman, the unkindness of the grabbing woman, the ignorance and submission of the old-fashioned good woman. They are able to see everything and to help in everything, without being deceitful, without being dulled.