Chapter 24 Chapter 16 The Married Person (Part 1)-2

Michaud's poem "The Wedding Night" puts this situation very succinctly: Even if the groom puts his wife to soak overnight in the well, she will feel justified in defending her vague views. "So that's what marriage is all about, no wonder they're so tight-lipped about the real details," she thought.However, although she was annoyed, she didn't say it, and the neighbors knew nothing about it.Today, many young women know better, but their consensual intercourse is still formal and abstract, and physical intercourse with virgins still has the quality of rape.Havelock-Ellis says there are definitely more rapes within marriage than outside of marriage.There are as many as 150 instances of women being injured during sexual intercourse recorded by Niuchbauer.Ellis reports six intellectual women of the middle class who all said their first sexual intercourse in marriage was a shock to them; two of them knew nothing about it; Still physically hurt.Adler also stresses the psychological impact of a virgin's loss of virginity, claiming that the moment can last a lifetime, and that what one clumsy husband does can lead to permanent frigidity.There are many examples of this in the previous chapter.

We have already discussed that the virgin must overcome many inhibitions and obstacles in order to fulfill her sexual destiny: her initiation requires a real labor pain, both physical and psychological.It is stupid and cruel to try to accomplish this kind of activation overnight.It's absurd to make something so sensitive and difficult as first-time intercourse an obligation.Because the strange activity she had to go through was sacred; because society, religion, family, and friends solemnly handed her over to her husband, as if to a master; and because she felt that this act involved her whole future, Marriage is still seen as a decisive, once-and-for-all measure, and women are increasingly terrified.At this moment, she really felt that she had been exposed to the Absolute: this man she swore to be with her for life was the embodiment of all men in her mind; and now he was also a stranger to her, but he was a very important stranger. man, because he was going to be her life partner.The man is also very anxious at this time about the task he is now undertaking; he has his own obstacles, his own complex psychology, which may make him timid, clumsy or rude.Sometimes the solemnity of it all led him to be incapacitated on his wedding night.The psychologist Tweet has spoken of such instances, one of which is quite tragicomic.An angry father-in-law asked for a medical certificate in order to divorce his daughter.

The poor son-in-law insisted that he had been sexually competent before, but he admitted that after marriage he lost it through embarrassment and shame. Too much recklessness can frighten a virgin, and too much refinement can shame her.Women always hate selfish men who seek their own pleasure at the expense of their pain, but also those who seem to despise them (as in some of Stekel's instances already quoted), and often hate those who in the Men who don't want or can't make them lose their virginity overnight.Helen Deutsch speaks of husbands who, for lack of strength or courage, would rather have a doctor pierce a bride's hymen and insist that their hymens are too thick, which is often not the case.In such situations, she said, a woman feels an insurmountable sense of contempt for a man who cannot penetrate her in the normal way.An observation by Fogeld (which Stekel cites) suggests that the trauma of a husband's impotence can haunt a wife.At this time, she often changed a sheet so that the maid could see the stain.The bed sheet was prepared by the husband, who had deliberately sprinkled some red ink on it on his wedding night in order to conceal his impotence, so that the maid would not doubt the truth.

The wedding night turns sexual intercourse into a test, and both parties are so afraid of encountering their own impotence that they are too worried that something will go wrong for them to be generous enough to be considerate of the other.This makes the atmosphere of the occasion forbiddingly dignified, and it is not surprising if women develop a persistent frigidity as a result.The conundrum facing the husband, in Aristotle's words, is that if "he stimulates Miko with excessive profligacy," it may arouse her resentment and anger.American husbands, for example, are overwhelmed by the fear of such consequences, especially when their wives are highly educated and extremely restrained before marriage.

As the Kinsey report puts it, this group of women was too restrained to be able to "engage in intercourse with the full ecstasy that is essential to the successful completion of any sexual relationship."But on the other hand, if a husband treats his wife "seriously," she won't be sexually aroused.This dilemma is caused by the ambiguity of female attitudes: the young woman both desires and rejects sexual pleasure; she wants to restrain, but it is very painful.Unless by luck, the young husband must be either a prodigal or an ass.So it's no surprise that "marital obligations" can often be an annoyance and a nuisance to wives.

