The Topeka state journal., 1921-11-07
Dorothy Dix TaLks
Domesticity on the HaIf shcll-2.
ny DOROTHY DIX
WOrIG's Highest Paid Woman writeR.


Domesticity ON the Half ShelI-2.
When a woman has a great love of
| her profession, or business she is sell
| dom happy if she gives it up, no mat
| ter how much she cares for the man
( for whom she sacrifices her calling.
| Actresses, for instance, who leave the
stage when they marry, nearly always
go back to it after having frittered
away a few crucial years playing at
| domesticity, and nearly all women
| who have been in big business in any
way tell you that when they devote all
their time and energies to a little six
by four flat they feel like a hundred
horse power engine that is put to
| lifting a half horsepower load.
Such owmen do well either to es-
pouse their careers and leave hus-
bands alone, or else they should marry
men who are capable of sympathizing z
with their aspirations, and who do not
expect to turn them into cooks.
Whether a marriage in which the
wife continues in business, after mar
| riage, is happy or not depends mostly
upon the man, and what he married
for. If he marries for a home, and
the kind of pie that mother used to
make, wife's work is at the gas range,
and not at a desk. No woman can
make a real home, in the old-fash-
ioned way with one hand, and hold
down a job with the other. No
| woman can meet husband with a
sweet smile, and a. savory dinner if
she has been kept late at her work
during a business rush as she is apt
to be. A woman can not be a cracker
jack housekeeper and Al business
woman She can no more serve two
| masters acceptably than a man can.
Nor will a man be happy if his wife
re- a ftnr- !. l. - n,
vain, egotistic type who expects wife
to kowtow before him, and knock her
forehead on the ground with gratitude
every time he gives her a nickel. Such
man is absolutely bound to have a
wife who is financially dependent on
him, and he would prefer that =
woman shaved herself to death in the
kitchen for him, where she worked
out of sight, than for her to make a
million dollars a year at a profession
that everybody knew about.
On the other hand, it is to be said
that the whole of domestic life doesn't
center around a cooking stove. There
are innumerable pleasant boarding
houses, and hotels in which people can
live with the utmost comfort, and one
can conceive husband and wife fol-
lowing their different avocations by
day, and coming home happily in the
evening to a good meal that some
body else has prepared, and a house
kept by other hands than the wife's.
one can picture them as interested,
and interesting, each alive, alert with
far more congeniaI things to talk
about than they would have if the wife
had no topic of conversation except
her scraps with the janitor, and the
price of butchers meat! Such a
couple would, at least, escape many of
the petty squabbles over money that
! take place between husbands and
wives when the wife has no income of
her own
There also is to be considered the
thousands of young couples who can
never marry, or who must wait so
long to marry tha the bloom of ro-
nance will be gone, if they put off
marrying until the man makes enough
to support a family alone, but they
can be married a once if the girl con-
tinues in business.
In such cases, think they will be
happier if they marry. and the girl
holds her job. Half a loaf is better
than no angels food at all.