The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-09-04
Dorothy D11 Says
By DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
The Neglected Wife.


ly about her face, ran shrieking thru |
the lobby of the hotel in which she |
had lived for many years. When she
was caught and overpowered, it was |
discovered that she had gone raving |
mad. !
what a strange case,'' said the |
few people who knew her. Here is |
a woman apparently in good health |
who leads the easiest possible life in
a luxurious hotel, with no work, no
responsibilities, no care, no bother
with servants, no children to worry
her, and with a rich and generous
husband who gives her everything that
money can buy, and yet she goes
crazy! What do you suppose allied
herr"
And no one even guessed that the
woman had been driven mad by neg
lect and the sheer boredom of life
that had in it neither interest, duty
nor purpose.
The woman's husband wasn't inten-
tionally bad or cruel man. He
was just absolutely selfish and inca
pable of perceiving that any other
human being had any rights when
they conflicted with his pleasure.
Least of all that a wife had any claim
upon a husband that went beyond her
board and keep. These he lavishly
supplied, and having bought her Paris
clothes and set her down in an ex-
pensive suite in a hotel, he felt that
he had done his full duty towards her
and that if she wasn't happy and sat
isfied it was her own fault, and be-
cause of the unreason of woman.
Long, long ago she had ceased to
interest him, or to be anything but a
negligible factor in his life. For the
most part he was a mans man, alb
sorbed in business, playing the great
game of money making for the games
sake. He took his pleasures also
mostly among menIstiff games OF
| big deals were settled between the
| fish and the salad.
| He did not care much for women,
| but the ones that he found most at
tractive were those who appeal to the
tired business man-pretty, young, sill
~ chorus girls that pleased a mans
eyes. and amused him with their row.
| dy playfulness, as he might have been
| amused at the antics of a kitten.
His whole life was as much apart
from his wifes as if they had lived
on different spheres. When he went
away in the morning he set sail to
some invisible port he called down
| town, to which she could not follow
him even in her thoughts. And she
never knew when he was coming back
from this strange land. Sometimes he
| came home to dinner. Oftener he did
| not. Sometimes he would telephone
he would forget
And the woman had nothing on
earth with which to fill up her in
terminable days and still more in
| terminable evenings. She had wanted
to keep house, but her husband would
not agree to it. He said he loathed
home cooking and that the very
thought of the clumsy maid and the
unsophisticated boiled mutton and po-
tatoes of the family dinner turned
him faint with loathing. What he
really meant was that he wanted to
/ escape the weight of the nearthstone
| that holds man down to some ele-
mentary sense of domestic duty
So the woman was cut off from
even the poor feminine refuge of doll
les and bed spreads and monogram
ing things and fussing over pots and
pans and cooking up elaborate dishes
in which so many women find an out
let for their energies and affections
There is nothing that you can do in
:, a vacuum cleaned hotel suite but
think. And when woman thinks
too much she gets morbid. That was
what happened to this woman. She
sat and thought hour after hour. and
day after day, dun black thoughts that
went round in darker and darker cir
cles until at last something snapped
. in her brain and she went Taving mad
The tragedy of the neg. ected wife
is always a heart rending one but il
who is the victom of one of these un
fortunate marriages, whether she will
succumb to her fate or triumph ovel
: it.
, she will let her selfish husband make
, life an arid desert for her, or whether
she will get busy and by FER own eff
forts, and independent of him, maxi
r it blossom like the rose.
, Marriage is not the whole of tn.
. universe. Neither is a husband tn,
, only individual in it, and you can b.
L | happy with both, or in spite of both
J | if you are determined enough to ge
the sweet instead of the bitter out o
= life.
s There are two plans open to tn
: woman who finds herself in the posi-
e ton of the neglected wife One is t.
r pack her trunk and buy a ticket t.
. Reno, and separate herself once AM
e for all from the husband who fails t.
d | appreciate her. and who shows tina
= he is deadly tired of her.
t That is one way out The othe
f way is for the neglected wife to fiji
T her life so full of outside interest
o she is neglected. instead of sitting
r down supinely and waiting for he
husband to come home at any oil
time, let her put on her nat and hus
! tie out and find something; so agreea
BILE to do that she will find her hus
I band waiting for her when she get
I back.
AS Stevenson aptly remarked
THE world is so full of a number o
things that everybody can find som
a fascinating occupation if only the
have enough energy to seek it. Their
d are clothes for the woman who love
to dress; society and clubs; philan
N thropies and charities. books and lee
q lures: business and the professions
million different interests in which an
woman can absorb herself.
:, Why should any woman sit at HON
II and crouch and gloom when the Who'll
outside world beckons to her to com
k and help do her part in it, to absor
a herself in its interests, and to rea
s. its rewards?
a A woman complained to me not yer
e long ago that she never saw ne
play, altho she was devoted to til
:. theater, because her husband woul
never take her out at night