In fact, many women become mothers and grandmothers before they have experienced orgasm or even sexual arousal.Sometimes they try to evade this demeaning "obligation" on the grounds of medical orders or other excuses.Kinsey said many wives "reported that they thought they had sex too much and wished their husbands would stop thinking about it so much. There were also very few wives who wished they had more sex."But as we've seen, a woman's sexual capabilities are nearly limitless.This contradiction makes clear that marriage stifles women's sexuality in an effort to normalize it.

The betrothal period seems to have been designed to give the girl a gradual initiation, but custom often compelled both parties to observe strict chastity.Even if a virgin "has had sex" with her fiancé at the time of her engagement, her situation is no different from that of a young married woman. It was only because engagement was almost as unchangeable to her as marriage that she committed herself, and first sexual intercourse was an ordeal for her as well.Once she gave her body (even without pregnancy, which of course was binding), she seldom changed her mind. If the love or lust makes both parties fully willing, the obstacles to the first experience are easily overcome.The pleasure that two lovers give and receive in mutual recognition of the other's freedom gives strength and dignity to carnal passion.At this time, nothing they do is shameful, because it is not forced but done voluntarily and generously.Marriage is largely a pity in so far as it turns into rights and obligations what should have been a mutual relationship based on spontaneous impulse.Because of the instrumental and therefore dehumanizing nature that marriage gives to two bodies, they are destined to be experienced with each other generally as bodies, not as persons.A husband is often disheartened at the thought that he is doing his duty, and a wife is ashamed at the thought of giving herself to someone who exercises power over her.Of course, their relationship may also be characterized from the beginning of the marriage; the trial of sexual life is sometimes slow and gradual; it may also show a pleasant physical attraction on the first night.Marriage helps set women free to indulge, dispels the sinful notion so often associated with the body; regular and frequent intercourse arouses physical intimacy and sexual maturity.Consequently, some wives experience their greatest satisfaction during the first few years of their marriage.It is worth noting that their gratitude to their husbands makes it easy for them to forgive their husbands for possible faults in the future."The wives who can't get out of unhappy marriages are always the ones who get sexual satisfaction from their husbands," says Stekel, although one suspects that they may be unhappy in other ways.Even so, when a girl spends her life planning only to have sex with a man who knows nothing about her sexually, she is too risky, because the fate of her sexual drive will depend on the personality of her sexual partner.

This absurdity is rightly attacked in Leon Bloom's book on marriage. It is sheer hypocrisy to think that a union based on some profit-making purpose will have many chances of inducing love; Meet, it's ridiculous.Advocates of rational marriage, however, have no trouble pointing out that a loving union does not necessarily guarantee marital happiness, either.In the first place, the idealistic love that is so common to a girl does not always lead to erotic love; her platonic adoration, her daydreams, her lust for childish or adolescent obsessions, are not fit to stand the test of everyday life. , nor will it last.Even if there was a strong, sincere sexual attraction between her and her fiancé, it could not be said that a life event had a solid foundation.As Arlette writes in "The Tramp":

The pleasures of the flesh occupy a small blazing place in the vast desert of love, and their radiance is so intense that one sees nothing else.Around this unpredictable campfire, there are dangers and unknowns.When we emerge from a short hug or a long night, we are re-faced with the livelihood issues that we both have to grapple with. And, even if sex existed before marriage or was aroused on the honeymoon, it wouldn't last long into the future.Undoubtedly, loyalty is necessary for sexual love, because the desires produced by two people in love are only related to themselves; they are therefore unwilling to let a third party intervene, and hope that each other is irreplaceable by others.But this fidelity only makes sense if it's spur-of-the-moment, and since it's spur-of-the-moment, the mojo of a sex drive wears off fairly quickly.Incredibly, it transforms each lover, temporarily and physically, into a human being whose existence extends in an infinite transcendence; possession of this human being is certainly impossible, but at least possible in a very special way. A very stimulating form of contact building.However, when the parties no longer want such contact through hostility, disgust, or indifference, the attraction of the sexual drive disappears.It will almost certainly also disappear in an atmosphere of respect and friendliness, for two persons entering into the outer world to carry out their common design, and thus intercourse with each other in a transcendent form, do not need a physical union; and since this union loses its meaning , they may even resent it.

