The nature of the housewife, the conditions of her life, and her relations to her husband are these three factors. All enter into each case, though in some only one may be emphasized as of importance. There are cases where the nature of the woman is mainly the essential cause, others where it is the conditions of her life, and still others where the husband stands out as the source of her symptoms.
We are now to consider the nature of the housewife as our first factor. We may preamble this by saying that a woman essentially normal in one relationship in life may be abnormal in some other, may be the traditional square peg in the round hole. Moreover, we are to insist on the essential and increasing individuality of women, which is to a large extent a recent phenomenon. The cynical commonplace is "All women are alike"—and then follows the specific accusation—"in fickleness", "in extravagance", "in unreasonableness", in this trick or that. The chief effort of conservatism is to make them alike, to fit each one for the same life by the same training in habits, knowledge, abilities, and ideals.
Talk about Prussianism! The great Prussianism, with its ideal of uniformity, serviceability, and servility, has been the masculine ideal of woman's life. Man was to be diversified as life itself, was to taste all its experiences, but woman had her sphere, which belied all mathematics by being a narrow groove.
The nineteenth century changed all that,—or started the change which is going on with extraordinary rapidity in the twentieth. There are all kinds of women, at least potentially. It may be true that woman tends less to vary than man, that she follows a conservative middle-of-the-road biologically, while man spreads out, but no one can be sure of this until woman's early training to some extent resembles man's.
1. From the very start woman is trained to vanity. Every mother loves to doll up her girl baby, and the child is admired for her dress and appearance. Now it is an essential quality of the normal human being that he accepts as an ideal the quality most admired. To the young child, the girl, the young woman, the important thing is Looks, Looks, Looks! The first question asked about a woman is, "Is she pretty?" The pretty girls, the ones most courted, the ones surest on the whole to get married and to become housewives are usually spoiled by indulgence, petting, admiration, and this for a quality not at all related to strong character, and therefore vanity of a trivial kind results.
2. Moreover, woman is trained to emotionality. It may be that she is by nature more emotional than man, but again this can only be known when she has been trained to repress emotional response as a man is trained. If a boy cries or shows fear, he is scolded, and training of one kind or another is instituted to bring about moral and mental hardihood. But if a girl cries, she is consoled by some means and taught that tears are potent weapons, a fact she uses with extraordinary effect later on, especially in dealing with men. If she shows fear, she is protected, sheltered, and given a sort of indulged inferiority.
3. The romantic ideal is constantly held before her in the private counsel of her mother, in the books she reads, in the plays she witnesses, in all the allurements of art. She is to await the lover, the hero; he will take her off with him to dwell in love and happiness forever. All stories, or most of them, end before the heroine develops the neurosis of the housewife. In fact, literature is the worst possible preparation for married life, excepting perhaps the courtship. This latter emphasizes a distorted chivalry that makes of woman a petty thing on a pedestal, out of touch with reality; it is an exciting entrance into what in the majority of cases is a rather monotonous existence.
All these things—vanity, emotionality, romanticism, courtship—are poor training for the home. They hinder even the strongest woman, they are fetters for the more delicate.
In taking up the special types predisposed to the nervousness of the housewife it is to be emphasized that conditions may bring about the neurosis in the normal housewife. Nevertheless, there are groups of women who, because of their make-up or constitution, acquire the neurosis much more easily and much more intensely than do the normal women. They are the types most commonly seen in the hospital clinic or in the private consulting room of the neurologist.
First comes the hyperæsthetic type. One of the chief marks of advancing civilization is an increasing refinement of taste and desire. The fundamental human needs are food, shelter, clothes, sex relations, and companionship. These the savage has as well as his civilized brother, and he finds them not only necessary but agreeable. What we call progress improves the food and the shelter, modifies the clothes, elaborates the sex relations and the code governing companionship. With each step forward the cruder methods become more actively disagreeable, and only the refined methods prove agreeable. In other words, desire keeps pace with improvement, so that although great advances materially have been made, there has been little advance, if any, in contentment. This is because as we progress in refinement little things come to be important, manner becomes more essential than matter, and we get to the hyperæsthetic stage.