The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-11-03
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

lump of dough, and that if a man
marries a young girl he can mould her
into any kind of wife that suits his
fancy.
Innumerable men have fallen vic
tins of this superstition. They have
married silly little girl-girlies who
looked as soft as mush, only to find
that under their pliable exteriors there
was a subsurface of fool prejudices
and fixed ideas as hard as granite,
and that they could change the rock
of Gibraltar just as easily as they
could alter their wives habits or
modes of thought.
Heredity. environment and mother
had already been on the job for some
twenty years or more, and placed their
stamp upon the girl too deeply for the
hand of any mere husband to erase it.
Nevertheless. in spite of all of this,
matrimony is the factory in which
character is really made, and while
blood and breeding and upbringing
lay the foundations for it, and parents
and kindred and early associations
help to form it, it is the hand of hus-
band and wife who put the finishing
craftsman who inscribe upon it, at
last, their own personality.
1t is true that no man can marry a
girl with any certainty that he can
develop her into being the wife of his
dreams. Nor can any woman cut over
a man according to her little per-
forated paper pattern of an ideal hus-
band. But no man and woman can
live together in the intimacy of mar
ried life without being changed by
each other. and in the end they are
pretty much what each has, con-
sciously or unconsciously, made the
other.
No one can tell how this influence
will work Sometimes it works for
evil, what is fine and noble in husband
or wife growing commoner to mix
with the clay of his or her mate. Just
as often it brings a revulsion, and
what is highest and best in a man or
woman's nature is called out by the
meanness and sordiness in the char
acter of the one to whom he or she is
married.
You will often notice the almost
Godlike patience with which man
will deal with the weaknesses and pet
illnesses of a silly, vain, shallow wife.
Unknowingly she has made him what
he is. Her lack of every fine quality
has called out the fineness in him.
Or you will see a woman bearing
with and forgiving a man who is a
cad and a brute. He has made her
the almost angelic creature she is
able to suffer and be strong, big
enough to look beyond the personal,
and sacrifice herself for the good of
her children and society.
And of course there is the reverse
of this where the mean woman makes
her husband mean and where the un-
principled husband breaks down his
wifes principles.
Who has not seen a generous, open
hearted man, full of kindly thoughts
toward all the world. gradually grow
stingy and narrow and suspicious aft
er a few years marriage to par
sim9nious and bitter woman?
Who has not seen a girl of noble
and altruistic ideals grow purse proud
and sordid and full of shifty expe-
dents after marrying a man whose
God was the money god?
Certainly the brightest saints and
the blacklist devils on this earth are
home made, for no other influence on
our lives is comparable in Importance
with that of our husbands and wives.
1t is something we can never escape
for a day or an hour. IT is always
with us. 1t is like the dropping of
the water that wears away the hard
est granite.
AS of which has the greater influ-
ence over the other, husband or wife,
that depends upon which of the cou-
pie has the stronger will and the more
determination to rule the roost. Also
it is generally the one who is of the
more ignOble nature.
Nothing on earth is more pathetic,
or more unfortunate for humanity
than that the family circle is almost
invariably dominated by the most I'M
worthy member of the household.
It is the man who is a bully, or the
woman who is Shrew, who keeps the
family covering before him or her
because decent people shrink with
horror from the scenes that crossing
these domestic autocrats bring on. 1t
is the ruthlessly selfish one who al
ways gets the best of everything It
is the man who curses and swears
or the woman who goes into Mysteries
when things go wrong, to whom we
all sacrifice ourselves to save the
peace. At home We are all ruled by
the tyranny of the weak.
1t is seldom that a strong man has
the power to make over a weak wo-
man, or that a good woman can lift
a bad man up to her level of the high
er life. But it is fatally easy for the
weak and evil wife and husband to
pull down the good and strong.
Generally speaking, wives have far
more influence over their husbands
than husbands have over their wives
Perhaps the reason of this is because
a woman concentrates her whole mind
on trying to make a husband what
she wants him to be. while a wife is
never the whole interest of life to a
man. She is sort of an annex. and
he is very apt to take her as she is,
with gratitude and relief if she is
what he wants her to be and a phil
osophical shrug if she isn't.
No man studies his wife's character
and modes of though or really tries
to find out her limitations, or what
she might be developing into. as a
woman does with her husband. The
woman has to do this in order to
know how to manage her husband.
to get out of him the things she wants
and to make him do things that she
wants to do. Therefore, he misses
the opportunity to influence her
that he might have if he had troubled
to study her psychology. whereas
even the stupidest of women knows
how to play on her husband as upon
a harp with a thousand strings.
YOU will often notice a man radi-
cally changed in a few years after he is
married If he marries a woman