The word "incest" used by Montaigne has a profound meaning.The sexual drive is an action towards the other, which is its main quality.But in the extraordinarily intimate relationship of husband and wife, both are the same; between them no exchange is possible, neither giving nor conquering.So if they continue to make love, it tends to induce a sense of shame: they feel that sex is no longer an experience between two subjects in which both can transcend themselves, but rather a joint masturbation.The fact that they both see each other as a tool they need to get what they want suggests that the husband and wife don't really care if they're polite to each other.Dr. Lagassi's observations, for example, illustrate the point in this way.A jealous wife sees her husband as a pleasure-providing object that belongs to her, and she is stingy with it, like a candied fruit she keeps in a cupboard—if the husband is generous to his neighbors, the wife There was nothing left; she scrutinized his panties to see if he had wasted precious cum.To a husband, he can satisfy his desire in her without asking her opinion.

It must also be said that this savage gratification of demands does not satisfy one's sexual desires, and this is why there is often a sinister aftertaste in what seems to be the most legitimate embrace, when the wife often resorts to fantasies of sexual impulses. .Stekel cites the example of a 25-year-old woman who, while having sex with her husband, was able to achieve a little orgasm if she imagined an older, stronger man was raping her.Therefore, when a wife imagines herself being raped, her husband is not himself, but an Other.The husband has this dream too; what he imagines possessing in his wife is the thighs of some dancer he has seen on stage, the breasts of some pretty girl he has seen in pictorials, a memory, an image .Or he may imagine his wife being desired, possessed, raped as a way of regaining her lost otherness.As Stekel puts it, the fantasy comedy and theatricality that marriage induces between two sexual partners can destroy the line between appearance and reality.And in extreme cases, overt sexual perversions do occur.A husband becomes a spectator: he has to see or hear his wife having sex with a lover in order to regain some of the magic of the past.Or he abuses his wife so much that he provokes her to protest in order to finally understand her consciousness and freedom as a person, to feel that what he wants to possess is indeed a person.In contrast, some wives exhibit masochistic behavior, trying to make their husbands a master, a tyrant, even though he is not such a person.I once knew a pious woman who grew up in a convent, authoritative and domineering by day, but desperate for her husband to whip her at night.He was terrified, but let her get her way.In marriage, even evil itself has an aloof, pre-arranged, cruel side that can indeed make it as bleak as all-or-nothing. The fact is that physical love can be seen neither as an end in itself nor as a mere means to an end.It cannot justify its existence, but it cannot accept a justification from outside either.That is to say, it should play an independent episode in any human life.That is, above all it must be free. So what bourgeois optimism offers to the betrothed girl is certainly not love; the brilliant ideal it sets up for her is the ideal of happiness, that is to say, of the monotonous balance sought in inner and repetitive life. ideal.In certain halcyon times this had been the ideal of the middle classes in general, and of the landowners in particular; their object was not to conquer the future and the world, but to preserve the past peacefully, to maintain the Statusquo [the status quo].A kind of mediocrity without ambition and enthusiasm, a kind of aimless life that repeats itself again and again, a life that is gradually dying without asking its purpose-this is their so-called "happiness".This pseudoscience, vaguely advanced by Epicurus and Zeno, is now discredited: preserving and perpetuating the world intact now seems neither desirable nor possible.The man is mobilized to act, his mission is to produce, fight, create and advance, to transcend to the entire universe and the infinite future.But traditional marriage does not want the woman to transcend with him, it confines her to interiority, confines her to her own circle.She could then only attempt to establish a stable, balanced life in which the present is a continuation of the