The Physiology of Marriage, Part 3 by Honoré de Balzac
page 69 of 125 (55%)
page 69 of 125 (55%)
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the nerves and the vapors solely in their connection with marriage.
Victims of Neurosis (a pathological term under which are comprised all affections of the nervous system) suffer in two ways, as far as married women are concerned; for our physiology has the loftiest disdain for medical classifications. Thus we recognize only: 1. CLASSIC NEUROSIS. 2. ROMANTIC NEUROSIS. The classic affection has something bellicose and excitable on it. Those who thus suffer are as violent in their antics as pythonesses, as frantic as _monads_, as excited as _bacchantes_; it is a revival of antiquity, pure and simple. The romantic sufferers are mild and plaintive as the ballads sung amid the mists of Scotland. They are pallid as young girls carried to their bier by the dance or by love; they are eminently elegiac and they breathe all the melancholy of the North. That woman with black hair, with piercing eye, with high color, with dry lips and a powerful hand, will become excited and convulsive; she represents the genius of classic neurosis; while a young blonde woman, with white skin, is the genius of romantic neurosis; to one belongs the empire gained by nerves, to the other the empire gained by vapors. Very frequently a husband, when he comes home, finds his wife in tears. |
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