Husbands and Wives

One of my favorite novelists was Peter DeVries who poked fun at modern suburban living and modernity in general. Often, I'd run across a snipit that I thought worth recording. Here's one of them from his novel, "Reuben, Reuben. "

The conclusion Mopworth now drew about it was based on a sizable span of daily experience, now for the first time recognized in terms of a general principle. it was that the woman determined the weather in the house. From her came permission to laugh, instruction to brood, the cue for fun or woe. As he stepped in the door Mopworth realized that the first things he did was, not greet Geneva, but read her face to determine how she should be greeted. He consulted her face like this many times a day, as one consults a barometer, to see what kind of day or evening it will be. He had done this now, he remarked to himslef for the first time, for well over a year. Was it true of all marriages, or only mariages like his, in which the man is the acquiescent; the type wanting only peace in the house? Was it more true now that it had once been? Or more true in American than elsewhere? That woman calls the ever-changing emotional tunes to which once dances--was that universal fact accepted abroad without fuss and only exaggerated in a country where emancipation was bearing its first disillusioning fuits, like early returns in a doubtful election?