with titles that are sometimes much more clever than their
contents.

Such eras have been with us before this, have come and gone. It is
doubtful if they ever affected so large a number of people. The
excitement of the daily life is increased in a sexual way, and this
brings an unrest that reacts on the anchor of the home, the housewife.
She too tugs at her moorings; life must be speeded up for her too as
well as for the younger and unattached women. She becomes more
dissatisfied and therefore more nervous.

Altogether the sexual relationship of modern marriage needs a candid
examination. No drastic change is indicated, but education in sexual
affairs for men and women is a need. Even the prudish admit the pleasure
of the sex-life, and that seems to be their fundamental aversion to it.
Most of the advice and injunctions in the past seem to have come from
the sexually abnormal. It is time that this was changed; in fact, it is
being changed. The danger lies in a swing to extremes, in leaving the
fields to those who think reform lies in the abolition of restraint, in
the disregard of all social supervision and obligation. Free love is
more disastrous if possible than prudery.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS

The problems of life are not all sexual, and in fact even in the
relations of men and women there are more important factors. After all,
as Spencer pointed out in a marvelous chapter, love itself is a
composite of many things, some, of the earth, earthy, and some of the
finest stuff our human life holds. The aspirations, the ideals, the
yearnings of the girl attach themselves to some man as their
fulfillment; the chivalrous feelings, the desire to protect and cherish,
the passion for beauty of the man lead to some girl as their goal. There
are few for whom the glow and ardor of their young love bring no
refinement of their passion; there are few who have not felt a pulsating
unity with all that love and live, at least for some ecstatic moments.
Something of what James has so beautifully designated as the "aura of
infinity that hangs over a young girl" also lingers over the love of men
and women.

All the cynics and epigram makers in the world agree that love ends with
marriage, and this not only in modern times but even back into those
days of the French Court of Love, when Margaret de Valois decided that
the lover had more claims than the husband. Romance dies with marriage
is