past, protected from the threat of tomorrow—that is, only a happy life.She will find that love is replaced by a tender and respectful emotion known as conjugal love; she will close her world in the family she is to manage; But no survivor will give up his transcendence, even if he swore to give up it.The bourgeois of the past believed that to maintain the established order, to justify its merits by his own prosperity, was his service to God, to his country, to institutions and civilization: what is called happiness is the fulfillment of his function as a man.Woman, too, must conceive of a purpose beyond the peaceful life of the family, but it is man who will mediate between the wife as an individual and the world, who will give her contingent, incoherent life a human value.In uniting with his wife, he not only acquires strength for cause, action, and struggle, but he also justifies her existence: an existence that has meaning only if it is placed in his charge. This portends a humbling self-denial on her part; but she will be compensated, for under the guidance and protection of male power she will shed the influence of that inherent self-denial; .As a wife, mother and housewife, a woman is the queen in her nest, and she lives a contented life in her world, but she is also brought into the infinite space and time by men, so she has gained both in marriage. Gained vigor and meaning of life.Now let's take a look at how this ideal is realized. The ideal of happiness is always tangible in the dwelling, whether it is a hut or a castle; it symbolizes immutability and separation from the world.The family, built within the dwelling, is a separate cell or a group unit that maintains its own identity despite the coming and going of its offspring.The past is preserved in the form of furniture and portraits of Zu Guang, giving hope for Taiping's future. In the garden, in the growth of vegetables throughout the year, they show their reliable cycle.Every spring, the same flowers are blooming as in previous years, heralding the same summer as in previous years, and the autumn with the same harvest as in any year is coming again: Time or space will not suddenly deviate from the routine, but just run on the designated track.In all civilizations based on landed property there is much literature in praise of the family.In Henry Bordeaux, for example, all the values ​​​​of the middle class are summarized: loyalty to the past.Patience, frugality, foresight, love of family and homeland, etc.The poet who praises the family is often a woman, because a woman's task is to ensure the happiness of the family group; her role, like the domia [hostess] sitting in the nave in Roman times, should be that of "housewife". Today the house has lost its patriarchal splendor, and to most men it is no more than a dwelling, no longer filled with memories of dead ancestors, nor enveloping centuries to come.But a woman still wants the family to have in her "mind" the meaning and value it once had.Steinbeck, in Cannery Row, describes a homeless woman who decides to decorate the disused boiler where she and her husband live with rugs and curtains; curtains, he protests in vain, are useless—"we have no windows at all" . This concern is particularly feminine.A normal man sees the things around him as tools.He arranges them according to their purpose.To him, being "organized" meant that he had his cigarettes, his papers, and his tools at his fingertips, but women tended to think it was disorganized.Among other things, the artists-painters and sculptors-painters and sculptors who are able to recreate the world with their chosen materials are also indifferent to the environment in which they live.Rilke wrote of Rodin: The first time I went to Rodin... I knew that his home meant nothing to him, that it might be a meager necessity, a shelter from the rain and a place to sleep.He paid no attention to it, and it had no effect on his solitude or composure.He had a dark, sheltered, and peaceful home deep within him, and he himself became the sky above it, the woods around it, the mighty stream rushing beyond it. But for a man to find a home within himself, he must first realize himself in work or action.A man is less interested in his surroundings because he can express himself by design.And woman is confined to the realm of marriage, so she is going to turn that prison into a kingdom.Her attitude towards the family is also governed by the same dialectic that explains her general situation: she acquires by becoming prey, she becomes free by giving up herself; she gives up the world in order to conquer it. She's not without regrets about shutting herself up in her new home.When she was a child the whole country had been her home and the forest had been hers.Now she is confined to a small space, nature has been reduced to a place only the size of a potted flower, and the walls on all sides block her sight.But she's working on overcoming those limitations.She placed more or less extravagant antiques in the interior, so that she also has animals and plants in the world, and can also experience exotic sentiment and relive the past era.She has her own husband, who represents human society, and she has her own children, who will conveniently give her the whole future. The home, which becomes the center of the world, even its only reality; the home is "the opposite universe or opposite universe" (Bachelard); Danger provides hiding places; this chaotic outside world becomes unreal.Especially at night, when the doors and windows are closed, the wife feels herself a queen; The light under the shade was her own, illuminating only her dwelling: nothing else existed.Reality is centered in the home, while the outside space seems to recede. Thanks to the velvets, silks, and china at her side, a woman can in some measure satisfy the tactile sensuality of which her sex life can scarcely satisfy.These ornaments can also express her personality; she is someone who likes to choose, make, go out and buy furniture and knick-knacks, and she arranges them according to aesthetic principles, and the emphasis on symmetry is usually an important factor in this principle; they Not only is it a reflection of her personality, but it's a public testament to her standard of living.Her home is thus her earthly destiny, her social worth and the expression of her truest self.Since she has nothing to do, she desperately wants to realize herself through what she possesses. With or without the assistance of servants, women always use housework to affirm that her home is her own, to prove to society that she is above reproach, and to provide herself with efficient and satisfying disposal of material things (sparkling a work, an activity, a clean stove, neat clothes, bright brass, gleaming furniture), but it did not free her from immanence, and hardly confirmed her individuality.This kind of work has a negative basis: sweeping is to remove dust, tidying is to remove mess.Satisfaction of any kind is impossible in a poor family; a hut is a hut, no matter how much a woman sweats, how many tears she sheds, or "nothing in the world can make it pretty." So many women have just this never-ending struggle against dust.And even for the most privileged women, this victory will never be decisive. Few jobs resemble Sisyphus' torments more than the perpetual repetition of domestic chores: clean things become dirty, and dirty things get cleaned again, over and over again, day after day.The housewife consumes herself standing still: she makes no progress, is always just maintaining the status quo.She never feels robbed of positive good, but rather is engaged in an endless struggle with passive evil.A primary school student wrote in her composition: "I never want to live a life of cleaning the room."She thought the future was a constant march toward some unknown apex; but one day, while her mother was washing the dishes, it occurred to her that they would both be bound by this ritual for life.Eating, sleeping, cleaning—the years to come do not ascend to heaven, but creep onwards, gray and uniform.The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, removing lint-balls from under wardrobes—all these moth-proofing measures are also a denial of life; for time is both creating and destroying, and the housewife is only concerned with its negative aspects.Philosophically, her point of view is that of someone who believes in the antithesis of good and evil.The basic point of view of the antithesis of good and evil not only admits that there are two origins, one is good and the other is evil, but also believes that good is obtained by canceling evil rather than by positive actions.In this sense, Christianity hardly belongs to the doctrine of antinomy, although it admits the existence of the devil; for the best way for people to fight the devil is to devote themselves to God, not to directly try to conquer the devil.Any doctrine of transcendence and freedom places the victory over evil at the level of progress towards good.But woman is not called to build a better world; her territory is fixed, so she can only endlessly fight against the evil principles that have crept into it.As she battles dust, smudges, grime and filth, she is fighting sin, she is fighting Satan. But it's a sad fate to be called upon to fight off the enemy non-stop for a moment instead of acting for a positive purpose. The housewife is often in a state of madness bordering on perversion, in sadomasochism when she submits to this fate.The mad housewife wages a violent war against dirt, blaming life itself for the rubbish that all products of life produce.When any living thing steps into her house, her eyes will flash maliciously: "Wipe your feet quickly, don't mess up that place, don't touch it!" Things were better left untouched, and every job meant a thankless effort to her.Severe, preoccupied, always on the alert, she loses [the joy of living] and becomes cautious and greedy.She shaded the sun, because insects, germs, and dust would follow, and the sun would destroy the silk hangings and fade the sofa covers; she sprayed perfume everywhere to fill the room with fragrance.She is complaining, resentful, and hostile to everything that lives: often with murderous intent as a result. Healthy young women are seldom susceptible to so gloomy vices.Such neuroticism and resentment are more suited to frigid and frustrated women, spinsters, cheated wives, and women who lead lonely, empty lives because of brutal, authoritarian husbands. I know an old woman who was jovial and flamboyant when she was young, who got up at 5 o'clock every morning to check her wardrobe.After marrying a man who neglected her, she had only one child and lived a lonely life isolated from the world.She likes to keep the house in order, like someone who is addicted to alcohol.Because of this madness, her home became so neat and tidy that people hardly dared to live in it; the woman was so busy that she forgot her own existence.In fact, there are endless chores that can lead a woman to escape from herself in a sadistic-masochistic way, as she frantically struggles with her surroundings, with her absent-minded and spiritually empty self. .This avoidance often has a sexual overtone.It is worth noting that the manifestations of cleanliness culminated in Dutch and Puritan civilizations; Dutch women were sexually frigid, and Puritan civilization opposed carnal pleasures with ideals of cleanliness and purity.If the people of the southern Mediterranean lived in happy squalor, it was not only because of the lack of water there, but also because of the love of the flesh and its animality, which made people tolerate the smell of the human body, dirt and even parasites. Cooking and meal prep is actually more active and often more enjoyable than cleaning.First of all, this means going to the market to buy things, which is often the happiest part of the day.And chatting while choosing vegetables at the door is also a happy relief from loneliness.For the reclusive Muslim woman, going out to fetch water was an important adventure.In the market, in the shop, the women gossiping, sympathetic, feeling part of a group that, at that moment, is opposed to the group of men, just as the primary is opposed to the secondary .Buying is a great pleasure, a discovery, even an invention.As Gide says in his book, Muslims do not understand gambling, but find treasure instead; it is the poetry and adventure of commercial civilization.The housewife knew little of how to win at the gamble, but a bok choy and a ricotta cheese must have been treasures she had won by wit from an unwilling shopkeeper.Gambling is all about getting the best for the least amount of money; thrift is not so much meant to help balance the books as it is to gamble to win.When she saw her home stocked with groceries, she was genuinely happy with the momentary victory. Although gas and electricity have killed the magic of fire, there are still many women in the countryside who experience the joy of lighting the fire of life with dead wood.As the fire burns, the woman becomes a magician; with a single action, such as cracking an egg, or with the help of the magic of fire, she can cause the incredible transformation of matter: matter becomes food.There is a charm in these alchemies, and the making of candied fruit is full of poetry; the housewife knows that sugar can keep fresh, so she seals her life in a jar.Cooking is an accident of discovery and creation, and perfectly baked cakes and thin pies give a woman special satisfaction, because not everyone can make it: one must be gifted. In this respect again, the little girl naturally loves to imitate her elders, to make cakes out of mud and the like, and to help knead dough in the kitchen.But like any other chore, repetition can quickly spoil the fun.The magic of the fire has little appeal to the Indian Mexican woman who has spent most of her life making tortillas, a job that has remained unchanged from day to day, from century to century.It is impossible for a person to go to the market every day to search for treasure, or to gaze at the gleaming faucet with infinite joy every day.The writers and men who tout these victories on the spur of the moment are the ones who have done little or no real housework.Housework as a profession is dull, empty, and monotonous.However, if the person who does this work is at the same time a producer, a creative worker, then it merges as naturally with the organic function as the whole of life.For this reason, men are far less gloomy when it comes to household chores.To them, it is nothing more than a moment of negative insignificance from which they can quickly get away.What makes the wife-servant fate so repulsive is the division of labor which dooms her to be thoroughly an ordinary human being, a minor.Shelter and food are useful to life, but do not make it meaningful: the immediate end of the housewife is only a means, not a real end.Of course, she also strives to give her work a certain personality, making it seem like the main thing.She will feel that it is impossible for anyone else to do her job so well.She will have her manners, superstitions, and ways of doing things. But her "personality" is often nothing more than a vague and meaningless rearrangement of the mess. A great deal of time and energy is wasted by woman in such pursuit of originality and unique perfection; this gives her work a tedious, chaotic, and never-ending character, making it difficult to gauge how much housework actually does. What a workload.Recent studies show that the average married woman spends about 30 hours a week on housework, or about three-quarters of an employee's workweek.The burden is heavy if a woman still has gainful work; it is light if she has no other work to do.Caring for several children of course greatly increases a woman's workload: poor mothers often work around the clock.Middle-class women with servants, on the other hand, had little to do; they filled their leisure time with small talk.If they have little interest in the outside world, it tends to make their domestic chores unbelievably burdensome and complicated, just to have something to do. Worst of all, this labor does nothing to create anything that can last.The more a woman tries to see her work as an end in itself, the more she suffers.As she gazed at the perfect cake fresh from the oven, she would sigh and say, "What a shame!" She would never tolerate the dirty feet of her husband and children trampling on the waxed hardwood floor!Things get stained or broken after use - we all know how much she wants people not to use them; She hides the candied fruit until it gets moldy, and she locks the living room.However, the passage of time is relentless.Stored food was attracting rats and worms, and the moths were ruining blankets and clothing.The world is not a dream carved in stone, it is made of perishable and elusive matter; edible matter is as ambiguous as Dali's observations of the flesh: 它似乎是惰性的、无机的，但隐藏在里面的幼虫可以使它变成一具死尸。沉湎于物品当中的主妇像物品一样依附于整个世界：床单烫坏了，肉烤焦了，瓷器摔破了，这些都是绝对的灾难，因为物品一旦毁坏，便永远无法挽回。不可能通过它们得到一种永恒感和安全感。战争的洗劫和炸弹，也在威胁着人们的衣柜，人们的家。 因此，家务劳动的产品肯定要被消耗掉。不断的放弃对女人来说是需要的，她的作用只有在这些产品被毁坏时才能够完成。于是，她也许会毫不遗憾地认为，这些小小的毁坏，至少应当引起某个人的高兴和愉快。但由于主妇的劳动是为了维持［现状〕而扩大的，丈夫进屋时就可能注意到混乱或不整齐，不过他似乎觉得干净整齐是理所当然的。他对一顿美餐肯定会更感兴趣。当她把盛着美餐的碟子放在桌子上时，烹饪的凯旋时刻便来到了：丈夫和孩子以热情的赞许去接受它，不但表现在口头上，而且愉快地把它吃光。于是烹饪炼金术按照一定的程式，把食物变成了乳糜和血。 所以，维持生命体比适当地保持地面清洁更具体、更至关重要。烹饪的努力显然是在向未来超越。然而，如果说参与另一个人的自由超越，比沉湎于物品更可取，这不在是指它的危险比较小。烹饪工作的功效，只能在她桌子周围的那些人的嘴上发现。她需要得到他们的赞赏，她希望他们喜欢她做的菜，吃完了还要。如果他们不饿，她就会感到不痛快。就此而论，人们真是不明白，究竟炸土豆是为了丈夫，还是丈夫是为了炸土豆？这种含糊性明显表现在作为主妇的妻子的一般态度里：她为丈夫理家，但又希望他把全部收入花在买家具和电冰箱上。她希望让他幸福，但他只有在她所确定的幸福范围内活动，才能得到她的赞成。 曾经有过这些要求得到一般满足的时期，有过这种幸福也是男人的理想的时期，即他非常依恋他的家和家人的时期，甚至孩子们也愿意突出表现他们的父母、他们的传统和他们的过去的特征的时期。在这样一些时期，她作为家里的统治者，作为餐桌的负责人，被公认具有至高无上的权威。如今，在处处使父权文明不朽的一些地主和富有农民当中，她仍在扮演着这种无比荣光的角色。