In other marriages the differences of education and conceptions, that were overlooked in the beginning while passion was still strong, become more and more noticeable with the advancing years. But as sexual passion decreases, it ought to be replaced by mental conformity. Quite disregarding the fact whether or not a man recognizes that he has social and civic duties, and whether or not he fulfills these duties, his business or profession alone suffices to keep him in constant touch with the outside world, and to create an intellectual atmosphere about him that broadens his views. Contrary to the woman, he is usually in a state of intellectual moulting; but domestic activities require the woman’s time and attention from morning till night, and being deprived of opportunity for mental development, she is apt to become dull and mentally stunted.
This domestic misery in which the majority of wives in present day society are obliged to live, has been truly pictured by Gerhard v. Amyntor in his book on “A Commentary to the Book of Life.” In the chapter on “Fatal Stings” he says: “It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared,--a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope,--it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring cares. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy cheeks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook to-day,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.--To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy.” That is the only consolation that bourgeois society is able to offer those women who slowly perish as a result of the present order!