The Marriage Book (47 page)

You see, my dear child, whither Providence hath brought us. Those considerations which occasioned our marriage are vanished, and that which was accounted as nothing makes all our happiness. . . .

. . . You never saw our prosperity; you were born after we failed in the world. You have made our poverty pleasing to us, and we have shared in it without pain. Never, child, seek for that wealth which we thank Heaven for taking from us; we never tasted happiness until we lost our riches.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

LITTLE WOMEN
, 1868

With four daughters and an absent husband, Marmee March is the moral center of family life in the small-town New England house where
Little Women
is set. The novel’s author, Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), based much of the bestselling book on her own childhood experiences. The idea expressed here by Marmee to her daughters—that love and virtue should outshine money and position—was one of the central themes of the book.

To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman; and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. It is natural to think of it, Meg; right to hope and wait for it, and wise to prepare for it; so that, when the happy time comes, you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy. My dear girls, I
am
ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world—marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing—and, when well used, a noble thing—but I never want you to think it was the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE
, 1882

When Elizabeth Cady (1815–1902) married Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840, she persuaded their minister, Hugh Maire, to omit one traditional word from their vows. In her autobiography, she would recall: “I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation.” She had learned early, from working in her father’s congressional office, about the unequal rights of women under the law, and her lifelong pursuit of women’s equality led to the very front lines of the suffrage movement and the first wave of feminism in the United States.

In Ashfield, Mass., . . . a married woman was severely injured by a defective sidewalk. Her husband sued the corporation and recovered $13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to him
bona fide;
and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him say, every time:

“What have you done, my dear, with the twenty-five cents I gave you yesterday?”

Isn’t such a position, I ask you, humiliating enough to be called “servitude”?

ANNIE SWAN

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE AND THE GENTLE ART OF HOME-MAKING
, 1894

Whether using her given name or the pen names David Lyall or Mrs. Burnett-Smith, the Scottish writer Annie Shepherd Swan (1859–1943) published some two hundred novels and short stories, as well as contributing frequently to England’s increasingly popular women’s magazines. Swan was also a poet, journalist, advice-book author, and lecturer. She married James Burnett Smith in 1883 and, ironically, in light of the following passage, supported him financially in his quest to become a doctor.

There is a type of husband—unfortunately rather common—who begrudges his wife, whatever her character and disposition, every penny she spends, even though it is spent primarily for his own comfort, and who has never in his life cheerfully opened out to her his purse, whatever he may have done with the thing he calls his heart. This is a very serious matter, and one which
presses heavily on the hearts of many wives. It is hard for a young girl, who may in her father’s house have had pocket money always to supply her simple needs, to find herself after marriage practically penniless—having to ask for every penny she requires, and often to explain minutely how and where it is to be spent. I have known a man who required an absolute account of every halfpenny spent by his wife, and who took from her change of the shilling he had given her for a cab fare. We must pray, for the credit of the sex, that there are few so lost to all gentlemanly feeling, to speak of nothing else; but it is certain that, through thoughtlessness as much as stinginess often, many sensitive women suffer keenly from this form of humiliation. It ought not to be. If a woman is worthy to be trusted with a man’s honour, which is supposed to be more valuable to him than his gold, let her likewise be trusted with a little of the latter, without having to crave it and answer for it as a servant sent on an errand counts out the copper change to her master on her return. There are many little harmless trifles a woman wants, many small kindnesses she would do on the impulse of the moment, had she money in her purse; and though she may sometimes not be altogether wise, she is blessed in the doing, and nobody is the poorer. However small a man’s income, there are surely a few odd shillings the wife might have for her very own, if only to gratify her harmless little whims, and to make her feel that she sometimes has a penny to spare.

CARL REINER, R. S. ALLEN, HARVEY BULLOCK

“BANK BOOK 6565696,”
THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
, 1962

Graduating from his on- and offstage roles as contributor to the Sid Caesar shows, Carl Reiner (1922–) went on to co-write and direct
The Dick Van Dyke Show
, a beloved staple of 1960s sitcoms that ran for five seasons. Rob Petrie, played by Dick Van Dyke, is happily married to Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) and can’t fathom why she’s felt the need to keep a separate and secret bank account.

This episode appeared in the series’ second season, the only show written by Harvey Bullock (1921–2006) and R. S. Allen (1924–1981), collaborators on a number of other TV series, including
The Flintstones
.

ELIZABETH HARDWICK

“AMATEURS: JANE CARLYLE,” 1972

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) wrote short stories and novels but was best known as a critic and essayist. Liberal and emphatic, she was one of the founders of the
New York Review of Books
, where many of her works appeared. The following comes from an article she wrote about the Carlyles (see
Math
).

Hardwick was married to the poet Robert Lowell for more than two decades, until their divorce in 1970. In her
New York Times
obituary, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt described the marriage, with Lowell’s many adulterous and manic-depressive episodes, as “restless and emotionally harrowing.” Harriet Ashburton was a friend and flatterer of Thomas Carlyle.

When Jane Carlyle was cleaning and sweeping and keeping the accounts within discreet limits she certainly did not set a price upon her actions. But, of course, there was a hidden price. It was that in exchange for her work, her dedication, her special, if somewhat satirical, charms, Carlyle would, as an instance, not go out to Lady Ashburton when she would rather he stayed at home. This is the unspoken contract of a wife and her works. In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin—consideration for their feelings. And it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged.

RALPH GARDNER JR.

“ALPHA WOMEN, BETA MEN,”
NEW YORK
MAGAZINE, 2003

The assumption that husbands were the chief family breadwinners in the United States was no longer a given when Ralph Gardner Jr. (1953–) set out to explore the possible effects of women’s increasing emergence as higher earners. In 2013, the Pew Research Center would report that, based on its analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures, women were the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of households with children under the age of eighteen. Of these, 37 percent, or some five million, were married with higher incomes than their husbands.

In addition to his magazine work, Gardner writes the daily “Urban Gardner” column for the
Wall Street Journal.

Anna, a public-relations executive, saw her relationship with her Web-designer husband collapse as she became more and more successful and he floundered. In the last year of their marriage, she earned $270,000 while he brought in $16,000.

“He never spent money that wasn’t his in an extravagant way,” she says while taking therapeutic sips of a Sea Breeze at Tribeca Grill on a recent evening. “But by not helping, he was freeloading.”

She felt unable to confront him. “We were really dysfunctional,” she admits. “We acted as if we were a two-income family. He was in denial, and I was sort of protecting him. He’d pay for groceries. He was running up credit-card debt to make it appear he had more money.”