Married Life | Page 8

It took only a few months to make the young wife feel that her position
was to be one of great trial. She was of a mild and gentle character,

more inclined to suffer than resist; but her judgment was clear, and she
saw the right or wrong of any act almost instinctively. Love did not
make her blind to every thing in her husband. He had faults and
unpleasant peculiarities, and she saw them plainly, and often desired to
correct them. But one trial of this kind sufficed to keep her silent. He
was offended, and showed his state of mind so plainly, that she
resolved never to stand in that relation to him again.
As time progressed, the passiveness of Amanda encouraged in Lane his
natural love of ruling. His household was his kingdom, and there his
will must be the law. In his mind arose the conceit that, in every thing,
his judgment was superior to that of his wife: even in the smaller
matters of household economy, he let this be seen. His taste, too, was
more correct, and applied itself to guiding and directing her into a
proper state of dressing. He decided about the harmony of colours and
the choice of patterns. She could not buy even a ribbon without there
being some fault found with it, as not possessing the elements of beauty
in just arrangements. In company, you would often hear him say--"Oh,
my wife has no taste. She would dress like a fright if I did not watch
her all the time."
Though outwardly passive or concurrent when such things were said,
Amanda felt them as unjust, and they wounded her more or less
severely, according to the character of the company in which she
happened at the time to be; but her self-satisfied husband saw nothing
of this. And not even when some one, more plainly spoken than others,
would reply to such a remark--"She did not dress like a fright before
you were married," did he perceive his presumption and his errors.
But passiveness under such a relation does not always permanently
remain; it was accompanied from the first by a sense of oppression and
injustice, though love kept the feeling subdued. The desire for ruling in
any position gains strength by activity. The more the young wife
yielded, the more did the husband assume, until at length Amanda felt
that she had no will of her own, so to speak. The con- viction of this,
when it formed itself in her mind, half involuntarily brought with it an
instinctive feeling of resistance. Here was the forming point of
antagonism--the beginning of the state of unhappiness foreshadowed
from the first. Had Amanda asserted her right to think and act for
herself in the early days of her married life, the jar of discord would

have been light. It now promised to be most afflicting in its character.
The first activity of Amanda's newly forming state showed itself in the
doing of certain things to which she was inclined, notwithstanding the
expression of her husband's disapproval. Accustomed to the most
perfect compliance, Mr. Lane was disturbed by this.
"Oh, dear! what a horrid looking thing!" said he one day, as he
discovered a new dress pattern which his wife had just purchased lying
on a chair. "Where in the world did that come from?"
"I bought it this morning," replied Amanda.
"Take it back, or throw it into the fire," was the husband's rude
response.
"I think it neat," said Amanda, smiling.
"Neat? It's awful! But you've no taste. I wish you'd let me buy your
dresses."
The wife made no answer to this. Lane said a good deal more about it,
to all of which Amanda opposed but little. However, her mind was
made up to one thing, and that was to take it to the mantuamaker's. The
next Lane saw of the dress was on his wife.
"Oh, mercy!" he exclaimed, holding up his hand, "I thought you had
burnt it. Why did you have it made up?"
"I like it," quietly answered Mrs. Lane.
"You like any thing."
"I haven't much taste, I know," said Amanda, "but such as it is, it is
pleasant to gratify it sometimes."
Something in the way this remark was made it disturbed the
self-satisfaction which was a leading feature in Mr. Lane's state of mind;
he, however, answered--"I wish you would be governed by me in
matters of this kind; you know my taste is superior to yours. Do take
off that dress, and throw it in the fire."
Amanda did not reply to this, for it excited feelings and produced
thoughts that she had no wish to manifest. But she did not comply with
her husband's wishes. She liked the dress and