The Marriage Book (27 page)

One warning: there is certain ware

That must be handled with all care:

The Lord Himself will give you up

If you should drop a willow cup!

PHYLLIS M
C
GINLEY

“THE 5:32,” 1941

Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978) grew up in a family struggling through land speculation and farming in Oregon, Colorado, and Utah. At twenty-four she moved to New York, where she taught, wrote advertising jingles, and began contributing the kind of poetry generally known as “light verse” to magazines, especially
The New Yorker
. When in her thirties she married Bell Telephone executive Bill Hayden and moved to Westchester County, she embraced and described the joys of suburban living with lyricism and passion. Often dismissed by feminists as either hopelessly conservative or, worse, self-deluded, McGinley stayed true to her traditional values—as well as traditional rhyme and meter. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1961 and published eighteen books, including poetry, children’s stories, and essays.

Hayden eventually retired from his job to help McGinley in her career, often saying, “There are 70,000 employees at the phone company, but only one Phyllis.”

She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two,

Blacked out, dissolved, I think I would remember

(As if transfixed in unsurrendering amber)

This hour best of all the hours I knew:

When cars came backing into the little station,

Children scuffing the seats, and the women driving

With ribbons around their hair, and the trains arriving,

And the men getting off with tired but practiced motion.

Yes, I would remember my life like this, she said:

Autumn, the platform red with Virginia creeper,

And a man coming toward me, smiling, the evening paper

Under his arm, and his hat pushed back on his head;

And wood smoke lying like haze on the quiet town,

And dinner waiting, and the sun not yet gone down.

PAT MAINARDI

“THE POLITICS OF HOUSEWORK,” 1968

This essay was originally printed as a
New England Free Press
pamphlet, later in the magazine
Redstockings
, and it became part of the feminist canon. A decade and a half later, Pat Mainardi (1942–) became a PhD in art history, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art.

In addition to teaching at several colleges and universities, Mainardi has published articles and books on art and politics, as well as a history of marriage in nineteenth-century France. Italics and ellipsis in the original.

We women have been brainwashed more than even we can imagine. Probably too many years of seeing media-women coming over their shiny waxed floors or breaking down over their dirty shirt collars. Men have no such conditioning. They recognize the essential fact of housework right from the very beginning. Which is that it stinks.

Here’s my list of dirty chores: buying groceries, carting them home and putting them away; cooking meals and washing dishes and pots; doing the laundry; digging out the place when things get out of control; washing floors. The list could go on but the sheer necessities are bad enough. All of us have to do these jobs, or get someone else to do them for us. The longer my husband contemplated these chores, the more repulsed he became, and so proceeded the change from the normally sweet considerate Dr. Jekyll into the crafty Mr. Hyde who would stop at nothing to avoid the horrors of—housework. As he felt himself backed into a corner laden with dirty dishes, brooms, mops and reeking garbage, his front teeth grew longer and pointier, his fingernails haggled and his eyes grew wild. Housework trivial? Not on your life! Just try to share the burden.

So ensued a dialogue that’s been going on for several years. Here are some of the high points.

“I don’t mind sharing the housework, but I don’t do it very well. We should each do the things we’re best at.”

Meaning:
Unfortunately I’m no good at things like washing dishes or cooking. What I do best is a little light carpentry, changing light bulbs, moving furniture.
(How often do you move furniture?)
Also meaning:
Historically the lower classes (Blacks and women) have had hundreds of years doing menial jobs. It would be a waste of manpower to train someone else to do them now.

Also meaning:
I don’t like the dull stupid boring jobs, so you should do them.

“I don’t
mind sharing the work, but you’ll have to show me how to do it.”

Meaning:
I ask a lot of questions and you’ll have to show me everything, every time I do it because I don’t remember so good. Also, don’t try to sit down and read while I’m doing my jobs because I’m going to annoy hell out of you until it’s easier to do them yourself.

“We used to be so happy!” (said whenever it was his turn to do something)
Meaning:
I used to be so happy.

Meaning:
Life without housework is bliss. No quarrel here. Perfect agreement.

“We have different standards, and why should I have to work to your standards? That’s unfair.”

Meaning:
If I begin to get bugged by the dirt and crap, I will say “This place sure is a sty” or “How can anyone live like this?” and wait for your reaction. I know that all women have a sore called
guilt over a messy house
or
housework is ultimately my responsibility.
If I rub this sore long and hard enough it’ll bleed and you’ll do the work. I can outwait you.

Also meaning:
I can provoke innumerable scenes over the housework issue. Eventually, doing all the housework yourself will be less painful to you than trying to get me to do half.

“I’ve got nothing against sharing the housework, but you can’t make me do it on your schedule.”

Meaning:
Passive resistance. I’ll do it when I damn well please, if at all. If my job is doing dishes, it’s easier to do them once a week. If taking out laundry, once a month. If washing the floors, once a year. If you don’t like it, do it yourself oftener, and then I won’t do it at all. . . .

“Housework is too trivial to even talk about.”

Meaning:
It’s even more trivial to do. Housework is beneath my status. My purpose in life is to deal with matters of significance. Yours is to deal with matters of insignificance. You should do the housework.

