Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine

by S. T. Arthur

  A good hearty cry to myself was all the satisfaction I had, and then I went to sleep. On the next morning, I met Mr. Smith at the breakfast table with red eyes and a sad countenance. But he did not seem to notice either.

  “I hope you enjoyed yourself at the concert last night,” said he. “I was delighted at the theatre. Fanny danced divinely. Hers is truly the poetry of motion!”

  Now this was too much! I will leave it to any reader—any female reader, I mean—whether this was not too much. I burst into a flood of tears and immediately withdrew, leaving my husband to eat his breakfast alone. He sat the usual time, which provoked me exceedingly. If he had jumped up from the table and left the house, I would have felt that I had made some impression upon him. But to take things in this calm way! What had I gained? Nothing, as I could see. After breakfast Mr. Smith came up to the chamber, and, seeing my face buried in a pillow, weeping bitterly—I had increased the flow of tears on hearing him ascending the stairs—said in a low voice—

  “Are you not well, Mary?”

  I made no answer, but continued to weep. Mr. Smith stood for the space of about a minute, but asked no further question. Then, without uttering a word, he retired from the chamber, and in a little while after I heard him leave the house. I cried now in good earnest. It was plain that my husband had no feeling; that he did not care whether I was pleased or sad. But I determined to give him a fair trial. If I failed in this new way, what was I to do? The thought of becoming the passive slave of a domestic tyrant was dreadful. I felt that I could not live in such a state. When Mr. Smith came home at dinner-time I was in my chamber, ready prepared for a gush of tears. As he opened the door I looked up with streaming eyes, and then hid my face in a pillow.

  “Mary,” said he, with much kindness in his voice, “what ails you? Are you sick?” He laid his hand upon mine as he spoke.

  But I did not reply. I meant to punish him well for what he had done as a lesson for the future. I next expected him to draw his arm around me, and be very tender and sympathizing in his words and tones. But no such thing! He quietly withdrew the hand he had placed upon mine; and stood by me, I could feel, though not see, in a cold, erect attitude.

  “Are you not well, Mary?” he asked again.

  I was still silent. A little while after I heard him moving across the floor, and then the chamber door shut. I was once more alone.

  When the bell rang for dinner, I felt half sorry that I had commenced this new mode of managing my husband; but, as I had begun, I was determined to go through with it. “He’ll at least take care how he acts in the future,” I said. I did not leave my chamber to join my husband at the dinner table. He sat his usual time, as I could tell by the ringing of the bell for the servant to change the plates and bring in the dessert. I was exceedingly fretted; and more so by his returning to his business without calling up to see me, and making another effort to dispel my grief.

  For three days I tried this experiment upon my husband, who bore it with the unflinching heroism of a martyr. I was forced, at last, to come to; but I was by no means satisfied that my new mode was a failure. For all Mr. Smith’s assumed indifference, I knew that he had been troubled at heart, and I was pretty well satisfied that he would think twice before provoking me to another essay of tears. Upon the whole, I felt pretty sure that I had discovered the means of doing with him as I pleased.

  A few weeks of sunshine passed—I must own that the sun did not look so bright, nor feel so warm as it had done in former times—and then our wills came once more into collision. But my tears fell upon a rock. I could not see that they made the least perceptible impression. Mr. Smith had his own way, and I cried about it until I got tired of that sport, and in very weariness gave over. For the space of a whole year I stood upon tears as my last defensible position. Sometimes I didn’t smile for weeks. But my husband maintained his ground like a hero.

  At last I gave up in despair. Pride, self-will, anger—all were conquered. I was a weak woman in the hands of a strong-minded man. If I could not love him as I wished to love him, I could at least obey. In nothing did I now oppose him, either by resolute words or tears. If he expressed a wish, whether to me agreeable or not, I acquiesced.

  One day, not long after this change in my conduct towards my husband, he said to me, “I rather think, Mary, we will spend a couple of weeks at Brandywine Springs, instead of going to Cape May this season.”

  I replied, “Very well, dear;” although I had set my heart on going to the Capes. My sister and her husband and a number of my friends were going down, and I had anticipated a good deal of pleasure. I did not know of a single person who was going to the Brandywine Springs. But what was the use of entering into a contest with my husband? He would come off the conqueror, spite of angry words or ineffectual tears.

  “The Springs are so much more quiet than the Capes,” said my husband.

  “Yes,” I remarked, “there is less gay company there.”

  “Don’t you think you will enjoy yourself as well there as at the Capes?”

  Now this was a good deal for my husband to say. I hardly knew what to make of it.

  “If you prefer going there, dear, let us go by all means,” I answered. I was not affecting any thing, but was in earnest in what I said.

  Mr. Smith looked into my face for some moments, and with unusual affection I thought.

  “Mary,” said he, “if you think the time will pass more pleasantly to you at the Capes, let us go there by all means.”

  “My sister Jane is going to the Capes,” I remarked, with some little hesitation; “and so is Mrs. L—and Mrs. D—, and a good many more of our friends. I did think that I would enjoy myself there this season very much. But I have no doubt I shall find pleasant society at the Springs.”

