The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-06-09
Dorothy Die Says
By DOROTHY DIX
worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer

homes, good children, good clothes. |
and yet they are discontinued and dis |
gruntled, and always signing for some |
intangible. unattainable career that |
they think they have missed by get |
ting married.
For at the bottom of almost every |
woman's discomfort with her lot, her |
dissatisfaction with her husband, and |
her distaste for domesticity. lies the
secret belief that the only reason |
that she isn't world famous is because
she permitted some man to lead her to
the altar, instead of her going in for
art, or literature, or the stage, or
finance.
That's the reason she is such a fiz-
zle and failure as a wife and mother
and housekeeper.
You couldn't expect a woman who
is dead sure she is an embryo Hetty
Green to treat a husband who is a $50
week clerk with much respect. GU
couldn't look for a woman who is GER
tain she could write novels like Ell
len GlaSgow's, or poetry like Theodo-
STA Garrison's if she had turned her
attention to it, to devote her great
mind to keeping the baby's milk bottle
clean.
1t would be absurd to suppose that
lady who felt that her real mission
in life was to play Lady Macbeth
could come down off of her pedestal
long enough to sweep under the bed
and see that the food is decently
cooked.
1t is great pity that these women
who think of the mselves as awful sac
rif1ces to matr.mony. couldn't have
gone up good and hard against the
career theory before they married.
That would have Knocked it out of
their systems once and for all, and
shown them how lucky the woman is
| who has a settled home and a good
| husky man to stand between her and
| the world
If every woman had tried to sup
port herself, if she had burned into
her memory the WEAKNESS of long days
in which she had stood with an ach-
ing back, and tired feet behind the
counter, or had pounded thru the
binding mists of d headache, hour
AFTER hour, upon typewriter; if she
could recall the thousand indignitieS
to which every woman who has to
work out CT her own home is subject
ed; If she had but to shut her eyes to
see 4:sain the miserable hall bedroom,
anu the greasy table of a fourth rate
| boarulnS house, and feel once more
the cold dread of losing her job and
not being able TO afford even that
poor shelter|there would be fewer
discontinued. complaining, critical
wives in the world.
| The reason that the woman who has
a kind husband, who is a good pro-
WIDER, is so insensible to her blessing
is because she has never known any
thing else. She has gone from her
fathers good home to her husband s
good home, and she takes it as no
more than her due that somebody
should work for her and provide for
her. and it doesn't even occur to her
that anything in the way of spoken
thanks and actual tangible apprecia-
ton is due to the two men who have
devoted their lives to her comfort and
we'll being.
OF course no man who isn't a cad,
wants his wife to go about blowing
his horn and proclaiming that he sup
ports his family, but a man does like
to feel that his wife appreciates what
he does for her, that she is not blind
nor insensible to the sacrifices he
makes that she may dress as well and
live as well as her neighbors. Above
all he likes her to be at least cheerful
about being married to him, and he
naturally resents her pose of being a
domestic martyr.
The average husband gets precious
little out of all his work and worry
but his board and clothes, and his
wife's appreciation,> and if he misses
this last, he is poor indeed.
Surely it is worth women's while to
remember this and to at least make
the poor return of thanks to their hus-
bands, for it is SO easy to do things
for those that appreciate them, and so
hard to have to do things for those
who don't.
Perhaps it is because everything has
been made soft and easy for the aver
lage woman, because she has never
earned a dollar, or known the night
mare of meeting pay day with an
empty purse, that she has so little ap-
probation of all that her husband does
for her and of what home and com
fort really mean. That is the reason
that she neither feels, nor shows any
gratitude towards him.
| That is also the reason that she does
not realize how discouraging 1t IS to
a. man who has done his very best,
who has toiled and shaved to provide
his wife with comforts, to- receive as
his pay not appreciation ror thanks
but reproaches that he didn't do bet
ter and give her much as some
other woman has.
But there is one sure cure for the
| career craze in wives. That is to try
it. The protected woman. who be-
lieves herself a wasted genius, thinks
that all she has to do is to reach out
her hand and gather in the laurel
| wreath of fame.
She believes that all that she needs
is half a dozen lessons in singing or
acting, and she will have the Metro
politan or Belasco offering her thou
sands Of dollars a night She thinks
that if she could breathe the rarefied
atmosphere of Washington square
that she could sit down and dash off
literary gems that editors would
| struggle over.
If only her husband had the nerve
to tell her that he would be the last
man on earth to put out the sacred
fame in her soul, and to advise her to
go out and put her talent to the acid
test of seeing what she really could
do with it, and if he would stake her
! to the least possible amount of money
on which she could live while she
tried instead of trying to bride her
| with automobiles and diamonds to
stay at home and be good, why, he
could settle the whole matter forever
in three months.
/ The woman would find that careers,
| even real careers that crown real tai