‘Men, dying, make their wills—why cannot wives?
Because wives have their wills during their lives.’
‘Here,’ wrote Burns—‘here lies a man a woman ruled; the Devil ruled the woman.’ And Landor makes someone say to a scholar about to marry:
‘So wise thou art that I foresee
A wife will make a fool of thee.’
That wives are talkative is a venerable commonplace. The historic husband thought that the fact of his spouse’s likeness not being a ‘speaking’ one was its principal merit. And Lessing makes a man excuse himself for marrying a deaf woman on the ground that she was also dumb. We all remember Hood’s particular trouble:
‘A wife who preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night-dress.’
And so with those who are more than merely talkative—who are positively scolds; while sometimes the conventional helpmeet is as active with her fists as with her tongue—as in the case of the lady whose picture, her husband thought, would soon ‘strike’ him, it was so exceedingly like her.
It is, however, unnecessary to carry the tale further. This mocking at matrimony has always been a feature of life and literature, and probably will always remain so—partly because it is so easy of achievement; partly because it is not less easy of comprehension; and also, perhaps, because humanity has ever been inclined to chasten that which it loves. It rails against marriage, but it marries all the same. Or is it that it recognises the wedded life as a necessity, which cannot be put away, but which it is a pleasure to ridicule? Perhaps that is the best explanation one can offer. All this satire may be mankind’s way of revenging itself upon one of the laws of nature.
