Poverty and its Psychical Results : Part 2

The Nervous Housewife
by Abraham Myerson, M.D.

(Page 7 of 14)

One of the fundamental strivings of the human being is the enlargement of the self-feeling, which fundamentally is the wish to be superior, to have the admiration and homage of others. All daydreaming builds this air castle; all ambition has this as its goal. No matter how we disguise it to ourselves and others, the main ends of purpose are power and place. True, we may wish for power and place so as to help others; we may wish them as the result of constructive work and achievement, but the enlargement of self-feeling is the end result of the striving.

To be poor is to be inferior in feeling and applies equally to men and women. Man is a competitive-social animal and competes in everything, from the cleverness and beauty of his children to the excellence of his taste in hats. Money has the advantage of being the symbol of value, of being concrete and definite, and of having the inestimable property of purchasing power.

Now woman is as competitive as her mate. A housewife vies with her neighboring housewives in her clothes, her good looks, her youth, her husband, her children, her home, her housekeeping, her money, - vies with her in folly as well as in wisdom. How much of the extravagance of women (and here is a difficulty to be dealt with later) arises from rivalry only the tongues of women could tell, but it is safe to say that the greater part of it has this origin.

Jealousy and envy are harsh words, yet they stand for traits having a great psychological value. Part of the impetus for effort rises from these feelings, and an incredibly large part. Many a man who bends unremitting in his effort has in mind some man of whose success he is envious, or whose efforts he watches with a jealousy hidden almost from himself.

Upon women these feelings play with devastating force. One may be satisfied with what he has until some one else he knows gets more; that is to say, the causes of most of the dissatisfaction and discontent of the world are envy and jealousy. In many cases it may be a righteous sort of jealousy or envy. A woman, especially because she is a rival of her fellow-woman mainly in small things, becomes acutely miserable when she is outstripped by her neighbor and especially if she is passed by her relatives and intimate friends.

Poverty is especially hard on those intensely ambitious for their children. "They must have the education I did not have; they must have a good time in life which I never had; I don't want them to be poor all their lives like we are." Here is the woman who works herself to the bone, yet is content and well save for her fatigue, if her children respond to her efforts by success in study and by ambitious efforts of their own. But if the struggling mother is so unfortunate as to have drawn in Nature's lottery an unappreciative or a weak-minded child, then the breakdown is tragic.

A poor man is much more apt to be philosophical about poverty for his children than his wife is. He is willing to do what he can for them, but he is more apt to realize what mother love is blind to, - that the average child is unappreciative of the parents' efforts and takes them for granted. The man is more apt to think and say, "Let them stand on their own feet and make their own way; it will do them good." The mother usually longs to spare her children struggle, the father rarely shares this desire except in a mild way.

It may be that there was a time when classes were more fixed, that poverty had less of humiliation and blocked desire than it has at present. That society of all grades is restless with the desire for luxury seems without doubt. How profoundly the psychology of the masses is being altered by education, by the newspaper, the magazine, the movie, the automobile, the fashion changes that make a dress obsolete in a season and above all the department store and the alluring advertisement, no one can hope to even estimate. Modern capitalism reaps great wealth by developing the luxurious, the spendthrift tastes of the poor. It would be a peculiar poetic justice that will make that development into the basis of revolution.

The women of the poor are perhaps even more restless than the men. In fact, it is the women that set the pace in these matters. This is because to woman has fallen the spending of the family funds, a fact of great importance in bringing about discord in the house. As the shopper the poor woman now sees the beautiful things that her ancestors knew nothing of, since there were no department stores in those days. To-day desires are awakened that cannot be fulfilled; she sees other women buying what she can only long for, and an active discontent with her lot appears.

Unphilosophical this, and severely to be deprecated as unworthy of woman. This has been done so often and so effectively(?) by divines, reformers, press, that a mere physician begs leave to remark that it is a natural sequence of the publicity luxury to-day has. The most successful commercial minds of America are in a conspiracy against the poor Housewife to make her discontented with her lot by increasing her desires; they are on the job day and night and invade every corner of her world; well, they have succeeded. The divines, etc., who thunder against luxury have no word to say against the department store and the advertising manager.

Boston
Little, Brown, And Company
1920