The Nervous Housewife

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The Nervous Housewife

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Title: The Nervous Housewife
Author: Abraham Myerson
Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14196]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE NERVOUS HOUSEWIFE

BY
ABRAHAM MYERSON, M.D.

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920

Published November, 1920
Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J.S. Cushing Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTRODUCTORY 1 II THE NATURE OF "NERVOUSNESS" 17
III TYPES OF HOUSEWIFE PREDISPOSED TO NERVOUSNESS
46 IV THE HOUSEWORK AND THE HOME AS FACTORS IN THE
NEUROSIS 74 V REACTION TO THE DISAGREEABLE 91 VI
POVERTY AND ITS PSYCHICAL RESULTS 116 VII THE
HOUSEWIFE AND HER HUSBAND 126 VIII THE HOUSEWIFE
AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS 141 IX THE SYMPTOMS
AS WEAPONS AGAINST THE HUSBAND 160 X HISTORIES OF
SOME SEVERE CASES 168 XI OTHER TYPICAL CASES 199 XII
TREATMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL CASES 231 XIII THE
FUTURE OF WOMAN, THE HOME, AND MARRIAGE 244 INDEX
269

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
How old is the problem of the Nervous Housewife?
Did the semi-mythical Cave Man (who is perhaps only a
pseudo-scientific creation) on his return from a prehistoric hunt find his
leafy spouse all in tears over her staglocythic house-cleaning, or the
conduct of the youngest cave child? Did she complain of her back, did
she have a headache every time they disagreed, did she fuss and fret
until he lost his patience and dashed madly out to the Cave Man's
Refuge?
We cannot tell; we only know that all humor aside, and without
reference to the past, the Nervous Housewife is surely a phenomenon
of the present-day American home. In greater or less degree she is in
every man's home; nor is she alone the rich Housewife with too little to
do, for though riches do not protect, poverty predisposes, and the poor
Housewife is far more frequently the victim of this disease of
occupation. Every practicing physician, every hospital clinic, finds her
a problem, evoking pity, concern, exasperation, and despair. She goes
from specialist to specialist,--orthopedic surgeon, gynecologist, X-ray
man, neurologist. By the time she has completed a course of treatment
she has tasted all the drugs in the pharmacopeia, wears plates on her
feet, spectacles on her nose, has had her teeth tinkered with, and her
insides straightened; has had a course in hydrotherapeutics,
electrotherapeutics, osteopathy, and Christian Science!
Such is an extreme case; the minor cases pass through life burdened
with pains and aches of the body and soul. And one of the commonest
and saddest of transformations is the change of the gay, laughing young
girl, radiant with love and all aglow at the thought of union with her
man, into the housewife of a decade,--complaining, fatigued, and
disillusioned. Bound to her husband by the ties the years and the
children have brought, there is a wall of misunderstanding between
them.

"Men don't understand," cries she. "Women are unreasonable," says he.
What are the causes of the change? Did the housewife of a past
generation go through the same stage? Ask any man you meet and he
will tell you his mother is or was more enduring than his wife. "She
bore three times as many children; she did all her own housework; she
baked more, cooked more, sewed more; she got up at five o'clock in the
morning and went to bed at ten at night; she never went out, never had
a vacation, did not know the meaning of manicure, pedicure, coiffure.
She was contented, never extravagant, and rarely sick."
So the average man will say, and then: "Those were the good old days
of simple living, gone like the dodo!" To-day,--well, it reminds me of a
joke I heard. One man meets another and says: 'By the way, I heard that
your wife was the champion athlete at college.' 'Ah, yes,' said the
husband; 'now she is too weak to wash the dishes.'
Is the average man's impression the correct one? Or are we dealing with
the incorrigible disposition of man to glorify the past? To the majority
of people their youth was an era of stronger, braver men, more
wholesome, beautiful women. People were better, times were more
natural, and there is a grim satisfaction in predicting that the "world is