The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-02-12
DOROTHY, DIX TALKS
By DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
Don't Be a Snail Lady.

It's queer how our standard of val
ues change, even in wifely virtues. In
our grandmother's time the highest
praise that you could bestow upon
married woman was to say that she
was stay t-home body.
For a woman never to stir beyond
her own doorstep, and to have no in
terest in the outside world was sup
to her family, and that she was
model wife and mother. "a womans
place is in the home" everybody
cried, and everybody felt the closer
home the better for her and the
world.
Nowadays we have come to see that
the snail with its house on its back
isn't the, most elevated object in ma
ture, and that there is no reason why
a woman should emulate it. We have
also come to see that the woman who
is an Alice -by-the-fire, and who
knows nothing and sees nothing ex-
cept the things that happen in her
own kitchen, nursery and dOoryard
makes very dull and uninspiring
companion, a little of whose society
goes long way.
Home staying youths have ever
homely wit" says the old proverb, and
| the same cause and effect have the
same results with wives. Nothing mar
| rows an individual down as does liv-
| ing in a rut. In order to broaden out
we must have room in which to ex-
| pand The brightest mind grows dull
| if it is not kept polished by rubbing up
| against other bright minds To keep
| fresh we must have a constant flow of
new ideas and thoughts from the out
| side.
| A great deal of the morbidness. the
| irritability and the bad health from
| which women suffer. and which they
| in turn inflict on their helpless fam
lilies, is due to this old superstition
I ,4n -. l,<.-
house, and that she is somehow not
doing her duty unless she is working
| out her life sentence within its walls.
1t is the women who have no variety
in their lives, no fresh interests, no
| change, who become Obsessed with
| one idea, who lose their perspective
and who make mountains out of mole
| hills. 1t is these women who grow
! peevish and irritable and who are full
| of complaints and tears. sometimes
| they even go insane. There are many
| tales of these home keeping women.
| especially country women. who sat in
their kitchens and rocked in the same
place in their chairs until they wore
grooves in the floor and were finally
I taken away to insane asylums.
The trouble with work around the
| house is that is that it gives a woman
| too much time to think about herself.
| Sewing, sweeping, making beds and
busting are mechanical tasks that oc-
| cupy only the hands and leave the mind
| free to go round and round the same
| old treadmill, threshing over the same
old straw and, garnering the same old
.rvest.
Therein lies the danger of intensive
! domeSticity. A womans thoughts
| must be busy with something as she
! sews long seams and goes about her
! household tasks, and if she has moth
ing else to think about she begins to
! think about herself and her husband.
! Now it is inevitable that no one can
turn a searchlfght on their own lot in
life without finding in it a million
flaws, and that fate has not given
them a fair deal. 1t is still more in
| eyitabIe that any woman who puts her
| husband under the microscope will
| discover that he isn't the hero of her
| romantic dreams and that she is
| poor, prosecuted, unappreciated mar
| tyr and a domestic slave
! There are millions of disgruntled.
disiIlusioned, fretful wives. There are
also millions /of husbands of such
| women. who wonder what ai1s their
wives that they are not satisfied with
sense enough to know that the trou-
BILE is too much home staying on the
| woman's part and the remedy is for
her to go out
/ All she needs is a change. To get
out 6 her own house and get some
thing to think about besides herself
To get some fresh ideas. Have some
| new experiences, to see how other
people live, and find out that the trou-
bles that she thin'.s are tragedies are
pin pricks compared to the sorrows
that others endure
If men only realized this. and that