Now sedentary life has several main effects upon health and mood.  It tends quite definitely to lower the vigor of the entire organism.  Perhaps it is the poor ventilation, perhaps it is the lack of the exercise necessary for good muscle tone that brings about this result.  Though the housewife may work hard her muscles need the tone of walking, running, swimming, lifting, that our life for untold centuries before civilization made necessary and pleasurable.

With this sedentary life comes loss of appetite or capricious appetite.  Frequently the housewife becomes a nibbler of food, she eats a bite every now and then and never develops a real appetite.  Nor is this a female reaction to “food close-at-hand”; watch any male cook, or better still take note of the man of the house on a Sunday.  He spends a good part of his day making raids on the ice chest, and it is a frequent enough result to find him “logy” on Monday.

Furthermore, in the household without a servant, the housewife rarely eats her meal in peace and comfort.  She jumps up and down from each course, and immediately after the meal she rarely relaxes or rests.  The dishes must be cleared away and washed, and this keeps from her that peace of mind so necessary for good digestion.

An increasing refinement of taste adds to these difficulties.  If the family eat in the dining room, have separate plates for each course, and various utensils for each dish, have snowy linen instead of oilcloth,—­then there is more work, more strain, less real comfort.  Much of what we call refinement is a cruel burden and entails a grievous waste of human energy and happiness.

An important result of the sedentary life is constipation.  Woman, under the best of circumstances, is more liable to this difficulty than her mate, just as the human being is more liable to it than the four-legged beast.  Man’s upright position has not been well adjusted by appropriate structures.  Childbearing, lack of vigorous exercise, the corset, and the hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel.  Indeed it is a cynicism amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman is “a constipated biped.”

While it is a lay habit to ascribe overmuch to constipation, it is also true that it does definite harm.  For many people a loaded bowel acts as a mood depressant, as illustrated by the Voltaire story.  For others it destroys the appetite and brings about an uneasiness that affects the efficiency.  Whether there is a poisoning of the organism, an autointoxication, in such a condition is not a settled matter.  But the importance of the constipation habit lies chiefly in its effect upon mood and energy, in its relation to neurasthenia.

These factors, the nature of housework, monotony and the results of sedentary life bear with especial weight upon the woman of little means.  It is absolutely untrue that nervousness is a disease of wealth.  There are cases enough where lack of purpose and lack of routine tasks, as in the case of wealthy women, lead to a rapid demoralization and deenergization.  It is also true that the search for pleasure leads to a sterile sort of strenuousness that breaks down the health, as well as inflicting injury on the personality.