for. He is the wretched
buffer through which the impetuous forces of his wife impinge upon his
neighbors. That is to say, he leads an uneasy life between two ever
colliding bodies, being equally misunderstood and equally reviled by
either.

This is the evil result of a state of things in which natural
distinctions and conventional distinctions are a very long way from
coinciding. The theory is that women are peaceful domestic beings, with
no object beyond household cares, no wish nor will outside the objects
of the man and his children, no active opinion or concern in the larger
affairs of the State. Every man, on the other hand, is supposed to have
views and principles about public topics, and to be anxious to make more
or less of a figure in the enforcement of his views, to exercise in some
shape an influence among his fellows, and to win renown of one sort or
another. Of course if this division of the male and female natures
covered the whole ground, society would be in a very well-balanced
state, and things would go on very smoothly in consequence of the
perfect equilibrium established by the exceeding contentedness of women
and the constant activity and ambition of men.

But a very small observation of life is quite enough to disclose how ill
the facts correspond with the accepted hypothesis about them. We are
constantly being told of some aspiring man that he is, in truth, no more
than the representative of an aspiring wife. He would fain live his life
in dignified or undignified serenity, and cares not a jot for a seat in
the House of Commons, or for being made a bishop, or for any of those
other objects which allure men out of a tranquil and independent
existence. But he has a wife who does care for these things. She cannot
be a member of Parliament or a bishop in her own person, but it is
something to be the wife of somebody who can be these things.

A part of the glory of the man is reflected upon the head of the woman.
She receives her reward in a second-hand way, but still it is glory of
its own sort. She becomes a leading lady in a provincial town, and
during the season in town she is asked out to houses which she is very
eager to get into, and of which she can talk with easily assumed
familiarity when she returns to the provinces again. She is presented at
Court too, and this makes her descend to the provincial plain with an
aroma of Celestial dignity like that of Venus when she descended from
Olympus.