Transcriber’s Note
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[Illustration: _Yours Sincerely_
_Dorothy Dix_]
_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_
Every-day Help
For Every-day People
[Illustration: Decoration]
SECOND EDITION
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK and LONDON
1927
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[Printed in the United States of America]
Published, August, 1926
Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention
of the Pan-American Republics and the
United States, August 11, 1910.
_Contents_
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD xi
INTRODUCTION xix
I HOW A HUSBAND LIKES TO BE TREATED 1
II CHARM 10
III THE ORDINARY WOMAN 22
IV TEACH THE CHILDREN TO LOVE FATHER 27
V STRIKE A BALANCE WITH MATRIMONY 32
VI JEALOUSY 39
VII HAVE A GOAL 44
VIII THE GOAT FAMILY 48
IX SPOILING A WIFE 53
X THE ABSENCE CURE FOR FAMILY ILLS 58
XI THE DEADLY RIVAL 63
XII LEARN A TRADE, GIRLS 67
XIII TRIAL DIVORCE 76
XIV MARRY THE MAN YOU LOVE 81
XV ARE YOU GOOD COMPANY FOR YOURSELF? 87
XVI KEEPING YOUNG 92
XVII GOSSIP, THE POLICEMAN 96
XVIII THE LUCKY WORKING WOMAN 100
XIX AN INDOOR SPORT 105
XX SHOULD WOMEN TELL? 109
XXI DOMESTIC BOREDOM 114
XXII TO MARRY OR NOT TO MARRY 118
XXIII WOMAN’S GREATEST GIFT 122
XXIV GRAFTING ON THE OLD FOLKS 127
XXV ARE YOU A GOOD FATHER? 132
XXVI THE MORAL MUSCLES OF YOUR CHILDREN 136
XXVII THE MOTHER-IN-LAW 140
XXVIII WHY OUR FAMILIES RILE US 145
XXIX OUR LIVES ARE WHAT WE MAKE THEM 149
XXX HUSBAND LOSERS 154
XXXI MARTHA OR MARY? 159
XXXII THE T. B. M. AT HOME 163
XXXIII DON’T BE AFRAID TO LET YOUR HUSBAND SEE YOU LOVE HIM 169
XXXIV QUEER THINGS ABOUT MARRIAGE 174
XXXV HUSBANDS—THE LIVING CONUNDRUM 180
XXXVI THE POWER OF SUGGESTION 185
XXXVII WOMAN’S MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY 190
XXXVIII HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND 195
XXXIX GIVING CHILDREN ADVANTAGES 200
XL SELL YOURSELF TO YOUR CHILDREN 205
XLI TAKING HUSBANDS “AS IS” 210
XLII BEING A GOOD WIFE 215
XLIII INVALIDISM A GRAFT 222
XLIV SELFISHNESS MADE TO ORDER 227
XLV SELF-CONTROL 231
XLVI OLD FATHERS AND NEW DAUGHTERS 236
XLVII LOSING A WIFE’S LOVE 240
XLVIII THE LURE OF THE MARRIED MAN 245
XLIX FORGET IT 249
L LOST LOVE 254
LI THE SHOW WEDDING 259
LII WHEN YOUR CHILDREN ARE GLAD YOU DIE 264
LIII WHAT PRICE PLEASURE? 269
LIV THE IDEAL MOTHER 273
LV HOW TO CATCH A WIFE 278
LVI DANGEROUS GIRLS 283
LVII WHEN A GIRL LOVES A MAN 288
LVIII MARRIAGE LESSONS 293
LIX THE SUPERIOR BUSINESS WOMAN 297
LX NEW IDEALS FOR OLD 301
LXI WHY DIVORCE IS COMMON 305
LXII THE CHILDREN PAY 310
LXIII THE LEARNED PROFESSION OF HOME-MAKING 315
LXIV A FATHER’S INFLUENCE 320
LXV THE RICHES OF POOR CHILDREN 325
LXVI A MAN’S RIGHT TO HIS HOME 330
LXVII DEVOURING FRIENDS 334
LXVIII THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS 338
LXIX PREPAREDNESS FOR OLD AGE 343
_Foreword_
_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_
A FOREWORD BY RICHARD DUFFY
To the accurately estimated millions of readers who are familiar with
Dorothy Dix’s understanding and interpretation of the plain facts
of everyday life and also its enigmas, it may appear a presumption
that one should attempt a foreword of explanation to make clear why a
choice of her daily contributions to the press, not only in the United
States and Canada, but also in farther regions of the world, should
be deemed worthy of the more permanent shelter of book covers. But it
becomes at once justifiable when we try to present a true account of
the work of “The Little Lady of New Orleans,” as one of her oldest
editors calls her. She herself confesses that, among the hundreds of
letters she receives each day from men and women, young, adult and
aged, there recur the questions: “Are you a real person, or only a
newspaper syndicate name?” “Are you a man, or are you a woman?” “Are
you married or single?” “Have you ever been married?” “If you have not
been married, would you marry?” “If you have been married—and are not
now—would you marry again?” “Have you any children? If so—are they
boys or girls—and how many?” It must be emphasized that the questions
above recorded are not asked by correspondents merely curious, who put
the questions just to probe the author of the Dorothy Dix articles.
