Women of the Upper Class

3. Wife

Wife 3 "He expects me to make a nice home to come to, to be a cheery companion, to be ready to go on vacations when he wants to. He expects me to go along with what he wants to do." "My husband has never helped around the house or done anything for the children. If I were starting life over he certainly would." "He wanted to move to the country, and I didn't so we moved to the country." "My husband never asks me what I think. He just tells me how its going to be." They could be traditional wives anywhere. They could be sitting in working class bungalows, cramped city apartments, or suburban 37 Copyrighted Material tract houses. But they aren't. The first woman, Mrs. Smythe, is described in Chapter 1. She arrived late for our interview, coming from a luncheon for the Friends of the Metropolitan Opera Association held at a nearby estate. Her uniformed maid ushered me to a sunroom to await her arrival. Mrs. Smythe's family is old enough and wealthy enough to have the library of an established local university named after them. The next woman (who complained that her husband never helped around the house) is Mrs. Holt. A well-known and influential woman in the community, she is respected for her service on the boards of many of the city's health and educational institutions. Since she recently lost her full-time help, she rises at six each morning to make her husband's breakfast. She thinks that he could "help" by making his own breakfast. Our interview took place in the living room ofher urban apartment, which occupies the entire floor of a building-a building whose extensive security system I had penetrated only because my appointment was known to the gatekeeper . Mrs. Carpenter (the woman who had recently moved to the country) spoke with me in the plush blue and gold surroundings of her intown woman's club. The club's membership is invitational and limited to the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, She is the retiring president of the club, Mrs. Cooper, (the woman whose husband never asked her what she thought) was speaking specifically about decisions having to do with the company of which he is the president. The company is owned by her family, not his, and carries her family name-a name known to virtually every family in America. In the previous chapter, much of what these women described as the meaning of upper class focused on the basic differences of their lives and the lives of other people. But as they talked about themselves as wives, their descriptions were strikingly similar to those of women in other classes. How do they see their 38 Wife Copyrighted Material responsibilities as wives? What are their expectations of themselves in that role? Expectations The upper class women I spoke with centered their lives around their husbands and their husbands' work and adapted themselves to the men's needs, performing what Jessie Bernard has called the "stroking" function. The stroking function, according to Bernard, consists of showing solidarity, giving help, rewarding, agreeing, understanding and passively accepting. Mrs. Haines, for example, a young wife who mentioned as an aside toward the end of the interview that her husband was regularly out of town from Monday through Friday on business, remarked: "You have to be your husband's biggest booster. You have to make him feel good. He does not appreciate it if he comes home and I'm exhausted. I've got to be ready to find out what his week was like. He comes first, and I have to bend my life to fit his." Mrs. Lane is an extremely protective wife in her fifties. Her husband heads one ofthe city's oldest and most prestigious shipping firms: "He's the brain in the family and it's my role to see that he's at his best. I've subjugated everything to that. When he comes home in the evening, this house must be perfectly quiet. I've told everyone the phone must not ring after five o'clock. He wants me to be pleasant, pretty and relaxed. I can't dare cry in front of him or show any emotion. I never bring a problem to him, except during forty-five minutes set aside on Sunday mornings for that...