Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-02-22
NO WOMAN AT
BEST COOPED-UP
Dementia - Four-Rooms-and-
a-Bath-Discussed by Doro-
thy Dix
by DOROTHY DIN

WtWTOIOEISI FtCCnIIN
serted that the reason so many city wo-
men go insane is because of the re-
stricted space in which they live. and
that there is a form of mental aberra-
llun that may well be called dementia-
tour- rooms aud-a- bath.
lie says that hundreds of thousands
OF " smsn spend their lives cooped up in
few small rooms. about which they
wander ike animals in cage. Gener-
ally the rooms are ugly and unattrac-
tive; often they are dark: nearly always
their windows offer no view except Il
Squaltd street, or fire escapes and
clothes lines In time her environment
gets on the woman's nerves. She be-
comes morbid, hysterical, and often
Soes raving mad.
heretofore it has always been an in
soluble enigma why the average wife
and mother is always i'm the doleful
dumps and disgruntled with her job. Go
into store or office, and the women em-
ploXIes are alert, cheerful, bright-eyed,
smiling. Go into a house and the wo-
man VINO Is running 1t has dropping
shoulders. saSged down mouth, and
Is a bundle of complaints about hus-
band and children, and if she has to do
her own cooking she regards herself
as martyr
The Greatest Career
Yet housework is not half as exhaust
ing labor as standing all day behind a
counter or bent over a typewriter. .
Moreover, to make a real home is the
hnest career any woman can aspire 10,
ana brings the greatest reward.
Why, then, should the domestic wo-
man not be as happy in her work and
brlng the same philosophy to bear on
hers? Simply because the domestic
woman lives shut up in such a little
space that she has lost her perspective
She has become unable to see the true
value of life and to Judge things at their
proper worth: She's gone loco, as they
say in the West.
the TACT that you can cure. temporarily
at least the most queEulous and nag
ginS Wife and mother by sending her
away from home for a while.
1t is the woman who has the four
room and-a a-bath type of mind who has
a mania about tri1es. She can't see
beyond the end of her nose.
Her molehills are all mountains
Every disappointment is a tragedy. She
has Mysteries if new dress is botched
in the making. She calls in her friends
cook leaves She bores you to death by
recounting every detail of her family
history.
And it's the woman with the four
rooms-and-ab bath mind who is the
%rlndlnS FAMILY tyrant who keeps hus-
band and children under her thumb
until the mere thought of any one hav-
ing any individual personal liberty fills
her with terror. She is confident that if
she permitted her husband to take Il
single drop of liquor he would become q
drunken sot She is sure that if she
didn't keep him tied to her apron
that only the knowledge that her eagle
eye is upon him Keeps him from philan-
derinS with every Sood-looking woman
he meets.
1t takes the woman who has lived in
the big world, who has handled big af-
fairs. who has had to give and take,
and been taught to respect other peo-
pies rights, to be broad-minded and
broad -visioned, and above the little
meannesses and tyrannies characteris-
tic of her sex.
1t is often observed that the busi-
and placid than the domestic woman,
that she does not worry over trilles as
the domestic woman does, that she does
not gossip, nor is she catty or full of
Spiteful jealousy to other women; but
on the contrary that she is a lover of
her sex and invariably the first to help
q sister in trouble and the last to be-
lieve evil of her.
This is not because the business wo-
man is naturally better woman than
the domestic woman, but merely that
she is saner. She lives in the bound
fined within the narrow limits of
family circle, and so has escaped the
dreadful malady of dementia-fou
rooms and "a bath.
1t is significant that admost all of
the most Objectionable feminine faults
of keeping women shut up in the house
This has produced certain abnormali
ties of character that we have spoken
of politely as the feminine tempera-
merit" or feminine peculiarities" or a
''woman's whims," but which, in real
ity, are just plain bughouse.
They are dementia-four-roo and-a-
bath, and the sure cure for it is for
women to get out of the home and do
their share of the worlds work.