FullReads

1. Thou shalt love me.

2. Thou shalt succeed so that I may love thee.

All this is not manifest, but it is there. It is there even in the days of courtship, when a man’s work, a man’s clothes, a man’s views on bimetallism are sacred; in those days, the woman must kowtow to the man’s work, just as he must keep on good terms with her pet dog. But the time almost invariably comes when the man kicks the pet dog, because pet dogs are madly irritating sometimes–and so is a man’s work. There is something self-protective in this, for work is so domineering. I should not be at all surprised to hear that Galatea saw to it that Pygmalion never made another statue. (On second thoughts it strikes me that there might be other reasons for that.)

It is true that Pygmalion was an artist, and these are proverbially difficult husbands: after an hour’s work an artist will “sneer, backbite and speak daggers.” Art is a vampire, and it will gladly gobble up a wife as well as a husband, but the wife must not do any gobbling. She does not always try to, and there are many in London who follow their artist husbands rather like sandwichmen between two boards, but they are of a trampled breed, indigenous, I suspect, to England. I think they arise but little in America, where, as an American said to me, “women labor to advance themselves along a road paved with discarded husbands.” (This is an American’s statement, not mine, so I ask the Reverend John Bootfeller, President of the Kansas and Nevada Society for the Propagation of the Intellect, to spare me his denunciations.)

But leaving aside such important things as personal pettinesses, which too few think important, it must be acknowledged that women seldom conceive the passion for art that can inflame a man. They very seldom conceive a passion for anything except passion,–an admirable tendency for which they blush as one does for all one’s natural manifestations. They hardly ever care for philosophy; they generally hate politics, but they nearly always love votes. They are quite as irritating in that way as men, who almost invariably adore politics and detest realities, sometimes love science and generally prefer record railway runs. But where such an interest as a science or an art has reigned supreme in a man, and reasserts itself after marriage, she recognizes her enemy, the serpent, for is he not the symbol of wisdom? Invariably he rears his head when the love fever has subsided. Woman’s impulse is more artistic than man’s, but it seldom touches art; her artistic impulse is not yet one of high grade; she is the flower arranger rather than the flower painter, the flower painter rather than just the painter. But this instinct that is in all women and in so few men avails just enough to make them discontented, while the great instinct that is in a few men is always enough to make them wretched.

It would not be so bad if they had not to live together, but social custom has decided that couples must forsake their separate ways and evermore follow the same. Most follow the common path easily enough, because most follow the first path that offers, but many grumble and cast longing eyes at side tracks or would return to the place whence they came. They cannot do so because it is not done, because other feet have not broken paths so wide that they shall seem legitimate. When husband and wife care no longer for their common life, the only remedy is to part: then the contradictory strain that is in all of us will reassert itself and make them rebound towards each other. If the law were to edict that man and wife should never be together for more than six months in the year, it would be broken every day, and men and women would stand hunger and stripes to come together for twelve months in twelve. If love of home were made a crime, a family life would arise more touching than anything Queen Victoria ever dreamed. But from the point of view of a barbarous present, this would never do, for the very worst that can happen to two people is to reach the fullness of their desire. The young man who raves at the young woman’s feet: “Oh! that I were by your side day and night! Oh! that ever I could watch you move! I grudge the night the eight hours in which you sleep!”– Well, that young man is generally successful in his wooing and gets what he wants; a little later he gets a little more. For proximity is a dangerous thing; it enables one to know another rather well: full knowledge of mankind is seldom edifying. One sees too much, one sees too close; a professional Don Juan who honors me with his friendship told me that he has an infallible remedy against falling in love more often than three times a day: “Stand as close to your charmer as you can, look at her well, very well, at every feature; watch her attitudes, listen to every tone of her voice; then you will discover something unpleasant, and you will be saved.” That is a little what happens in marriage; for ever and ever people are together, hearing each other, watching each other. Listen to M 14: