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As the title, and the Shakespearean quotation on the title page ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments etc") suggest, in this book, published in 1873, Emma Jane Worboise is writing about the relationships between couples within marriage. The narrative follows the fortunes of four married couples, among whom those who marry for money, or position, or with a self-centred attitude, stand little chance of happiness compared to those who marry for love, on little money, but with abundant faith in the Lord and a willingness to work hard. The interwoven stories of such disparate characters and relationships makes Husbands and wives a surprisingly gripping novel.
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The characters may seem stereotypical, and the situations they find themselves in over-dramatic to the modern reader, but it is hard not to feel sympathy for Theodora and Bernard, for example, and although Richard may seem ridiculous, with his pathological hatred of deceit of any sort, Eleanor's late-awakening love for him doesn't strike us as too unlikely. It must be a hard-hearted reader who doesn't rejoice at the ingenious solving of their marital problems!
Before fading quietly away, from
"...one of those strange cases of rapid, painless decay, which ever and anon baffle all medical science, and render unavailing the tenderest, most unceasing care and devotion that fondest affection can bestow", one of the wives has good advice for the reader: "When I write a book--and I do think of writing a plain, practical, useful book about husbands and wives, as soon as I get up my strength and spirits again--I shall advise all young, impassioned, enthusiastic women not to weary their husbands, and not to make ideals, which must always disappoint and cause sorrow in the end."
Nor is she the only one to offer advice: Margaret, who married for love, and little money, is very ready with helpful hints to her friends:
"there are many ways, it seems to me, in which a woman can work in her own home; I shall have to make the best of everything, to plan and to contrive; also, I shall have to take great care of my husband, seeing that he wants for nothing that I can give him. A man who is hard at work all day needs attention to his creature comforts, which ought to be well considered and secured; he requires the very best his means will permit, and it is the wife's place and pleasure too, I should think, to make the very best of those means, especially on his behalf."
Although one isn't necessarily aware of it while reading, a large proportion of the action in the book takes place indoors, often in carefully described rooms. The overall effect is claustrophobic (with the exception of the central, pivotal section at Bayscliff, where the sea, the river, picnics and thunderstorms jostle for position as symbols), and the reader may feel some sympathy for these wives, whose arena was expected to be purely domestic. They may also feel slightly uneasy or impatient with the "religious bits" of the story: but Emma Jane Worboise has a lighter touch with this than many of her contemporaries, and her God is a loving and forgiving one, not the sterner, demanding taskmaster of other novelists.
And the moral of the story?
"Still it is good that every woman should have her own husband and her own home. Married life, in spite of all its cares and crosses, is by far the happiest and most blessed state for women."
Page created 18 November 2002 and last
updated 18 November 2002
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