Evening star., 1938-07-24
DO YOU WISH YOU WERE A MAN?
Buck Reviewer Discuss Topics of
Marriage and Careers for WomenMrs Foreets That
What Most Women Want Is Husband.

with as little trouble as possible to the
man when he comes home tired"
And so, says Mrs. Buck, we have a
neWotic, restless and unhappy
feminine population.
She then asks. what is the remedy?
And replies that she does not know,
but that reason would suggest one of
two courses-that we either stop
educating women for opportunities
which we mean to deny them, or else
improve the education still further
and see that it is followed up with the
chance of being used. Well, II you
accept her premise, you can hardly
quarrel with her conclusion.
And indeed many of the specific
facts with which she builds up her
premise are true. She quotes the
case of the woman physician, for
example, who has all her life to deal
with the state of mind in the public
which Is expressed by the remark,
" I don't feel I'd trust woman doctor
as 1 would a man." And that such
prejudice exists cannot be gainsaid
Let man doctor kill a patient be-
cause he has been mistaken, or be-
cause he has been clumsy, or because
he has been drunk, and he is blamed
Tor a mistake, or for clumsiness. or
for intoxication. Let woman doctor
Kill patient for any of same rea-
sons and she is blamed for being a
woman doctor.
LIKEWISE with woman pilots, wom-
an engineers. woman financiers
and woman politicians. They are
never members of profession or call
ing. They are always women who
happen to be engaged in that pro-
fession or calling That is the public
attitude, based of course on the sub
timely innocent masculine belief that
humanity itself is male, with women
simply being engaged from time to
tlme, as 1t were, in being human. Yes.
Mrs. Buck unquestionably has some
thing there.
But the case which she builds I'D on
this very solid evidence, somehow
seems to the reviewer a non seouitur.
1t seems to fall down on two counts.
The one is its assumption that be-
cause, in so years, American women
nave not attained the fullness of
equality toward which the intelligent
members Of their sex aim, they should
turn back the clock for all time in
the future. That is silly. And the
other Ito state which makes the re-
viewer wish that she were for the
moment NAM is that. in a very
great number of cases, the public is
dead right in estimating women as
women and no more. Mrs. Buck here
Is trying to treat the cases of all
women in terms which can only be
applied to an intelligent minority.
For nobody in his-or her-senses
can deny that the vast majority of
women want nothing cut of life be-
yond marriage. They may be un-
happy In marriage, but they would
rather be so than be unmarried. They
may Lead limited, dull, vegeta BILE
IKE lives in their marriages, and still
they would view with horror the idea
that they should change to a superior
existence in which marriage was de-
MED them. A happy marriage is the
ideal, of course. But marriage of
some kind is the indispensable. A
downright squalid, sordid, destructive
marriage Is better-so think most
women, though they do not know it
than none at all. 1t gives them a
certain complacence and they cling to
that complacence above all other at
tributes OF living. Not a nice thing
TO say about ones own sex, perhaps
but is it, or is it not, a fact?
WELL, but is Mrs. Buck advocating
that women give up marrying?
you Will ask. And. if so, what of
society? No, she is not advocating
any such thing. She is simply saying
tnat marriage as it exists in America
today offers an educated and gifted
woman no chance to use her education
and gifts. but. as an institution. posi-
lively acts to destroy both, and so
renders superior women unhappy. But
the answer is that superior women
can take care of themselves, and that
the others. who as among men, are
certainly the majority, would rather
be unhappy in marriage than
happy doing anything else.
The superior ones know that they
have to meet prejudice and they re-
gard 1t as merely a part of that un-
satisfactory process known as growth.
1t calls for tremendous forbearance
and it is not exactly conducive to
respect for the male sex, in which
latter consequence it may sometimes
have unhealthy results. But there are
superior men, too. Any enlightened
woman in the course Of a lifetime will
meet beggarly few and can use them
to check the balance against the
others. If the others are enormously
IN the ma alOritV that would or,ly seen,