Married woman

“ Keep some wood for the winter fire, and remember what is expected of a married woman. Her husband must be able to count upon her in his home; it is she to whom he must entrust the key of his heart; his honour, his household, his welfare are in the hands of his wife. ”

“ To find a woman in whom the currents are not all so entangled that the whole is inseparable into factors, is not easy, but I have found that wives (particularly happy wives whose feelings are not complicated by the stimulus of another love) who have been separated from their husbands for some months through professional or business duties—whose husbands, for instance, are abroad—are the women from whom the best and most definitive evidence of a fundamental rhythm of feeling can be obtained. ”

“ She was sitting up for him, as he knew by the light in the parlor window. He could see her through the half-closed blinds as she sat by the table, a magazine in her lap, her attitude, unknown to herself, betraying a listless depression. After all, is a woman glad to have all her aspirations and desires confined within four walls? She may love her cramped quarters, to be sure, but can she always forget that they are cramped? To what does a wife descend after the bright dreams of her girlhood! ”

“ Thirty years ago, when the woman's rights movement began, the status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the English common law, her husband was her lord and master. ”

“ And I showed the young lady your real wife's marriage lines, all regularly signed and witnessed by the rector of St. Margaret's and the sexton, and the pew-opener! I did! And there were letters in your own handwriting, and photographs, the very print of you, which I took along with the marriage lines, to prove my words when I told her that you had been married for over a year, and had lived in my house with your wife all that time!"
"Heaven may forgive you for that great wrong, woman; but I never can! And—the lady believed you?" ”

“ The erring wife returning to find her husband married to another woman, to nurse one of her own children through his last illness without being recognised by him or by her husband, and to die at last in her husband's house with the merest shadow of consolation in the shape of his somewhat grudging forgiveness, presents us with a figure which cannot fail to be extremely pathetic. ”

“ The lady of your story was wedded to a rich gentleman of high and ancient lineage, and had married him on account of the great affection that they bore to one another.
Being a woman most pleasant of speech, she by no means concealed from her husband that she had lovers whom she made game of for her pastime, and, at first, her husband shared in her pleasure. ”

“ Her happiness, sometimes almost more than she could bear, renewed her beauty. Just before she married, beginning to lose her first freshness, she had looked tired and drawn. The uncharitable said that she was going off. But there is all the difference between a girl of twenty-five and a married woman of that age. ”

“ The married women appear to be absolutely loyal, and certainly I never saw or heard a married woman sneer at her husband or speak ill of him except behind his back. Some are very beautiful, others are merely pretty, a few are as plump as partridges, and because they are natural, I did not see a single ugly woman amongst them. ”

“ Why is it that when we see in a restaurant a middle-aged couple, mutually interested and gay, we say: "I wonder if they are married?" Why do so many marriages persist when the love knot slips, and bandages fall away from the eyes? Strange cases come to my mind: M 6 and M 22, always apart, except to quarrel, meanly jealous, jealously mean, yet full of affability—to strangers; M 4 and many others, all poor, where at once the wife has decayed; when you see youth struggling in vain on the features under the cheap hat, you need not look at the left hand: she is married. ”

“ His kind-hearted old mother, who had been at work in the kitchen and had overheard our conversation, came to the doorway and placed her arms lovingly around our broad shoulders.
"Lots of time yet to think about getting married. And, let me whisper something into your ears. It's an old woman's advice, and it's good:—when you do think of marrying, be sure you get a wife with a pleasant face and a good figure; a wife that other wives' men will turn round and admire; for, you know, you can never foretell what kind of temper a woman has until you have lived with her. ”

“ But the tenderest bridegroom finds only caprice in his bride's coldness when she yields her sacrificial body while her sex-tide is at the ebb.
There is another side to this problem, one perhaps even less considered by society. There is the case of the loving woman whose love-tide is at the highest, and whose husband does not recognize the signs of her ardor. ”

“ When you give your wife your hand to lift her from the carriage, you grasp a woman of wood: she gives you a “thank you” which puts you in the same rank as her servant. You understood your wife no better before than you do after the ball: you find it difficult to follow her, for instead of going up stairs, she flies up. ”

“ I am convinced, however, that ordinarily, whether she recognizes it by outward signs or not, it profoundly influences the average woman, and hence that it fundamentally affects the marriage relation in every way. ”

“ It is true that my wife gives me no ground for jealousy, but my marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think that I am a married man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some excuse for my unfaithfulness. ”

“ What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. ”

“ The story, madam, is on my conscience a perfectly true one, and concerns a married lady who lived in all honour with her husband, although he was old and she was young. A gentleman who was her neighbour, seeing her married to this old man, fell in love with her, and importuned her for several years; but never received of her any reply save such as a virtuous woman should make. ”

“ It is useless to object that thousands of married men to-day remain faithful to their wives, and yet cannot be said to be among those rare geniuses in love for whom alone the monogamic marriage is suitable. ”

“ I am writing of the English-speaking races of to-day, and though we also have among us that dwarfed and sterilized type of woman, she forms in our community a dwindling minority. The majority of our best women enter marriage and motherhood, or else long for a marriage more beautiful than the warped mockery of it that is offered them. ”

“ That little girl you're with—you're taking her out and spending your money on her and making an ass of yourself, and she don't care tuppence for you. But this beautiful woman I'm taking out is my wife, and she loves me. ”

“ Yet, curiously enough, it sometimes comes to light that a pair do not even know the usual position, and in my own experience several couples who have failed to have children, or have failed to obtain the complete delight of union, have revealed that the woman did not know that it is not only her arms which should embrace her lover. ”

