The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-19
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
Why Married Life is Dull.
(New YORK American-Journal Exam

many.
II as a dull plain Of dreary monot-
ony. stretching from the altar to the
grave, on which love yawns itself to
death as soon as the honeymoon is
over. . ASN
There is never the slightest diff
Guilty in picking out any married
couple in public assemblage.
II on the street you see = man walk
Ing about two feet ahead, of his wife
and letting her drag. along as best
She may over the crossings, you know
the woman is his wife
IL at the theatre YOU see a couple
silence or reading the jokes onEthe
back of the programme. you know
they are husband and wife.
1t you hear q woman tell q story
and a man sarcastically oberserve that
he heard that anecdote in the Ark
during the Flood you know the gen.
tleman is the ladv's husband.
Now, nobody marries to achieve
this kind of fate. Every youth and
maiden believe that the wedding ring
is the circle that bounds paradise, and
when they marry they expect to be
perfectly happy.
They see that other married people
arc bored and weary and disgruntled.
but that does not deter them from
may be best described as the final
triumph of hope over other peoples
experience.
The most terrible thing in the world
is the disillusionment of matrimony
and that the tie which is the closest
and the hottest bond that can be
forged between two human beings, in
the majority of cases. becomes merely
a ball and chain that letters them
together like prisoners. and that you
can hear them clank as they walk.
Why is it that a man and woman
who have sacrificed everything for
the privilege of each others society
begin to gape in each others faces
the minute they find themselves Wis
avis across their own hearthstone?
If marriages We're arranged by the
parents as in Europe, or if people
generally married for money or posi-
ton, one could understand why mat
rimony from the point of view of pro-
noting happiness is SO often failure.
Marriages, however. in this country
at least, are almost universally love
matches, and it is a cynical common
tary on the brevity of affection that
the country that leads the world in
love matches also leads the world in
the number of divorces.
But it is not of divorces 1 would
speak here.
generally finds its own cure.
The average married couples suf-
ferings are not active.
They are merely the dull ache OIL
disappointment, of a romance that
has turned to prose, of an unsatisfied
longing for something they wanted
and never got.
Yet these people were once in love
with each other; they once i6ealized
each other; they once entranced each
other.
They married in order that they
might spend their lives together; and
the greatest problem of civilization is
why, when they started out with so
much material for happiness. they so
soon came 10 bankruptcy
1t is easy to say that the reason
nobody realizes q lovers paradise is
because lovers expect too much.
No couple could keep keyed UP to
the high c pitch of sentiment of their
couring day.
No woman can remain forever
young and beautiful. nor can any man
really enjoy holding a lily-white hand
for forty years at a stretch.
1t is naturally a blow to a young
couple TO find out that they have got
to live in world that is full of bills.
and cooks, and sickness. and collckY
babies, instead of one that is all
thrills and kisses. but even this does
not account for the decline and fall
ing off in domestic happiness.
All life is different from the way
we imagined it, but it is only married
life that bores us.
Married life is dull because, as a
general thing, it is lived amidst unat-
tractive and uncomfortable surround
ings where one hears nothing but
the creaking of the domestic machin-
cry and the grooming of the oper-
atives.
And environment is everything.
The difference between bill-stick-
ers paste and sauce Hollandaise IS
that one comes in a bucket and the
other is served in a china dish
What makes a dinner of beefsteak
and potatoes gay at a restaurant ana
dull at home?
Ii is the pink-shaded candle and
woman who smiles at you in one place
and a sickly gas jet and a wife who
nags in the other.
The earliest disillusionment of mat
rimony comes from women not un-
Outstanding the business of making
a comfortable home
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred
the very first mixing that younR
man gets that marriage is failure
is when he discovers that the angel he
has espoused does not know the first
principle Of how to run a house. and
the young wife ascertains that the ro-
mantle hero of her dreams has to be
fed night and morning, like the AMI
mails in a menagerie. to keep him in
a good humOr
Before a man is married he thinks
of possessing u home as a goal to-
ward which to work.
He looks forward to it as a place
of peace and rest where he will go
to throw down the troubles of life
and be soothed and comforted.
He sees himself sitting down to
daintily prepared and served meals,
opposite cheerful ard neatly-dressed
wife
When, instead of this he finds him
self returning home at night to an
ill-kept ill-managed house: when he
sits down opposite to a frowsy wo-
man to dinner Of over-done meat
and under-done bread; when, in place
of the peace and rest he expected, he
finds that he has added all of the
multifarious worries of Housekeeping
to his own business cares. all of hls
ideals of marriage and home and love
are shattered at one fell blow.
He has struck the upgrade of mat
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