Running-Away-Fund: 21st Century Good Housekeeping by Deception

Here’s a moral problem of modern mores that has recently come to my attention.

Call me old-fashioned but I’m at present dumbstruck by a September 2006 issue of Good Housekeeping (doctor’s waiting room) in which their Problems Page discusses women’s housekeeping, and whether a husband or Significant Other can be trusted to provide for a stay-at-home mother of a child.

The step-by-step advice given to the reader, on the assumption she does not work since she is rearing an infant, is that ...

1: She should discuss with her Significant Other a household budget that is falsely ‘weighted’ by 20 percent; 

2: She should negotiate with her Significant Other the proposed budget less 10 percent to gain credence; 

3: She should salt away the 10 percent budget surplus and her Child Benefit as ‘running-away-money’.

The conclusion is that, whatever the ethics of how the surplus housekeeping is obtained (and Good Housekeeping’s agony aunt recommends base deception), all women should have secret ‘running-away-money’ ... the advice column concludes with the example of a woman long married who had amassed a secret ‘running-away-fund’ of £57,000 from her housekeeping... (?)

Well. Here’s a case of modern morals for debate, and one that raises many questions about the sanctity of marriage and the case for mutual trust.

As I wrote in my most recent fiction for Ambit (issue 212, Darkly, More is Seen): 

Soon I had my escape route mapped out in the same meticulous detail with which my Significant Other would pack his emergency grab-bag for a transatlantic yacht race in the event of sinking.
   An abandon-ship-bag!
   Let me affirm here and now, in the strongest terms, that, for a moonlight flit, ‘Every Housewife Should Have One!’
   Hereunder, then, allow me to itemise the contents of an essential panic-bag all survivalists should pack in readiness for the old heaveho.
   Your grab-bag should contain: Nightdress, Toothbrush, Underwear, Passport, Identity Card, Credit Card, Prescribed Medication, Basic Toiletries, Facial Tissues (Mansize), and Foldable Raincoat and Galoshes.
   Forget your house-keys and address book; you won’t be needing them again. Similarly, for the completest disappearing act, of course, you will not need a distress call nor rescue flares for your life-raft.

Well. When it comes down to it, fiction is pure escapism, of course, yet I trust my escapism outside fiction does not have to depend on the housekeeping budget being squirrelled away in an abandon-ship-panic-bag ... on balance, if I’m heading for a shipwreck I’d rather remain onboard and rearrange the deckchairs to avoid seeing the rocks ... and, for the moment, that steamer lounger on the sun deck has a distinct appeal.

Moonlight Flit by George Cruikshank (detail)

    

Found! The Last Faithful Husband in France.

A recent fiction of mine (Darkly, More is Seen, Spring Issue of Ambit 212) considers infidelity in lovers as an unstoppable force of nature, the opinion held by my passive-aggressive narrator who fails to revise her cynical view of French mores due to a tendency to glare at Gallic seduction rites through Anglo-Saxon-tinted spectacles.

As she confesses:

I could not dismiss our parting in the light, practical manner with which the French seem to deal with natural catastrophes of the heart. In France, I’m aware, no woman is expected to remain physically faithful for three years, let alone a decade.

Darkly, More is Seen.

 I am reminded of a truisme français, formulated over three centuries ago:  

The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to one we love is little better than infidelity.

François de la Rochefoucauld

But it was neither of these two attitudes that prompted this brief posting.

No. What set me off on these musings was a recent screening of that truly gripping thriller, L’Homme Qui Voulait Savoir (The Vanishing, 1988, Dir. George Sluizer), starring the beguiling Johanna ter Steege. 

Here are fervent protestations of fidelity from its sinister French antagonist, Raymond Lemorne (played by a Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), addressing his wife:

‘I am the last Frenchman who can be proud of having known only one woman in his life.’

 An admirable sentiment.

Except it’s a sentiment professed by a homicidal French sociopath.

●

Postscript 06.06.16

In response to this post, a correspondent has complained, ‘It’s all very well to condemn the customary dalliances of the French, but what is your true opinion of the English attitude to the institution of marriage?’

In answer, I drew her attention to the English film, The Thirty Nine Steps (1935), wherein the hero, masquerading as an adulterous lover leaving his mistress’s flat at dawn, enlists the aid of a milkman to evade pursuing enquiry agents.

                English Adulterer: You married?

                Cockney Milkman: Yes. But don’t rub it in. 

Footnote 28.07.20

I note the death of Parisienne Olivia de Havilland who wrote Every Frenchman Has One. I'm determined to read it.