No doubt a great deal of cruelty lies to the charge of husbands who are out night after night, leaving their wives—already weary after a day's heavy work—to sit bored and alone, while they enjoy the company of their male friends, or hunt after their favorite pleasures. It is quite right that wives should refuse to tolerate such treatment. But the entire reversal of that policy is apt to work badly also. A husband should not drop all the masculine interests of his life, nor give up his old friends, nor resign from all the responsibilities that will take him sometimes out at nights. And a wise wife will not allow him to do it. Somewhere between the two extremes I have indicated lies the wise path in this connection.
Then is it not time that somebody boldly said that husbands ought to do some of the housework? I have no time to discuss the ethical problem raised by the households where paid servants do it all. They are a very small minority of modern households, and in all the rest the wives do a great deal of the housework—generally all of it. Some of it is heavy muscular work, such as carrying coals or moving furniture. The rest makes up an employment which is more constant, needs more brains, and calls for more administrative capacity than any man can imagine till he has tried to do it. Of course men say they cannot do such work. Which is plain rubbish. It only means that they do not like doing it. Neither do many women. And men can do most of it perfectly well if they will only take the trouble to learn how it is done. I do not mean that I propose for men such jobs as matching wools, or making babies' clothes, or arranging the drawing-room. There are limits to our powers. But I do seriously mean that setting fires, cleaning grates, carrying coals, making beds, washing dishes, cooking, scrubbing floors, cleaning brass and silver, etc., etc. are things which the average man can do quite as well as the average woman. Why then should they all be piled upon the weary back of the woman? Because, you probably say, the man must hurry off to business in the morning, and comes home too tired at night. Yes! most of us really believed all that before the war, and then we began to make discoveries. One was that there can be a lot of time before a man goes off to business, and another was that the man is not more tired by 6.30 p.m. than the woman, and can do a lot of useful things if he has the will. And I urge this point not only because it is in the clearest sense only fair, but because until a man does in this way take his share of the home burden he cannot understand his wife's life, and cannot give her intelligent sympathy.
The instinctive male attitude to household details is often expressed in the phrase that they are "bally nonsense," or something else equally picturesque. But when a little experience has taught a man how very uncomfortable he would be if the details were not right, he is forthwith able to be a much more intelligent friend to his wife. I do not think fathers ever really know their little children till they have helped in looking after them at bedtime, in the early morning, and at meals. And I am sure that no man ever knows what a crowded and terrific thing life can be till he has been left at home alone for a whole evening to look after two or three. When he has undergone that searching experience he will forthwith respect his wife with a new sincerity.
It is extraordinary too what a jolly business housework can be when two people go at it together and get all the possible fun out of it. On the other hand, when it is all done by lonely people it can be vilely tedious. Thousands of husbands have no idea of this. If they searched their own minds they would find that their idea of their own homes is that they are places to be kept clean and comfortable for them, and their idea of their own wives is that they are women whose first duty is to minister to their comfort. Any suggestion that this may mean a very dull life for wives is met by a snort, and some muttered murmur about "poisonous modern nonsense." But in spite of that or any other more brilliant adjectives that may be employed the suggestion is unalterably true, and if, having made life as dull as that for their wives, such men find that marriage itself is not turning out well, it is high time they should wake up to the fact that they themselves are to blame.
And yet may some kindly Providence save us all from the women who never forget the house—whose domestic possessions seem to constitute mere extensions of their nervous systems, so that if you kick the fender you give them the jumps—who cannot sit still once they have seen a speck of dust, and cannot turn with free minds to any wider interest. They help to fill clubs and pubs. But they ruin homes. I want husbands to share the housework chiefly because in that way it will get done the sooner, and give both husband and wife some free time. If they want really to live they must take care to get away at times from all such merely domestic concerns. If need be let the supper dishes lie dirty, but out of sight, until to-morrow—if need be, let your husband wear a sock with a hole in it—put off cutting out baby's trousers, and even let your new blouse go without that alteration in the meantime, but on most evenings at all costs get some time to read, or enjoy music, or go out, or talk, or dream, or do nothing. The problem of civilization is unsolved for those who let the house tyrannize over them, and the problem of marriage also. All of which may seem rather trivial and unimportant to some men, but in my belief it is connected in a strangely intimate way with the success of life.
Of course the converse to all this is that wives do well to enter into their husbands' interests. It is often done with amazing success. I can think at the moment of doctors, lawyers, engineers, shopkeepers, scholars, writers, financiers, teachers, and ministers whose wives have entered keenly and with intelligence into all their cares, plans, and labors. And in every such case the friendship between man and wife has been very close, and the marriage truly happy. When this is not done, I often wonder why. I suppose some wives do not understand their husbands' affairs at first, and cannot be bothered trying to understand. I suppose that some husbands are too impatient to explain, and that others really cannot. If so it is a pity. Possibly some would rather not explain. I have often wondered what the wives of many modern business men think of modern business methods; and I suspect that generally they simply do not know the truth. But I repeat it is a very great pity when a wife has no relation to her husband's business. It means that he has a life quite apart from her. And if it be said that many a man wants to forget his business and all its worries as soon as he gets inside his own front door, it is equally true that often such men have worries they cannot forget, and that they would be stronger and happier men if they only knew what a woman's sympathy is.
All of which seems to me so very important—so inevitably important— that I cannot but think it should be remembered when young men and women are deciding about their marriages. Have you noticed the lines on the face of that greatest of men—Abraham Lincoln? They were there in large measure because he married a woman who could not or would not share his real life.
II
PHYSICAL HARMONY
It is beyond all question that in many cases where marriage is not turning out happily the real cause lies in some failure to achieve real and true adjustment of the sexual relationship which marriage involves.