The first demand ever made on her for really disagreeable effort came when Chunk, in order to get a new factory going, had to move for a while to Junction City. When Marie bitterly and furiously objected, Chunk was severely astonished. Why, he had to go! It was necessary. But there had been no necessity in Marie's experience. They became quarrelsome about it. Then stubborn. Marie talked about her mother and her friends and how she loved them (which was true) and stayed.
For two years she inhabited Chunk's flat in the city and lived on
Chunk's monthly check.
She and Chunk were married. Chunk was to support her. Her father used to support her. Her job then was being nice. That was her job now. And she was nice. And she was still supported. Perfectly logical.
For two years, neither really daughter now nor really wife, not being obliged any longer even to make suggestions to her mother about what to have for dinner, not being obliged any longer even to think out the parties for Chunk's business friends, she did nothing but become more and more firmly fixed in her inertia, in her incapacity for hardship, in her horror of pain.
When Chunk came back from Junction City and was really convinced that she didn't want children he was not merely astonished. He thought the world had capsized.
In a way he was right. The world is turning round and over and back to that one previous historical era when the aversion to childbearing was widespread.
Once, just once, before our time, there was a modern world. Once, just once, though not on the scale we know it, there was, before us, a diffusion of leisure.
The causes were similar.
The Romans conquered the world by military force, just as we have conquered it by mechanical invention. They lived on the plunder of despoiled peoples just as we live on the products of exploited continents. They had slaves in multitudes just as we have machines in masses. Because of the slaves, there were hundreds of thousands of their women, in the times of the Empire, who had only denatured housekeeping to do, just as to-day there are millions of our women who, because of machines, have only that kind of housekeeping to do. Along with leisure and semi-leisure, they acquired its consequences, just as we have acquired them. And the sermons of Augustus Caesar, first hero of their completed modernity, against childlessness are perfect precedents for those of Theodore Roosevelt, first hero of ours.
Augustus, however, addressed himself mainly to the men, who entered into marriage late, or did not enter into it at all, for reasons identical with ours—the increased competitiveness of the modern life and the decreased usefulness of the modern wife. It was the satirists who addressed themselves particularly to the women. And their tirades against idleness, frivolity, luxury, dissipation, divorce, and aversion to child-bearing leave nothing to be desired, in comparison with modern efforts, for effectiveness in rhetoric—or for ineffectiveness in result.