Not at all, these questions are asked in letters revealing the puzzles
of life that entangle the very writers who address Dorothy Dix. Before
they make the simplest inquiry as to the trustworthiness of Dorothy
Dix, they tell their own troubles in the way we all have of saying:
“Of course what I have said to you is wholly confidential. Now let me
know where you stand—I mean about absolute personal fidelity.” To a
hard-boiled business man, or business woman, such a remark seems trite.
Yet, we must remember that hard-boiled business persons run to the
courts every so often to discover between themselves, at great expense,
how personal fidelity, in gush and in fact, sharply contrast.
The self-styled hard-boiled people and the people who pretend they
are less sophisticated than they are, look to Dorothy Dix for a way
out of all their troubles. These two classes are to be reckoned with,
because they are always telling their troubles to some confidant—the
less known, the better. But the vast majority of the people who write
to Dorothy Dix for counsel and guidance are profoundly sincere and
earnest, not so much because they fear to be otherwise, but because
they are so firmly persuaded of the sincerity and earnestness of life
itself, when they look it square in the face and without pose of any
kind. All and any of these correspondents of Dorothy Dix are struggling
with their problems of how to make life livable. In the case of the
young woman who has a good job and, at the same time, has a good home
with her parents, the question arises whether she should marry the man
she likes, and who on his part likes her, and then undertake to become
a parent herself without a salaried job and without the safeguard
of the home provided by her father and mother. On the other side
there appears the problem of the young man, who would marry, but for
responsibilities, psychological as well as financial, that make him
stop, look and listen before he leaves a dependent father and mother
unsupported.
We pass to the men and women who are actually married and suddenly
discover that they are facing the real and inevitable conflict of life
at home as compared with the daily battle of the business world. Some
husbands are go-getters, but they do not get anywhere because their
wives are shiftless as home managers, or because they are spendthrifts,
and would always, without trying, spend twice as much money as any
husband has, or can earn. Some wives are the best of helpmates, but are
linked to husbands who simply cannot or will not achieve the quiet
fame of a weekly pay-envelope which is the rock foundation of “Home
Sweet Home.”
Some wives are afflicted with the disease of “social climbing.” They
spend their days and nights proving to their husbands that for every
dollar earned, it is better to spend two dollars, in order to take a
chance at three, by inviting the Smiths to the theatre and to supper
afterward. Such wives usually overlook the fact that the Smiths, with
whom they would curry favor at great expense, are themselves spending
two dollars for every one dollar gained on the principle that it is a
good investment to obtain equal social standing with the Joneses.
Also to be encountered in this book are the varied specimens of
husbands and wives who have become tired of each other and seek from
Dorothy Dix guidance towards a way out of what they consider the
morass of marriage. Then, too, we meet the father, or the mother, who
is perplexed about the way children grow up nowadays—as tho the way
children grew up has not always been a surprise to parents since the
days of Romulus and Remus. To sum up, all _dramatis personæ_ in the
stupendous play of life, being enacted day in and day out, as we live,
are brought on the world’s stage before us, not so much by Dorothy
Dix as by themselves in the confidences they repose in her and the
disclosures they make about themselves.
