As regards the balance of fortune, the ideal in marriage would be that both husband and wife should be equally rich, or both have moderate means. It is not necessary that there should be absolute equality, but it ought to approach it. In these fortunate cases the equality of the income increases the dignity of the family to a fellowship, and is necessarily accompanied by many other harmonies of habits, tastes, and needs.
An hyper-ideal of perfection would be this, that although the amount of these incomes may be the same, the separate units should be of a different nature. Thus if the husband be a rich land owner the wife should hold house property; and if she has a large share of money in the funds the other should own lands or houses. In this way even the most unexpected political or meteoric disturbances would never strand the family. In many cases a good profession in the hands of the husband is equivalent to a rich dowry in the wife; but even here one must remember that life is uncertain, death certain. And, in truth, where the income proceeds entirely from the work of the father of the family this very fact is often a cause of ruin to the family well-being. They have no land, houses, nor money in the funds; a lucrative employment gives them riches, and parents and children live upon them without putting a penny aside. Then a railway accident or some illness unexpectedly kills the father, and from a gay, rich life they are reduced to the most squalid misery.
Empleomania is a Spanish word, and it sprung up in Spain as if in its native soil, but if we have not registered it in our classical dictionaries we have the equivalent in the speech of the common people. And above all we unfortunately have the thing it represents; and it is one of the most exact measures of our inertia of intellect and will. In the middle class, and especially in its lower ranks, the daily dream of the good mother of a family is to give her daughter to a government official, and it is the dream of a thousand small men, young, short-sighted fellows of slight phrenic development, to have some official situation, no matter what, so that in the morning they are not obliged to think how they can pass the day or to make any itinerary, but just go to the office at fixed hours, and at fixed hours return home. To do what others desire them to do, without the trouble of thinking themselves, and to muse on the sweets of the Sunday rest for six days in advance; for eleven months to feel the delights of the twelfth, that of the vacation, and to be able to think that every month of the year has a certain day which bears the number 27: a blessed day on which, whether it rains or pours, whether Liberals or Conservatives are in power, whether Crispi or Rudini is ruling, the paymaster is ready and they receive their salary—ah! these are serene and tranquil pleasures which make mothers weep for joy, wives leap for pleasure, and the hearts dance in nine-tenths of those Italian bipeds who love the peace and security of the morrow ... and the 27th of the month.
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If there be an inequality in the riches of two married people it is a hundred times better that it should be in favour of the husband.
A woman is never humiliated when she is poor and marries a rich man, or when, with moderate means, she marries a millionaire. However much she may be oppressed by social laws, however often she be placed below man in position, she brings him so many treasures with her beauty, youth, grace, and all the prizes of her womanhood that they weigh in equal value to gold, millions, and coats of arms rich with a hundred emblazonings.
There is perhaps another less noble, but more human, reason, which explains the inequality of our judgment on the subject of matrimony between persons with different amounts of income.
It is precisely because the woman is set a peg below us by law and custom that she can accept riches from us without any feeling of shame; besides, it is very difficult, if not often impossible, for her to gain sufficient by hand or brain work to maintain the family. Everything, then, conspires to enable her to give her hand to a rich man without selling or prostituting herself.
When instead of this it is the man who accepts the riches from the woman, without balancing them by great genius or by a very high social position, he always renounces that manly dignity which ought to be his nobility; he stands degraded before his wife, lowered, and at the least collision with vanity or passion he may be struck full in the face by an insult which ought to sink into his very heart.