ead separate lives. They will be no longer
husband and wife. There will be a domestic alliance, but no marriage.
A predominant interest in the same objects binds them together after a
fashion; but marriage is something beyond that. If a woman wishes and
purposes to be the friend of her husband,--if she would be valuable to
him, not simply as the nurse of his children and the directress of his
household, but as a woman fresh and fair and fascinating,--to him
intrinsically lovely and attractive,--she should make an effort for it.
It is not by any means a thing that comes of itself, or that can be
left to itself. She must read, and observe, and think, and rest up to
it. Men, as a general thing, will not tell you so. They talk about
having the slippers ready, and enjoin women to be domestic. But men
are blockheads,--dear, and affectionate, and generous
blockheads,--benevolent, large-hearted, and chivalrous,--kind, and
patient, and hard-working,--but stupid where women are concerned.
Indispensable and delightful as they are in real life,--pleasant and
comfortable as women actually find them,--not one in ten thousand but
makes a dunce of himself the moment he opens his mouth to theorize
about women. Besides, they have "an axe to grind." The pretty things
they inculcate--slippers, and coffee, and care, and courtesy--ought
indeed to be done, but the others ought not to be left undone. And to
the former women seldom need to be exhorted. They take to them
naturally. A great many more women fret boorish husbands with fond
little attentions than wound appreciative ones by neglect. Women
domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is
cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large,
comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have
an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one,
over which those duties shall spread and occupy the whole space.

This mistake is the foundation of a world of wretchedness and ruin. I
can see Satan standing at the mother's elbow. He follows her around
into the nursery and the kitchen. He tosses up the babies and the
omelets, delivers dutiful harangues about the inappropriateness of the
piano and the library, and grins fiendishly in his sleeve at the wreck
he is making,--a wreck not necessarily of character, but of happiness;
for I suppose Satan has so bad a disposition, that, if he cannot do all
the harm he would wish, he