The Plain Man and His Wife

The Plain Man and His Wife, by
Arnold Bennett

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Title: The Plain Man and His Wife
Author: Arnold Bennett
Release Date: September 13, 2004 [EBook #13449]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE
By ARNOLD BENNETT

AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ADAM," "THE OLD WIVES' TALE,"
"BURIED ALIVE," ETC.
NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. All Means and No End ......... 9
II. The Taste for Pleasure ....... 33
III. The Risks of Life ............ 60
IV. In Her Place ................. 87

THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE

I - ALL MEANS AND NO END

I
The plain man on a plain day wakes up, slowly or quickly according to
his temperament, and greets the day in a mental posture which might be
thus expressed in words:
"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!"
If you ask me whom I mean by the plain man, my reply is that I mean
almost every man. I mean you. I certainly mean me. I mean the rich and
the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, the idle and the diligent,
the luxurious and the austere. For, what with the limits of digestion, the

practical impossibility of wearing two neckties at once, the insecurity
of investments, the responsibilities of wealth and of success, the
exhaustingness of the search for pleasure, and the cheapness of
travel--the real differences between one sort of plain man and another
are slight in these times. (And indeed they always were slight.)
The plain man has a lot to do before he may have his breakfast--and he
must do it. The tyrannic routine begins instantly he is out of bed. To
lave limbs, to shave the jaw, to select clothes and assume them--these
things are naught. He must exercise his muscles--all his muscles
equally and scientifically--with the aid of a text-book and of diagrams
on a large card; which card he often hides if he is expecting visitors in
his chamber, for he will not always confess to these exercises; he would
have you believe that he alone, in a world of simpletons, is above the
faddism of the hour; he is as ashamed of these exercises as of a good
resolution, and when his wife happens to burst in on them he will
pretend to be doing some common act, such as walking across the room
or examining a mole in the small of his back. And yet he will not
abandon them. They have an empire over him. To drop them would be
to be craven, inefficient. The text-book asserts that they will form one
of the pleasantest parts of the day, and that he will learn to look forward
to them. He soon learns to look forward to them, but not with glee. He
is relieved and proud when they are over for the day.
He would enjoy his breakfast, thanks to the strenuous imitation of
diagrams, were it not that, in addition to being generally in a hurry, he
is preoccupied. He is preoccupied by the sense of doom, by the sense
that he has set out on the appointed path and dare not stray from it. The
train or the tram-car or the automobile (same thing) is waiting for him,
irrevocable, undeniable, inevitable. He wrenches himself away. He
goes forth to his fate, as to the dentist. And just as he would enjoy his
breakfast in the home, so he would enjoy his newspaper and cigarette in
the vehicle, were it not for that ever-present sense of doom. The idea of
business grips him. It matters not what the business is. Business is
everything, and everything is business. He reaches his office--whatever
his office is. He is in his office. He must plunge--he plunges. The day
has genuinely begun now. The appointed path stretches straight in front

of him, for five, six, seven, eight hours.
Oh! but he chose his vocation. He likes it. It satisfies his instincts. It is
his life. (So you say.) Well, does he like it? Does it satisfy his instincts?
Is it his life? If truly the answer is affirmative, he is at any rate not
conscious of the fact. He is aware of no ecstasy. What