Despite this fact there never has been nor will there be anything
merely approaching a betrayal of confidence by Dorothy Dix. She talks
to the whole world of men and women, and their worries and concerns are
so alike that all shadow of individual identity is lost. She talks to
them, not from the pedestal of the highbrow, but from the average level
of a human being, who herself has fought the grim battle of life—as may
be learned from her personal statement, which immediately follows these
pages. One of the most distinguished of living American novelists, on
being shown a few letters in her day’s mail, asked:
“How many such letters do you receive a month?”
She replied: “It takes me from three to four hours each day to answer
my correspondents—and then I have to write my articles besides.”
“Great Scott!” exclaimed the novelist. “You have more plots in a day’s
letters than any hard-working novelist could invent in a year.”
But none of these potential plots is available even for the most
prolific of story-writers, because they are not “plots” to Dorothy Dix,
but sacred testimonies to the help the “Little Lady of New Orleans” has
been able to render through many years to her ever-increasing number of
friends and confidants.
_Introduction_
_Introduction_
MY PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
I have had what people call a hard life. I have been through the depths
of poverty and sickness. I have known want and struggle and anxiety and
despair. I have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength.
As I look back upon my life, I see it as a battlefield strewn with the
wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions—a battle
in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me, and
which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old before my time.
Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone
sorrows; no envy for the women who have been spared all that I have
gone through.
For I have lived. They have only existed. I have drunk the cup of life
down to the very dregs. They have only sipped at the bubbles on the top
of it.
I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are
blind. It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with
tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all
the world.
This of itself is a compensation for many sorrows, but I have more. I
have proved myself to myself. I know that I have the strength to endure
and the courage to carry on, and that I will not be craven enough to
run up the white flag, no matter what other difficulties I may be
called upon to meet.
The skeleton at the feast of the woman who has always been happy and
prosperous is fear. She becomes panic-stricken when she thinks that
she may be called upon to meet trouble; that she may have hardships
to endure; that her soul may be torn with suffering. She suffers
with apprehension at the thought of poverty, and wonders how she
could endure to go shabby and do without the things to which she is
accustomed. She wonders helplessly what she would do if she had to earn
her own living.
_I am not afraid of poverty_ because I have been poor and I know that
poverty has its consolations and brings you pleasures that money cannot
buy. Nor am I afraid to support myself. I have earned my bread and
butter for many years. I know the joy of work and I know that to a
woman, just the satisfaction of knowing that she is self-supporting
turns her crust into angel’s food.
None of the fears with which happy women torture themselves upon
occasion have any terrors for me. I know them for the bogies they are,
and know, too, that they fly away before the person who does not cringe
before them.
Often I am tempted to envy the woman who has always had some strong
man to stand between her and the world, some man whose tenderness and
love has guarded and protected her. But I am consoled for not being a
clinging vine when I wonder what the vine would do and think how broken
it would be if the sturdy oak on which it hangs were laid low.
I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that
no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live
each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading to-morrow.
It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. I put
that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time
comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given
me.
Little annoyances have no longer the power to affect me. After you have
seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about
you, it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put the
doilies under the finger bowls or the cook spills the soup.
I have learned not to expect too much of people and so I can still
get happiness out of the friend who isn’t quite true to me, or the
acquaintance who gossips about me, and I can even find pleasure in the
society of those whose motives I see through.
Above all I have acquired a sense of humor, because there were so many
things over which I had either to laugh or cry. And when a woman can
joke over her troubles instead of having hysterics, nothing can ever
hurt her much again.
So I do not regret the hardships I have known because through them I
have touched life at every point. I have lived. And it was worth the
price I had to pay.
DOROTHY DIX.
_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_
_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_
I
HOW A HUSBAND LIKES TO BE TREATED
Altho marriage has been the chief business of woman since Eve
pulled off the first wedding in the Garden of Eden, women have not
yet mastered the first indispensable principle of success in their
profession. Millions of women have been married. Hundreds of thousands
of women marry annually, and yet, as a class, women do not know how to
treat a husband.
