In other cases the woman is weak and ill-developed and allows herself to sink to the level of her husband's sentiments. Sometimes, the crisis is accentuated and leads to divorce. In de Maupassant's "Une Vie," he describes with profound insight the continuous deceptions of a young innocent and sentimental girl who marries an egoistic roué, and whose life is transformed into martyrdom and completely ruined. De Maupassant's romances contain such true psychology of sexual life and love in all their forms, often even in their exceptional aberrations, that they furnish an admirable illustration to the present chapter.
Petticoat Government.—A series of most important irradiations of love in woman results from the need she feels of being, if not dominated, at least protected by her husband. To be happy, a woman must be able to respect her husband and even regard him with more or less veneration; she must see in him the realization of an ideal, either of bodily strength, courage, unselfishness or superior intellect. If this is not the case, the husband easily falls under the petticoat government, or indifference and antipathy may develop in the wife, at least if misfortune or illness in the husband does not excite her pity and transform her into a resigned nurse.
Petticoat government can hardly make a household truly happy, for here the positions are reversed and the wife rules because the husband is weak. But the normal instinct of woman is to rule over the heart of man, not over his intelligence or on his will. Ruling in these last domains may flatter a woman's vanity and render it dominating, but it never satisfies her heart, and this is why the woman who rules is so often unfaithful to her husband, if not in deed, at least in thought.
In such a union she has not found the true love which she sought, and for this reason, if her moral principles are weak, she looks for compensation in some Don Juan. If the woman in question has a strong character, or if she is sexually cold, she may easily become sour and bitter. These women, who are not rare, are to be dreaded; their plighted love is transformed into hatred, bad temper or jealousy, and only finds satisfaction in the torment of others.
The psychology of this kind of woman is interesting. They are not usually conscious of their malice. The chronic bitterness resulting from an unfortunate hereditary disposition in their character, as much as from their outraged feelings, makes them take a dislike to the world and renders them incapable of seeing anything but the worst side of people. They become accustomed to disparage everything automatically, to take offense at everything and to speak ill of everything on every occasion. They are unhappy, but they find a diabolical joy in all misfortune where they see the confirmation of their somber prophecies, the only satisfaction which is capable of exalting them.
We have just said that a certain constitutional disposition is necessary for such a deplorable change in feminine sentiments to be produced; but this disposition is often only developed under the influence of circumstances which we have indicated or analogous ones.
It is impossible for the life in common of two conjoints not to reveal their reciprocal failings. But true love generally suffices to definitely cement a union, provided that the wife finds a support in the steadfast nature of her husband, which then serves as her ideal. It is also necessary that the husband, finding sentiments of devoted love in his wife, should reciprocate them. These conditions are sufficient, if both devote their efforts to the maintenance of their family and the social welfare.
Maternal Love.—The most profound and most natural irradiation of the sexual appetite in woman is maternal love. A mother who does not love her children is an unnatural being, and a man who does not understand the desires of maternity in his wife, and does not respect them, is not worthy of her love. Sometimes egoism renders a man jealous of the love which his wife bears to his children. At other times, the father may show more love for the children than their mother; such exceptions only prove the rule.
The most beautiful and most natural of the irradiations of love is the joy of parents at the birth of their children, a joy which is one of the strongest bonds of conjugal affection, and which helps the couple in triumphing over the conflicting elements in their characters, and in raising the moral level of their reciprocal sentiments, for it realizes the natural object of sexual union.
A true woman rejoices at the progress of her pregnancy. The last pains of childbirth have hardly ceased before she laughs with joy, and pride, at hearing the first cries of the newly born. The instinctive outburst of maternal love toward the new-born child corresponds to a natural imprescriptible right of the child, for it needs the continual care of its mother. Nothing is so beautiful in the world as the radiant joy of a young mother nursing her child, and no sign of degeneration is more painful than that of mothers who abandon their children without absolute necessity, to strange hands.