"What else should she want?" he inquires in genuine amazement. "I love her, I am kind to her, I provide a good home for her--she has her children and she has me--what else should she want?"
What else does he want? He has her--the home and the children--does that suffice him? He wants also the human world to move freely in, to act fully in, to live widely in, and _so does she_.
And because she cannot have it, because he stands there in its stead, she demands of him the satisfaction of all these thwarted human instincts. She does not know what ails her. She thinks he does not love her enough; that if he only loved her enough, stayed with her enough, she would be satisfied. No man can sit down and love a woman eighteen hours a day, not actively. He does love her, all the time, in a perfectly reasonable way, but he has something else to do.
He loves her for good and all; it is in the bank, to draw on for the rest of life, a steady, unfailing supply; but she wants to see it and hear it and feel it all the time, like the miser of old who "made a bath of his gold and rolled in it."
The most glaring type of this unfortunate state of mind in recent fiction is that of the morbid Marna in the "Confessions of a Wife"--a vivid expression of what it is to be a highly-concentrated, double-distilled wife--_and nothing else_! No shadow of interest had she in life except this man; no duty, no pleasure, no use, no ambition, no religion, no business--nothing whatever but one embodied demand for her Man. He was indeed all the world to her--and he didn't like it.
If the woman was fully developed on the human side she would cease to be overdeveloped on the feminine side. If she had her fair share of world-life she would expect of her husband that he be a satisfactory man, but not that he be a satisfactory world, which is quite beyond him. Cannot men see how deeply benefited they would be by this change, this growth of woman? She would still be woman, beautiful, faithful, loving; but she would not be so greedy, either for money or for love.
The lady of the house may be most softly beautiful, she may be utterly devoted, she may be unutterably appealing; but all her centuries of cherished existence have but brought us to _Punch's_ "Advice to Those About to Marry": "Don't!"