The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-04-06
DECLARES WOMAN
NATURES PENDULUM
SWINGS FROM ONE EXTREME
TO ANOTHER. FROM A CA
REER TO A CRADLE
By Marguerite MOoers Marshall


A woman ic q per du lum in Nature s
clock. And no matter how Tar out
she swings toward career, a vote
grand passion-some goal OF the
extreme left-she is bound to SWING
back Just as far to 7 baby's cradle
and the home and marriage which
shelter 1.-THE ideal of the conserva-
tive right. ,...
So let the Observation-Disclosures
cheer up! The race is going to race
merrily on for some centuries yet'
even if women do go to national con-
ventions and to downtown jobs.
That. take it, is the reassurlng
moral of "The Swing Of the Pendu-
lum," the feminist novel of the sea-
son bv a clever Californian now dom
iciled in New York, Adriana SpadonL
The heroine, Jean Norris, after mar
rying and divorcing a rounder, loving
a man whom she cannot marry, cary
ing a career as a settlement worker
and social organizer of national dis
tinction marries in the end, in order
TO be "inside life," marries after a
man hurls at her the bitter truth that
you're successful in your little fld--
ding two-by-four job, but if you died
tonight the silly interfering world
would 90 on. You haven't got spot
in the whole world that really belongs
to you. You've got nothing"
The Woman of Today
"People are suffering from men
tai indigestion, from feeble-minded
ness" Miss Spadoni declared, with
vivacious emphasis when | called on
her, "when they imagine that women
are or ever will be too modern to be
mothers, to hear the call of self per-
petuation.
The woman of today who interests
me so much that | have made her the
heroine of my book is the product OF
an age of transition. She is in tran
sit between the devotee of the dish
pan, who was her mother, and the
United States senator who will be her
daughter. And sometimes she swings
in one direction, sometimes in the OPP
posite. In finding out that she can
think, she occasionally takes her
thinking so hard. that she forgets how
TO feel The law of the pendulum
in the end swings her back to emo
ton lust as far as she has swung
away from it"
Nevertheless, the woman of today
is not the woman Of yesterday" l
argued. "Your Jean was an utterly
different type from her mother. If
the avoidance of racial and domestic
obligations does not seem to you to
characterize the modern woman
and | agree with you therein what
does her 'modernness' consist"
"The woman of today" Miss Spa
doni said thoughtfully, sis, first OF
all, honest. She is sincere. She has
stopped believing lot of sentimen-
tai slush that people try to put over
on her. She doesn't pretend to feel
ings she doesn't possess, and she tries
to see the truth about herself and
about the men and women of her ac-
quaintance.
"Her other dominant quality-and
new quality for women-is closely
allied to her honesty. She is cour-
ageous. For so many centuries
women have been terrified creatures,
kept down and under by fear. Their
minds have been hobbled by it, their
emotions paralyzed, their acts com
pletely controlled. Even generation
ago women were afraid of so many
things-afraid to work for them
selves, think for themselves, run their
own lives. You mustn't women were
fold continually. do that. Men would
not respect you if you do"
And / was reminded of one of the
wisest bits of philosophy in THE
Swing of the Pendulum" Il don't
believe that society invented marriage
because a man wanted to keep one
woman as his property or because
women wanted to be supported. They
were just cropping blindly to keep love
alive to bind it fast, that biggest,
freest thing in all the world, and keep
it safe for itself"