“In
animal societies, wolves, for example, the top animal is usually a male even where he is not chosen for brute strength but on the basis of cunning and intelligence. Isn’t that interesting?”

Meaning:
I have historical, psychological, anthropological and biological justification for keeping you down. How can you ask the top wolf to be equal?

“Women’s Liberation isn’t really a political movement.”

Meaning:
The Revolution is coming too close to home.

Also meaning:
I am only interested in how I am oppressed, not how I oppress others. Therefore the war, the draft and the university are political. Women’s Liberation is not.

“Man’s accomplishments have always depended on getting help from other people, mostly women. What great man would have accomplished what he did if he had to do his own housework?”

Meaning:
Oppression is built into the system and I as the white American male receive the benefits of this system. I don’t want to give them up.

DIXIE CUP ADVERTISEMENT

LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL
, 1970

The ad showed a middle-aged, disgruntled man lying in bed while, in the background, a woman stands at a kitchen sink, surrounded by towers of presumably dirty glasses.

A woman’s place is next to her husband. Not next to her sink.

If he wanted a glass washer, he’d have married one. But he wanted a wife. A woman. You.

And where
are
you? At the sink as usual. Washing those endless stacks of glasses your kids dirty up all day.

So put a Dixie Kitchen Dispenser above your sink. Then you’ll have time on your hands instead of dishwater.

Time to paint pictures. Bake a peach pie. Or snuggle up to your husband and watch TV.

With a Dixie Kitchen Dispenser and Cups, you can stop being a glass washer. And start being a wife.

Try finding a marriage counselor for under $1.00.

A Dixie Kitchen Dispenser will get you together again.

HONEYMOON

BRITISH MEZZOTINTS

THE HONEY-MOON
AND
SIX WEEKS AFTER MARRIAGE
, 1777

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE
, 1829

Balzac himself (see
Fidelity
) didn’t marry until the woman with whom he had corresponded for decades was finally widowed and accepted his proposal. He died just five months later.

The fate of the house hangs on the first night.

GEORGE NAPHEYS

THE PHYSICAL LIFE OF WOMAN
, 1869

An innovator in offering a frank and scientific approach to sex education, Dr. George Napheys (1842–1876) dedicated much of his short life to researching and writing books that were intended to be more useful and accurate than either the backyard gossip or dubious pamphlets of his day.
The Physical Life of Woman
sold nearly 150,000 copies in its first three years and inspired the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (see
Freedom
) to write: “Every mother should have this book, nor should she suffer a child to be married without the knowledge which this work contains.” That praise notwithstanding, Napheys was exactly wrong about a woman’s time of greatest infertility and was on extraordinarily dubious ground in his comments about the differences between blondes and brunettes.

The initiation into marriage, like its full fruition, maternity, is attended with more or less suffering. Much, however, may be done to avert and to lessen the pain which waits upon the first step in this new life. For this purpose, regard must be had to the selection of the day. We have said that a time about midway between the monthly recurring periods is best fitted for the consummation of marriage. As this is a season of sterility, it recommends itself on this account, in the interest of both the mother and offspring. The first nuptial relations should be fruitless, in order that the indispositions possibly arising from them shall have time to subside before the appearance of the disturbances incident to pregnancy. One profound change should not too quickly succeed the other. About the tenth day after menstruation should therefore be chosen for the marriage ceremony.

It sometimes happens that marriage is consummated with difficulty. To overcome this, care, management, and forbearance should always be employed, and anything like precipitation and
violence avoided. Only the consequences of unrestrained impetuosity are to be feared. In those rare cases in which greater resistance is experienced than can be overcome by gentle means, the existence of a condition contrary to nature may be suspected. Violence can then only be productive of injury, and is not without danger. Medical art should be appealed to, as it alone can afford assistance in such an emergency.

Although the first conjugal approaches are ordinarily accompanied by slight flooding, a loss of blood does not always occur. Its absence proves nothing. The appearance of blood was formerly regarded as a test of virginity . . . [but] it is now well known that widows, and wives long separated from their husbands, often have a like experience. The temperament is not without its influence. In those of lymphatic temperament, pale blondes, who often suffer from local discharge and weakness, the parts being relaxed, there is less pain and little or no haemorrhage. In brunettes, who have never had any such troubles, the case is reversed. The use of baths, unguents, etc., by the young wife, however serviceable they might prove, is obviously impracticable. This great change sometimes also produces swelling and inflammation of the glands of the neck.

Marital relations ordinarily continue during the first few weeks to be more or less painful. General constitutional disturbance and disorders of the nervous system often result. These troubles are all increased by the stupid custom of hurrying the bride from place to place, at a time when the bodily quiet and the mental calmness and serenity so desirable to her should be the only objects in view. Too frequent indulgence at this period is a fruitful source of various inflammatory diseases, and often occasions temporary sterility and ill-health. The old custom requiring a three days’ separation after the first nuptial approach was a wise one, securing to the young wife the soothing and restoring influence of rest. Nothing was lost by it, and much gained.