  “We will go to the Capes,” said my husband promptly and cheerfully.

  “No,” said I, emulous now for the first time in a new cause. “I am sure the time will pass agreeably enough at the Springs. And as you evidently prefer going there, we will let the Capes pass for this year.”

  “To the Capes, Mary, and nowhere else,” replied my husband, in the very best of humours. “I am sure you will enjoy yourself far better there. I did not know your sister was going.”

  And to the Capes we went, and I did enjoy myself excellently well. As for my husband, I never saw him in a better state of mind. To me he was more like a lover than a husband. No, I will not say that either, for I can’t admit that a husband may not be as kind and affectionate as a lover; for he can and will be if managed rightly, and a great deal more so. Whenever I expressed a wish, it appeared to give him pleasure to gratify it. Seeing this, instead of suffering myself to be the mere recipient of kind attentions, I began to vie with him in the sacrifice of selfish wishes and feelings.

  It is wonderful how all was changed after this. There were no more struggles on my part to manage my husband, and yet I generally had things my own way. Before I could not turn him to the right nor the left, though I strove to do so with my utmost strength. Now I held him only with a silken fetter, and guided him, without really intending to do so, in almost any direction.

  Several years have passed since that ever-to-be-remembered, happy visit to Cape May. Not once since have I attempted any management of my husband, and yet it is a rare thing that my wish is not, as it used to be before we were married, his law. It is wonderful, too, how he has improved. I am sure he is not the same man that he was five years ago. But, perhaps, I see with different eyes. At any rate, I am not the same woman; or, if the same, very unlike what I then was.

  So much for my efforts to manage a husband. Of the three ways so faithfully tried, my fair readers will be at no loss to determine which is best. I make these honest confessions for the good of my sex. My husband, Mr. John Smith, will be no little surprised if this history should meet his eye. But I do not believe it will interrupt the present harmonious relations existing between us, but rather tend to confirm and strengthen them.
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  RULING A WIFE.

  AS a lover, Henry Lane was the kindest, most devoted, self-sacrificing person imaginable. He appeared really to have no will of his own, so entire was his deference to his beautiful Amanda; yet, for all this, he had no very high opinion of her as an intelligent being. She was lovely, she was gentle, she was good; and these qualities, combined with personal grace and beauty, drew him in admiration to her side, and filled him with the desire to possess her as his own.

  As a husband, Henry Lane was a different being. His relation had changed, and his exterior changed correspondingly. Amanda was his wife; and as such she must be, in a certain sense, under him. It was his judgment that must govern in all matters; for her judgment, in the affairs of life, was held in light estimation. Moreover, as a man, it was his province to control and direct and her duty to look to him for guidance.

  Yet, for all this, if the truth must be told, the conclusions of Amanda’s mind were, in ordinary affairs, even more correct than her husband’s judgment; for he was governed a great deal by impulses and first impressions, instead of by the reason of which he was so proud, while she came naturally into the woman’s quick perceptions of right and propriety. This being the case, it may readily be seen that there was a broad ground-work for unhappiness in the married state. Amanda could not sink into a mere cipher; she could not give up her will entirely to the guidance of another, and cease to act from her own volitions.

  It took only a few months to make the young wife feel that her position was to be one of great trial. She was of a mild and gentle character, more inclined to suffer than resist; but her judgment was clear, and she saw the right or wrong of any act almost instinctively. Love did not make her blind to every thing in her husband. He had faults and unpleasant peculiarities, and she saw them plainly, and often desired to correct them. But one trial of this kind sufficed to keep her silent. He was offended, and showed his state of mind so plainly, that she resolved never to stand in that relation to him again.

  As time progressed, the passiveness of Amanda encouraged in Lane his natural love of ruling. His household was his kingdom, and there his will must be the law. In his mind arose the conceit that, in every thing, his judgment was superior to that of his wife: even in the smaller matters of household economy, he let this be seen. His taste, too, was more correct, and applied itself to guiding and directing her into a proper state of dressing. He decided about the harmony of colours and the choice of patterns. She could not buy even a ribbon without there being some fault found with it, as not possessing the elements of beauty in just arrangements. In company, you would often hear him say—”Oh, my wife has no taste. She would dress like a fright if I did not watch her all the time.”

  Though outwardly passive or concurrent when such things were said, Amanda felt them as unjust, and they wounded her more or less severely, according to the character of the company in which she happened at the time to be; but her self-satisfied husband saw nothing of this. And not even when some one, more plainly spoken than others, would reply to such a remark—”She did not dress like a fright before you were married,” did he perceive his presumption and his errors.

  But passiveness under such a relation does not always permanently remain; it was accompanied from the first by a sense of oppression and injustice, though love kept the feeling subdued. The desire for ruling in any position gains strength by activity. The more the young wife yielded, the more did the husband assume, until at length Amanda felt that she had no will of her own, so to speak. The conviction of this, when it formed itself in her mind, half involuntarily brought with it an instinctive feeling of resistance. Here was the forming point of antagonism—the beginning of the state of unhappiness foreshadowed from the first. Had Amanda asserted her right to think and act for herself in the early days of her married life, the jar of discord would have been light. It now promised to be most afflicting in its character.

