And this heritage of wrong thinking is still compassing our feet, binding them and throwing us down, as soon as we try to move a step onwards: and until that entanglement is broken through, by bringing the whole complicated position into the light of understanding and honest thinking, the evil will go on, unchecked by our futile tearings here and there at withered branches. The supporting stem of concealments and dishonesty will flourish, and the devastating evil will continue to spread.
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.