Here and there is a shining exception to this rule, and the result is
an inspiring picture of domestic bliss. But the great majority of women
still go stumbling along into misery and divorce because they have not
had the wit to find out how to rub man’s fur the right way, and make
him purr under their hands.
In a word, women fail to strike just the right note in their attitude
towards their husbands. Sometimes they treat them better than they
deserve. Sometimes worse, but seldom do they treat the men just as the
men would like to be treated.
Perhaps the real reason that women fail in this most important
particular is because they make the mistake of treating a husband as
if he were a rational human being, and the same sort of an individual
inside of the home circle that he is outside of it.
Never was there a greater error. The John Smith to whom a woman is
married is no more the John Smith of the business world than he is some
other man.
The John Smith, who is a lawyer, or a doctor, or a grocer in the
outer world, is a big, strong, broad, self-reliant man who looks at
everything in a large way, and is just, and tolerant, and even stoical
in meeting the vicissitudes of life. The woman who marries him has
perceived all of these qualities, and loved him for them, and she
naturally expects him to exhibit these characteristics in home life.
Fatal blunder. John Smith, the business man, may be dealt with on a
plain, sensible, aboveboard platform, but John Smith the husband, has
to be jollied, and cajoled, and petted, and wheedled along the road he
should go, if there is anything doing in the domestic felicity line in
the household of which he is the alleged head.
Now the majority of husbands average up quite as well as the majority
of wives, but even when a man is really good, and true, and strong,
experience teaches his wife that there are three ways in which he likes
her to treat him. They are:
(a) Like a baby.
(b) Like a demigod.
(c) Like a good fellow.
No matter how big and strong a man is, nor how many other men he
bosses, he wants his wife to treat him as if he were a delicate infant
who had to be petted, and nursed, and dandled, and chucked under the
chin. There isn’t a man living whose secret ideal of a perfect wife
isn’t a woman who puts the buttons in his shirt, and lays out his
collar and tie in the morning, who has his slippers toasting on the
radiator when he comes home of an evening, and who cooks just the
particular thing he likes to eat, with her own hands.
Talk about your women who can hand out intellectual companionship!
Produce your living pictures! Exhibit your paragons of virtue! They are
simply not one, two, three with the wise dame who pets and fusses over
her lord and master. And it isn’t because the man really wants his wife
to wait on him. That doesn’t enter into it at all. He’s just like the
three-year-old who howls for mama to put on his shoes or butter his
bread when there are seven nurses standing around to do it.
Men are babyish in wanting their wives to show them off. The
expression on the face of little Tommy while his fond mother is telling
the smart things that he said, is exactly the same expression that
is on Tommy’s father’s face while his wife is bragging about how he
organized a trust, or won a big lawsuit, or was elected judge.
Wise,—oh, a daughter of Solomon is the woman who puts her husband
through his paces for the benefit of company. Matrimony is one long,
glad sweet song in the household of the lady who acts as a showman for
hubby.
Consider also a man when he is sick, or thinks he is sick. How does he
want to be treated then? Like a baby. He wants his wife to sit by his
bed, and hold his hand, and weep tears of sympathy, and if she doesn’t
believe he is going to die every time he has a headache, he considers
her a cold, heartless icicle and doubts her affection.
Therefore, the very first principle in treating a husband is to treat
him as if he was your littlest baby, and if you do, he will gurgle, and
coo just as your two-year-old does when you smother him with kisses,
and asks: “‘Oose de most booflest boy on earf, an’ mudders itty, pitty
wonder, and world beater?”
Secondly, every husband likes to be treated as if he were a demigod.
Men won’t admit it, but in his soul every husband feels that he has
conferred such an inestimable boon upon his wife by marrying her that
she can never really repay him, anyway, but that it is up to her
to keep busy on the job. Therefore, the least she can do is to act
grateful.
The real reason why there is a continual conflict in most families over
the money question is not because husbands are stingy, but because a
man likes to dole the money out, piece by piece, so that the woman who
gets it may have a living exhibition of his generosity.