  The first activity of Amanda’s newly forming state showed itself in the doing of certain things to which she was inclined, notwithstanding the expression of her husband’s disapproval. Accustomed to the most perfect compliance, Mr. Lane was disturbed by this.

  “Oh, dear! what a horrid looking thing!” said he one day, as he discovered a new dress pattern which his wife had just purchased lying on a chair. “Where in the world did that come from?”

  “I bought it this morning,” replied Amanda.

  “Take it back, or throw it into the fire,” was the husband’s rude response.

  “I think it neat,” said Amanda, smiling.

  “Neat? It’s awful! But you’ve no taste. I wish you’d let me buy your dresses.”

  The wife made no answer to this. Lane said a good deal more about it, to all of which Amanda opposed but little. However, her mind was made up to one thing, and that was to take it to the mantuamaker’s. The next Lane saw of the dress was on his wife.

  “Oh, mercy!” he exclaimed, holding up his hand, “I thought you had burnt it. Why did you have it made up?”

  “I like it,” quietly answered Mrs. Lane.

  “You like any thing.”

  “I haven’t much taste, I know,” said Amanda, “but such as it is, it is pleasant to gratify it sometimes.”

  Something in the way this remark was made it disturbed the self-satisfaction which was a leading feature in Mr. Lane’s state of mind; he, however, answered—”I wish you would be governed by me in matters of this kind; you know my taste is superior to yours. Do take off that dress, and throw it in the fire.”

  Amanda did not reply to this, for it excited feelings and produced thoughts that she had no wish to manifest. But she did not comply with her husband’s wishes. She liked the dress and meant to wear it, and she did wear it, notwithstanding her husband’s repeated condemnation of her taste.

  At this time they had one child—a babe less than a year old. From the first, Lane had encroached upon the mother’s province. This had been felt more sensibly than any thing else by his wife, for it disturbed the harmonious activity of the natural law which gives to a mother the perception of what is best for her infant. Still, she had been so in the habit of yielding to the force of his will, that she gave way to his interference here in numberless instances, though she as often felt that he was wrong as right. Conceit of his own intelligence blinded him to the intelligence of others. Of this Amanda became more and more satisfied every day. At first, she had passively admitted that he knew best; but her own common sense and clear perceptions soon repudiated this idea. While his love of predominance affected only herself, she could bear it with great patience; but when it was exercised, day after day, and week after week, in matters pertaining to her babe, she grew restless under the oppression.

  After the decided, position taken in regard to her dress, Amanda’s mind acquired strength in a new direction. A single gratification of her own will, attained in opposition to the will of her husband, stirred a latent desire for repeated gratifications; and it was not long before Lane discovered this fact, and wondered at the change which had taken place in his wife’s temper. She no longer acquiesced in every suggestion, nor yielded when he opposed argument to an assumed position. The pleasure of thinking and acting for herself had been restored, and the delight appertaining to its indulgence was no more to be suppressed. Her husband’s reaction on this state put her in greater freedom; for it made more distinctly manifest the quality of his ruling affection, and awoke in her mind a more determined spirit of resistance.

  Up to this time, even in the most trifling matters of domestic and social life, Lane’s will had been the law. This was to be so no longer. A new will had come into activity; and that will a woman’s will. Passive it had been for a long time under a pressure that partial love and a yielding temper permitted to remain; but its inward life was unimpaired; and when its motions became earnest, it was strong and enduring. The effort made by Lane to subdue these motions the moment he perceived them, only gave them a stronger impulse. The hand laid up
on her heart to quiet its pulsations only made it beat with a quicker effort, while it communicated its disturbance to his own.

  The causes leading to the result we are to describe have been fully enough set forth; they steadily progressed until the husband and wife were in positions of direct antagonism. Lane could not give up his love of controlling every thing around him, and his wife, fairly roused to opposition, followed the promptings of her own will, in matters where right was clearly on her side, with a quiet perseverance that always succeeded. Of course, they were often made unhappy; yet enough forbearance existed on both sides to prevent an open rupture—at least, for a time. That, however, came at last, and was the more violent from the long accumulation of reactive forces.

  The particulars of this rupture we need not give; it arose in a dispute about the child when she was two years old. As usual, Lane had attempted to set aside the judgment of his wife in something pertaining to the child, as inferior to his own, and she had not submitted. Warm words ensued, in which he said a good deal about a wife’s knowing her place and keeping it.

  “I am not your slave!” said Amanda, indignantly; the cutting words of her husband throwing her off her guard.

  “You are my wife,” he calmly and half contemptuously replied; “and, as such, are bound to submit yourself to your husband.”

  “To my husband’s intelligence, not to his mere will,” answered Amanda, less warmly, but more resolutely than at first.

  “Yes, to his will!” said Lane, growing blind from anger.

  “That I have done long enough,” returned the wife. “But the time is past now. By your intelligence, when I see in it superior light to what exists in my own, I will be guided, but, by your will—never!”