To illustrate with a concrete example the utter helplessness of some of the finest women, the following excerpt is made, with his permission, from a letter received by Dr. Robie:
“The man whom I finally married came into my life as an intellectual wonder. I marvelled at his knowledge and his worldly poise.... Whenever I pleaded for consideration, kindness, he would say: ‘Haven’t you a home, clothes, money, a baby? What more do you want?’ or ‘Haven’t I told you once that I love you? Can’t you take that for granted?’
“No gentleness, no petting, just hardness and the greatest conceit over his own personality and ability.
“I found at dances that other men could thrill me, and one man in particular.... He never knew it.
“I got the reputation of being a perfect mother, and a beauty, and my spirit never has been broken; but my faith is broken. My love is as dead as last year’s leaves; and I scorn men who stop being lovers on their wedding night.
“Health, enthusiasm, good nature, big sense of humour, beauty, ideal birth inheritance, magnetism, yes, and passion—for I am not cold, but very impulsive and affectionate—all this lost to the right man, and the wrong one quite content, apparently, in his worldly successes, and with a cultured wife who does not bother him, and keeps his noisy brood of children at a distance.
“This comes from a bursting heart. It is true I am a success as a mother; and the world thinks I am in all ways. Yet that greatest of all things, LOVE, is denied me.”
§ 204
The father’s part in the home is something, however, far more hypersomatic than that, more spiritual. The truly husbanded wife will make the egoistic-social aspects of home-keeping so much her own business that she will tend to appropriate more than she should really have. And the thoughtless man will let her and wonder why she is tired and cross.
If rugs have to be beaten and windows washed, and there is no money to hire a man to do it, the wife will do it, frequently, and the husband, who does not husband his wife’s health and beauty will let her. And so on up the egoistic-social scale till we reach the millionaire who might do certain things for his wife much more acceptably than hirelings, but dissociates himself more and more from her.