The senior Mrs. O’L. began a campaign of criticism against the younger woman.  There was enough to find fault with, since the wife was absolutely inexperienced.  But she was entirely new to hostile criticism, and it impeded her learning.  Furthermore, she was not inclined to try all of the mother-in-law’s suggestions; she had books which took diametrically the opposite point of view in some matters.  There were some warm discussions between the ladies, and a spirit of rebellion took possession of the wife.  This was emphasized by the fact that she found herself very lonely and longed secretly for the hum and stir of the office; for the deference and the courtesy she had received there.  Further, the distracted husband, in his roles of husband and son, found himself displeasing both his wife and his mother.  He tried to get the girl to subordinate herself, since he knew that this would be impossible for his mother.  To this his wife acceded, but was greatly hurt in her pride, felt somehow lowered, and became quite depressed.  The house seemed “like a prison with a cross old woman as a jailer”, as she expressed it.

Another factor of importance needs some space.  The bridal year needs seclusion, on account of a normal voluptuousness that attends it.  No outsider should witness the embraces and the kisses; no outsider should be present to impede the tender talks and the outlet of feeling.  It sometimes happens that the elderly have a reaction against all love-making; having outlived it they are disgusted thereby, they find it animal like, though indeed it is the lyric poetry of life.  So it was in this case; the mother was a third party where three is more than a crowd, and she was a critical, disgusted third party.  The young woman found herself taking a similar attitude to the love-making, found herself inhibiting her emotions and had a furtive feeling of being spied on.

The previously strong, energetic girl quickly broke down.  Physical strength and energy may come entirely from a united spirit; a disunited spirit lowers the physical endurance remarkably.  She became disloyal to matrimony, rebelled against housework, and yet loved her husband intensely.  A prey to conflicting ideas and emotions, she fell into a circular thinking and feeling, where depressed thoughts cannot be dismissed and depressed energy follows depressed mood.  Prominent in the symptoms were headache, sleeplessness, etc., for which the neurologist was consulted.

How to remedy this situation was to tax the wisdom of a Solomon.  It probably would have remained insoluble, had not the statement I made that the main element in the difficulty was the mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law situation come to the ears of the old lady.  Conscientious and well-meaning, that lady announced her determination to take up her residence with a married daughter who already had a well-organized household, and whose husband was a favorite of the mother’s.  Despite the mother-in-law joke of the humorists, the mother-in-law is far more friendly to a daughter’s husband than to a son’s wife.