§ 169
If, as assumed broadly above, the remedy for the ills which beset the married life which is guided by instinct alone are more excitement for the woman and less for the man, this only in one way suggests a balance which (as many wives consciously or unconsciously perceive) grows less and less as the years go on.
The man advances in his profession, makes more money, gains more or less gratifying triumphs in the world of affairs, joins a club or lodge, meets and has more or less stimulating contacts with more and more of his fellow-men. His wife the while remains mostly in the home, is restricted by the necessity of care of children, if any. If there are no children, she is generally steered by her husband into the least stimulating life possible, for he knows unconsciously that the interest of his wife in other people is mildly displeasing to him. He wishes to own her all—her actions, her thoughts. If he does not someone else will, and she will be, to that extent, not his. It will be difficult for him to reason that this type of ownership is merely the gratification of an egoistic-social instinct. If there is one thing a man should not, for his own erotic interests, want to do, that thing is the establishing of an ownership or possession. Ownership of wives dates back at least to the early Roman times when one had to own and control one’s wife’s whereabouts in order to satisfy oneself, and one’s neighbours, that one’s freeborn children were one’s own.
As a gratification of the egoistic-social instinct, ownership of the wife’s person, property, actions and thoughts is in direct antagonism with pure love instinct, which controls most satisfactorily and gratefully when there is no egoistic-social compulsion acting through husband on wife. Pure love instinct is gratified only when the control is perfected by eliminating all egoistic-social motives of husband or wife from the situation.
This is realized by some young women who marry but insist that they be not supported by their husbands.