“ When she discovers the true nature of his body, and learns the part she has to play as a wife, she may refuse utterly to agree to her husband's wishes. I know a case in which the husband, chivalrous and loving, had to wait years before his bride recovered from the shock of the discovery of the meaning of marriage and was able to allow him a natural relation. There are known not a few cases in which the horror of the first night of marriage with a man less considerate, has driven the bride to suicide or insanity. ”

“ "My dear, the truth must be spoken. I declare I don't think I ever saw a young woman so improvident as you are. When are you to begin to think about getting married if you don't do it now?"
"I shall never begin to think about it, till I buy my wedding clothes." ”

“ If, on passing your wife, an admirer were gently to press her, accidentally or purposely, would you have the slightest desire to discover his motives? Besides, you say, no woman would seek to bring about a quarrel for such a trifle. ”

“ And they might in that case be right if the reasons were purely numerical: that is, if every woman were willing to take a husband if one could be found for her, and every man willing to take a wife on the same terms; also, please remember, if widows would remain celibate to give the unmarried women a chance. ”

“ A woman thus married is called a “proxy” wife.
Now “spiritual” wives are of two classes. The one consists of old ladies who have plenty of money or property which of course needs looking after; and generous Elders marry them, and accordingly “look after” the said property, and the owner of it becomes the Elder’s spiritual wife. ”

“ PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE PART FIRST BY HONORE DE BALZAC PREFACE IN WHICH EVERY ONE WILL FIND HIS OWN IMPRESSIONS OF MARRIAGE. A friend, in speaking to you of a young woman, says: "Good family, well bred, pretty, and three hundred thousand in her own right." ”

“ And to such an extreme is this sometimes pushed, that not seldom is a girl married unaware that married life will bring her into physical relations with her husband, fundamentally different from those with her brother. ”

“ It is my experience, that in the early days of marriage, the young man is even more sensitive, more romantic, more easily pained about all ordinary things than the woman, that he enters marriage hoping for an even higher degree of spiritual and bodily unit than does the girl or the woman. ”

“ In short, the overcoming of her personal modesty which is generally looked on as an essential result in marriage where the woman becomes wholly the man's, has generated among our women a tradition that before their husbands they can perform any and all of the details of personal and domestic duties. ”

“ In short, in this instance, your paternity renders you all the more proud from the fact that it is incontestable, my dear sir!
REVELATIONS. Generally speaking, a young woman does not exhibit her true character till she has been married two or three years. She hides her faults, without intending it, in the midst of her first joys, of her first parties of pleasure. She goes into society to dance, she visits her relatives to show you off, she journeys on with an escort of love's first wiles; she is gradually transformed from girlhood to womanhood. ”

“ “Well, I really don’t advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married,” she said, beginning a fresh row rather elaborately. ”

“ In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the prey of frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly beloved, a happy mother of little children, the mistress of comforts that her husband had won for her, the appointed dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly beloved, the true owner of her husband’s heart, a woman whose work it was to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be more and more his helper, his lover. ”

“ If we have correctly stated the peculiar mental attitude and physical condition of the unmarried woman in our midst, and from this statement have drawn the correct inferences concerning her influence upon the community, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that permanently unmarried females are on the whole an element in society which cannot be regarded as very desirable. ”

“ Gradually the curious, timid, admiring bride is merged in the wife, with ambition budding in her heart, and exacting pride pleading for recognition and wifely dignities, and in this transformation the power of the woman asserted itself. ”

“ Has he any call to be a husband, who kisses his wife only on Saturday night, when he winds up the clock and pays the grocer, and who never notices, day by day, the neat dress, and shining bands of hair arranged to please his stupid milk-and-water-ship?
TO THE LADIES.
A CALL TO BE A WIFE. Has that woman a call to be a wife, who thinks more of her silk dress than of her children, and visits her nursery no oftener than once a day?
Has that woman a call to be a wife, who cries for a cashmere shawl when her husband’s notes are being protested? ”

“ Moreover, your wife will often find herself just on the point of indulging in soliloquies, and on such occasions her husband may recognize the secret feelings of his wife.
Is there a man as heedless of love's mysteries as not to have admired, over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a woman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through the crowd, like a snake through the grass. ”

“ We hear too much of a wife's duties to a husband and too little of the other side of the question. "The wife," they tell us, "should meet her husband with a smile and a kiss, should tactfully watch his moods and be ever sweetness and sunshine." Why this continual swinging of the censer of devotion to the man of business? Why should a woman have to look up with timid glance at the face of her husband, to "size up his mood"? ”

“ Let men, above all, ask themselves with regard to women—to wives—this question—and answer it in a manly, honest manner, whether it is condemnatory of their own "line of conduct" or the contrary: Should I be willing to endure what I expect my wife to bear, were I a woman and a wife? ”

“ But to avoid so base and curst a Life,
The only way's to Live without a wife.
FINIS.
THE Fifteen COMFORTS OF A Wanton Wife: OR, The FOOL Well Fitted. Dedicated to the London-Cuckolds.
LONDON:
Printed in the Year 1707
THE Fifteen COMFORTS OF A Wanton WIFE, &c.
The First Comfort. Unhappy Man! yoak'd with a wanton Wife,
The Wedding Day begins thy wretched Life.
Not all the Hurry of a Married State,
Can stint her Humour, make her more Sedate.
She'as all the Tricks the Devil can infuse
Into her Head; her Husband to abuse. ”

“ I underline these words, for they sum up my fondest aspirations. I have brought up Anna with the view of making her your wife, and thus dividing my fortune between you; and I rely upon you to carry out this arrangement. If marriage is for a man but a small matter, it is for a woman the most serious event in life. With you, I am confident that the dear girl will never be unhappy, and that is the thing of most importance. ”