The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married Life — John Shaqi
The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married LifeGibbs, Philip
Science
The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married Life
Gibbs, Philip
Domestic fiction; Married people -- Fiction
If none of these “accidents” happen, if some great influence like this
does not thrust its way into the lives of this husband and wife during
the crisis of the Eighth Year, if the woman is not caught up by some
great enthusiasm, or if she can find no work for the idle hands to do,
giving her new and absorbing interests to satisfy her heart and brain,
then the Eighth Year is a fatal year, and the President of the Divorce
Court has a new case added to his list, or the family records of the
country chronicle another separation, or another woman goes to prison
for arson or bomb-throwing. Because the laws of psychology are not so
erratic as the world imagines. They work out on definite lines. Certain
psychological forces having been set in motion, they lead inevitably to
certain results. When once a woman has lost her interest in her home and
husband, when she has become bored with herself, when she has a morbid
craving for excitement and adventures, when she has become peevish and
listless and hungry-hearted, she cannot remain in this condition. Those
forces within her are tremendously powerful. They must find some outlet.
They must reach a definite time of crisis when things have got to
happen. These vague yearnings must be satisfied, somehow, anyhow. The
emptiness of her heart must be filled by something or other. She will
search round with wondering, wistful eyes, more desperate day by day,
until she finds the thing, however evil it may be, however dangerous.
She must still that throbbing brain of hers, even if she has to take
drugs to do so. In spite of all the poison laws, she will find some kind
of poison, some subtle and insidious drug to give her temporary cure, a
period of vitality, a thrill of excitement, a glittering dream or two,
a relief from the dulness which is pressing down upon her with leaden
weights. She knows the penalty which follows this drug-taking--the awful
reaction, the deadly lethargy that follows, the nervous crises, the loss
of will-power, but she is prepared to pay the price because for a little
while she gets peace, and artificial life. The family doctors know the
prevalence of those drug-taking habits. They know the cause of them,
they have watched the pitiful drama of these women’s lives. But they
can do nothing to cut out the cause. Not even the surgeon’s knife can do
that; their warnings fall on deaf ears, or are answered by a hysterical
laugh.
As I have shown, there are other forms of drug-taking not less dangerous
in their moral effects. If the woman does not go to the chemist’s shop,
she goes to the darkened room of the clairvoyant and the crystal-gazer,
or to the spiritualistic séance, or to the man who hides his time until
the crisis of the Eighth Year delivers the woman into his hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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