CHAPTER X.
THE CARE OF THE BRIDE.
Few young husbands are intelligent guardians of their brides. Indeed, when first entering upon the marriage relation, young husbands are in danger of making some very serious mistakes. Many a husband has had cause to regret that in his lack of consideration he has allowed his passion to awaken in his wife such a feeling of disgust as to obliterate her affection for him, to blast the prospects of all future happiness, and render both himself and wife miserable throughout all their subsequent years.
In the first place a young husband should know that many women, even at the time of their marriage, are totally ignorant of all questions relating to sex. There are some women who do not so much as know that there are any physical differences between men and women. There are others who may know there is some difference, but into whose minds the thought of coition has never once entered. While this may not be true in a majority of cases, yet it is true in a large number of instances. We have even known of young wives who have approached the period of their first confinement who did not know the cause of their increasing bodily size; and we recently learned of an instance where the physician was already in the room to attend the expectant mother, who thought that she was to be delivered of her child by a surgical operation. She thought that the doctor was to make an incision in the abdomen, and remove her child in that way.
To say that all this is culpable ignorance does not, however, remove the fact. Young husbands do well to recognize the fact that such ignorance exists, and that, in addition to such possible ignorance upon the part of his own bride, there is that general condition of exhaustion and debility which follows as the result of the weeks of preparation and nervous excitement which have preceded and culminated at the time of the wedding festivities. We have already dwelt upon this phase of the subject, and we need not enlarge upon it here. With the poor it is weeks, and sometimes months, of sewing and preparation. With the rich it is the meeting of social exactions and requirements, formal visitations, and then senseless seclusion. In each instance the results are equally enervating, bringing most brides, whether rich or poor, to the one great event in their lives in an exhausted and nervous condition. To say the least, this uniform physical depletion entitles the bride to the most thoughtful consideration and most gentle treatment that the young husband can exercise.
With ignorance upon the one side, inconsideration and ungovernable passion upon the other, the combination is unfortunate and the results are oftentimes serious. The first act in the drama which is to culminate in separation and an effort to secure a divorce, is often enacted upon the night of the very day which witnessed the marriage ceremony and was attended with the congratulation of friends. The ignorance and inconsiderateness of both are alike to blame for this sad result—the wife for her lack of knowledge and consideration, and the husband for his lack of intelligent and thoughtful appreciation of the delicacies and dangers of his new relation.
In Greece the custom prevails of allowing three days to intervene between the marriage ceremony and the consummation of marriage. It would be well if such a custom prevailed everywhere. It would allow the exhausted, nervous, timid bride to bring to the consummation of the marriage relation renewed vigor and mental composure. It would prepare the mind of the young husband for such self-possession and restraint as would be becoming in this new relation, and would secure for him a happiness greatly heightened in intensity, and that would be prolonged through all the years that lie beyond.
It is enough to make a thoughtful and considerate man blush to think of the scores of wives who annually confess to their physicians that the only rape that was ever committed upon them was by their own husbands the first day of their married life. We recently heard of an instance where the expressed impatience and manifest impetuosity of the young husband, the moment he came into the bridal chamber with his young wife, awakened in her mind such a feeling of disgust that after a brief parleying the young wife left the room and refused ever to return to her husband, and thus terminated abruptly what, with thoughtful and considerate approaches and manifest affection, might have resulted in a union of lifelong happiness.