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268 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1924
That complacent unquestioned generalisation, 'The mother is the natural home-maker'; what a juggernaut it had been in their case! How poor Eva, drugged by the cries of its devotees, had cast herself down under its grinding wheels-- and had dragged the children under with her. It wasn't because Eva had not tried her best. She had nearly killed herself trying. But she had been like a gifted mathematician set to paint a picture.
He supposed that Harvey Bronson would die of shame if anybody put a gingham apron on him and expected him to peel potatoes. And yet there was nobody who talked louder than he about the sacred dignity of the home which ennobled all the work done for its sake-- that was for Mrs. Harvery Bronson of course!
'Oh Lester, let me do that! The idea of your darning stockings! It's dreadful enough your having to do the housework!'Evangeline Knapp is perfectly suited to be a successful business woman, while as a home-maker she is micro-managing, overbearing and miserable. Her children are crushed to the point of illness by her impatience and resentment, but her friends pity and admire her. Eva’s husband Lester works in an accounting office, where he is miserable, absent-minded, and disliked by his colleagues. He has the potential to be a sympathetic, nurturing parent who brings creative thought to the problems of housework, and lives his mind’s idle moments in poetic reflection. The enforcement of USian gender roles by the community leaves the family in a bind.
'Eva darned them a good many years,' he said, with some warmth, 'and did the housework. Why shouldn't I?' He looked at her hard and went on 'Do you know what you are saying to me...? You are telling me that you really think that home-making is a poor, mean, cheap job beneath the dignity of anybody who can do anything else.'
Mattie shouted indignantly, 'Lester Knapp, how dare you say such a thing! I never dreamed of having such an awful idea... Home-making is the noblest work anybody can do!'
'Why pity me then?' asked Lester with a grin, drawing his needle in and out of the little stocking.
What we ought to realize about marriage is, first of all, that, like every other human relationship, it is a problem that is never completely solved and settled, once and for all, until both parties are dead and buried. And secondly, that it is an intensely personal affair and that nobody on earth can know as much about it as the two people involved. Consequently, advice and pressure from the outside are always given on the basis of insufficient information, and have at least a fifty-fifty chance of being wrong.
A profound depression came upon her. These were the moments in a mother's life about which nobody ever warned you, about which everybody kept a deceitful silence, the fine books and the speakers who had so much to say about the sacredness of maternity. They never told you that there were moments of arid clear sight when you saw helplessly that your children would never measure up to your standard, never would be really close to you, because they were not your kind of human beings, because they were not your children, but merely other human beings for whom you were responsible. How solitary it made you feel!
Eva had passionate love and devotion to give them, but neither patience nor understanding. There was no sacrifice in the world which she would not joyfully make for her children except to live with them.
Lester said to himself, shivering, "What a ghastly thing to have sensitive, helpless human beings absolutely in the power of other human beings! Absolute, unquestioned power! Nobody can stand that. It's cold poison. How many wardens of prisons are driven sadistically mad with it!"
Anybody who knows anything knows how delicate and exacting a matter it is to try to tune in harmony two human beings, almost constitutionally out of tune even with themselves, full of strange complicated weaknesses and unexpected beauties and strength. Add to that the element of children, each of whom brings a full equipment of strange unexplored possiblities, and any fool can see that no outside complications are needed to make the problem a difficult one.
It wasn't because Eva had not tried her best. She had nearly killed herself trying. But she had been like a gifted mathematician set to paint a picture.