Now, dear, please don’t feel that you have no interest in life, for you have our dear little girl, and just as soon as she is big enough to be a comfort to you—well, she is yours.
Dean, if you only knew how badly I want to see you. Now, listen—Clarence leaves here August 31 for Vancouver and will be there until September 6.... So, if you could send me my fare one way, why, then he could not refuse to let me go.... Let me know what you are planning, for I want to see you and cook you some good old meals again.... Yours only, Patsy.[[20]]
In No. 18 a conventional woman permits herself to have a single new experience in the field of response, as compensation for a married relation which lacks everything but security, and then returns to her security.
18. American woman, forty-five years old, married. Husband is a prosperous real estate broker, a member of many clubs, a church warden, director of several corporations, a typical business man of the type termed “successful”, a good citizen “without one redeeming vice.”
She is a beautiful woman, albeit tired and faded. Her hair is prematurely white, her youthful face with deep-set brown eyes has a wistful contradictory appearance. Has many sides to her nature, can play ball with her boys as well as she can preside at a meeting. Is a good companion, has many friends, and leads a busy life as head of a prosperous household. Has five children, four boys and one girl. One would not guess that she is an unsatisfied woman; her friends all think her life ideal and, in a sense, she does not deny it. This in substance is her view of married life though not literally word for word:
“I suppose there can never be a school for marriage—how could there be?—yet how sad it is that every one must begin at the same place to work out the same problem. I had a good father and mother. They did not understand me but that was probably more my fault than theirs; I never confided in my mother overmuch. My father considered my mental progress at all times and I owe him much for the manner in which he made me think for myself, strengthened my views, and guided my education. When I left finishing school I played in society for two years and many of the men I met interested me, though none compelled me. I had never been given any clear conception of what marriage should be in the ideal sense. I knew vaguely that the man I married must be in my own class, good and honorable, and rich enough to maintain a dignified household. I had more of a vision of love at sixteen than at twenty-six, the year I married, though I was sure I loved my husband and I do—that is he is as much a part of my life as my religion or my household conventions. He is wholly a product of civilization and I discovered too late there is an element of the savage in most women. They wish to be captured, possessed—not in the sense the suffragists talk about; it is really a sense of self-abasement, for it is the adoration of an ideal. They wish to love a man in the open—a fighter, a victor—rather than the men we know who have their hearts in money making and play at being men. Perhaps it cannot be remedied, it is only a bit of wildness that will never be tamed in women but it makes for unhappiness just the same.
“My sex life had never been dominant. I had a commonplace adolescence with physical longings and sensations which were not explained to me and which did me no harm. My relation with my husband was perfectly orthodox, and vaguely I longed for something different. My husband was shocked at any demonstration on my part. If I was impulsive and threw myself in his arms he straightened his tie before he kissed me. Once at our cottage in the mountains I suggested that we spend the night in the woods. I saw a possibility of our getting nearer each other physically and spiritually if we could get out in the wilderness away from the restraints and niceties of our luxurious household. That was the first time I ever felt like a traitor. He told me quite sternly to go to bed, I was not a wild Indian and could not act like one. I went to the nursery for the night and snuggled close to my little boy and was glad he was young and slender and hoped he would never grow fat and complacent. I had noticed for the first time that my husband was growing stout, like any other church-warden.
“Since that time I have never been wholly happy. It was not the foolish incident, it was the fundamental principle, and underlying our civilization. Our babies came rather closely together and I was glad that the mother element in me needed to be uppermost. My husband was perfectly content with life, I satisfied him at dinner parties, I could dress well and talk well, managed the household money to advantage and was at hand—tame, quite tame, when he wished to kiss me. I do not mean to sound sarcastic and bitter. It is not what my husband is which troubles me, but what he is not; I think I speak for many women. I am more mated to the vision of what my children’s father might have been than to the good kind man whom I teach them to love and respect.
“Perhaps you have guessed I am coming to a confession: I met the man in England two summers ago, but he is an American and is in this country now, a friend of ours whom we both see quite often. Something in both of us flared the very night we met. He and Lawrence (my husband) get along famously; they both believe in many of the same ideals and discuss kindred subjects, but my brain and his supplement each other in a way which is hard to explain. I did not mean to love him. It is an upper strata of myself; I love Lawrence; I mean I belong to him, am part of his very being and he of mine, but I am myself when I am with this other man and I refuse to think what a different self it might have been had I known him before. The very morning after I faced the awful fact that I was thinking of a man other than my husband, Lawrence put a bouquet at my plate at the breakfast table. It was a red geranium, a tiny pink rose, and some leaves of striped grass. Poor Lawrence.
“Our adventure in love came rapidly. He understood me perfectly and I knew that he cared. We have never told Lawrence for we do not intend to do anything more that is wrong. He has spent several evenings at the house when Lawrence was away. There was no deception about this—it just happened and we have talked and kissed and faced life in the open. We decided quite calmly, and without passion, that we would have each other entirely just once. I wanted the complete vision of what my love could mean. If it is wrong I cannot think so; at any rate I would not give up the memory of that time. It was only once and it was a year ago. We both knew there could be no continued sex relation. When I have an opportunity I kiss him and he me. Lawrence never kisses my lips, so they belong to him. He has helped me to be more patient, and understanding of my life as it has been and must be. I have my children and must live out the life for their sakes and for Lawrence who loves me, tamed and domesticated.