The Physiology of Marriage, part 3 | Page 2

and all that is worth living for in society, is to
become a nonentity.
These axioms relate to the contest alone. As for the catastrophe, others
will be needed for that.

We have called this crisis /Civil War/ for two reasons; never was a war
more really intestine and at the same time so polite as this war. But in
what point and in what manner does this fatal war break out? You do
not believe that your wife will call out regiments and sound the trumpet,
do you? She will, perhaps, have a commanding officer, but that is all.
And this feeble army corps will be sufficient to destroy the peace of
your establishment.
"You forbid me to see the people that I like!" is an exordium which has
served for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the ideas
that are concomitant, is oftenest employed by vain and artificial
women.
The most usual manifesto is that which is proclaimed in the conjugal
bed, the principal theatre of war. This subject will be treated in detail in
the Meditation entitled: /Of Various Weapons/, in the paragraph, /Of
Modesty in its Connection with Marriage/.
Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the
spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the
benefit of a secret divorce.
But most of them owe their independence to the execution of a plan,
whose effect upon the majority of husbands is unfailing and whose
perfidies we will now reveal.
One of the greatest of human errors springs from the belief that our
honor and our reputation are founded upon our actions, or result from
the approbation which the general conscience bestows upon on conduct.
A man who lives in the world is born to be a slave to public opinion.

Now a private man in France has less opportunity of influencing the
world than his wife, although he has ample occasion for ridiculing it.
Women possess to a marvelous degree the art of giving color by
specious arguments to the recriminations in which they indulge. They
never set up any defence, excepting when they are in the wrong, and in
this proceeding they are pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose
arguments by precedents, proofs by assertions, and thus they very often
obtain victory in minor matters of detail. They see and know with
admirable penetration, when one of them presents to another a weapon
which she herself is forbidden to whet. It is thus that they sometimes
lose a husband without intending it. They apply the match and long
afterwards are terror-stricken at the conflagration.
As a general thing, all women league themselves against a married man
who is accused of tyranny; for a secret tie unites them all, as it unites
all priests of the same religion. They hate each other, yet shield each
other. You can never gain over more than one of them; and yet this act
of seduction would be a triumph for your wife.
You are, therefore, outlawed from the feminine kingdom. You see
ironical smiles on every lip, you meet an epigram in every answer.
These clever creatures force their daggers and amuse themselves by
sculpturing the handle before dealing you a graceful blow.
The treacherous art of reservation, the tricks of silence, the malice of
suppositions, the pretended good nature of an inquiry, all these arts are
employed against you. A man who undertakes to subjugate his wife is
an example too dangerous to escape destruction from them, for will not
his conduct call up against them the satire of every husband? Moreover,
all of them will attack you, either by bitter witticisms, or by serious
arguments, or by the hackneyed maxims of gallantry. A swarm of
celibates will support all their sallies and you will be assailed and
persecuted as an original, a tyrant, a bad bed-fellow, an eccentric man,
a man not to be trusted.
Your wife will defend you like the bear in the fable of La Fontaine; she
will throw paving stones at your head to drive away the flies that alight
on it. She will tell you in the evening all the things that have been said
about you, and will ask an explanation of acts which you never
committed, and of words which you never said. She professes to have
justified you for faults of which you are innocent; she has boasted of a

liberty which she does not possess, in order to clear you of the wrong
which you have done in denying that liberty. The deafening rattle
which your wife shakes will follow you everywhere with its obtrusive
din. Your darling will stun you, will torture you, meanwhile arming
herself by making you feel only the thorns of married life. She will