What Is Due To A Wife

1874

One of the very best wives and mothers I have ever known once said to me that whenever her daughters should be married she should stipulate in their behalf with their husbands for a regular sum of money to be paid them, at certain intervals, for their personal expenditures. Whether this sum was to be larger or smaller was a matter of secondary importance — that must depend on the income and style of living — but the essential thing was that it should come to the wife regularly, so that she should no more have to make a special request for it than her husband would have to ask her for his dinner. This lady's own husband was, as I happen to know, of a most generous disposition, was devotedly attached to her, and denied her nothing.

She herself was a most accurate and careful manager. There was everything in the household to make the financial arrangements flow smoothly. Yet she said to me: "I suppose no man can possibly understand how a sensitive woman shrinks from asking for money. I can prevent it, my daughters shall never have to ask it. If they do their duties as wives and mothers, they have a right to their share of the joint income, within reasonable limits; for, certainly, no money could buy the service they render. Moreover, they have a right to a share in determining what those reasonable limits are."

And I fancy that those who feel it most are often the most conscientious and high-minded women. It is unreasonable to say of such persons, "Too sensitive!" "Too fastidious!" For this very quality of finer sensitiveness which men affect to prize in woman, and wish to protect it at all hazards. The very fact that a husband is generous; the very fact that his income is limited; these may bring in conscience and gratitude to increase the retaining influence of pride, and make the wife less willing to ask money of such a husband than if he were a rich man or a mean one. The only dignified position in which a man can place his wife is to treat her at least as well as he would treat a housekeeper, and give her the comfort of and perfectly clear and definite arrangement as to money matters. She will not then be under the necessity of nerving herself to solicit from him as a favor what she really needs and has a right to spend. Nor will she be torturing herself, on the other side, with the secret fear lest she has asked too much and more than they can really spare. She will, in short, be in the position of a woman and a wife, not of a child or toy.

I have carefully avoided using the word "allowance" in what I have said, because that word seems to imply the untrue and mean assumption that the money is all the husband's, to give or withhold as he will. Yet I have heard this sort of talk from men who were living on a wife's property, or a wife's earnings; from men such as keepers of boarding-houses, who worked a little while their wives worked hard, and from men such as farmers, who worked hard and their wives work harder. Even in case where the wife has no direct part in the money-making, the indirect part she performs, if she takes faithful charge of her household, is so essential, so beyond all compensation in money, that it is an utter shame and impertinence in the husband when he speaks "giving" money to his wife as if were an act of favor. It is no more an act of favor than when the business manager of a firm pays out money to the unseen partner who directs the indoor business or runs the machinery. Be the joint income more or less, the wife has a claim to her honorable share, and that, as a matter of right, without the daily ignominy of sending in a petition for it.