When a man complains about how extravagant his wife is, and how much
her hat and dress cost, it doesn’t mean that he begrudges her a single
garment or the price thereof. On the contrary, it is his way of
boasting to the world of how prosperous he is, and how well he provides
for his family. Stupid, indeed, is the woman who does not comprehend
this, and who does not keep her glad rags hanging in public, so to
speak, and continually beat upon the cymbal, and chant pæans of praise
about how good her husband is to provide her with her lovely clothes.
Nor is this as silly as it sounds. The average man gets practically
nothing out of his labor, after he has supported his family, but his
board and clothes, and it is pretty discouraging to spend your life
toiling for those who take all that you can give, and make no sign of
appreciation in return. So it is not strange that husbands like their
wives to treat them as a beneficent providence from whom all blessings
flow.
Husbands like to be treated as good fellows.
If the average married man could put up one prayer more fervent than
all the rest it would be this: “Lord, send me a wife who laughs, and a
home that isn’t an understudy to a funeral parlor!”
But his prayer isn’t often answered.
Now one of the great reasons why so many husbands and wives make
shipwreck of their lives together is because a man is always seeking
for happiness, while a woman is on a perpetual still hunt for trouble.
When anything uncomfortable happens to a man he tries to forget it,
to put it behind him, to get it out of his thoughts, even if he has
to drown it in drink. When a misfortune befalls a woman she gloats
over it. She keeps pressing her finger on every sore until she makes a
raging abscess of it. Then she goes on a jag of tears.
The result of this feminine peculiarity is that the average home is not
a cheerful place, nor is the average wife a joyous companion, and that
is why a very large number of husbands seek their amusements elsewhere,
and with other people. The greatest danger that menaces domesticity is
that so many wives are killjoys.
The question is often asked—why do men, who are penurious and niggardly
to their families, and who never pay a household bill without
grumbling, spend money so lavishly on their vices? The answer is easy.
A man’s home is dull, and the money that his family costs him gives
him no fillip of pleasure. The other does. The home has been made to
mean to him nothing but hard duty, ungilded by any joy. The opening
of champagne for chorus girls is to the tune of gaiety and laughter.
Therefore, he is willing to pay for one and begrudges paying for the
other.
Once I was listening to a group of intelligent people discuss the most
desirable quality in a wife. They named the usual standard virtues
until suddenly one man burst out in a voice surcharged with genuine
emotion.
“I tell you,” he said, “what a man wants in a wife more than anything
else is a cheerful companion. Goodness? Bah! All women, at least the
kind a man marries, are good. Economy? A man likes to spend money
on his wife. Amiability? Who wants a simpering doll always about?
Domesticity? Stuff and nonsense. A man’s stomach isn’t the most
important part of him. Besides there is a good restaurant on every
corner, if he is bound to gorge himself on food.
“I tell you what a man wants is cheerfulness in his wife. He wants to
come home at night to somebody who will meet him with a smile, somebody
who has got a lot of bright little things to tell him, and who can make
him laugh, somebody who is willing to put on her prettiest dress and
go out with him if he wants to go to any place of amusement.
“He doesn’t want to come home to a woman who is sodden with tears,
or who is running over with the accumulated worries of the day that
she dumps on him, who is full of her own and other people’s hard luck
stories, and who looks like a chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.”
Of course, whether a wife is melancholy or not does not, from an
ethical standpoint, alter her husband’s duty to her. He should be
strong enough to love and cherish her no matter how lacrimose she
is; but the martyr’s crown is a piece of headgear that is distinctly
unfashionable at the present time, and most men duck wearing it.
Wherefore, it behooves the Amalgamated Order of Doleful Wives to
cheer up, and try to be more lively companions to their husbands if
they don’t want those gentlemen to stray off in search of ladies with
sunnier dispositions.
As a matter of fact, men are, emotionally, very primitive creatures
with a few simple domestic wants. They desire to be petted, and
jollied, and looked up to by their wives, and then they want to be
treated as good fellows. They want their wives to be chums with them,
and not reforming institutions, or lecture bureaus.
The average man simply pines for cheerful comradeship from his wife.
He wants her to enjoy the things that he does, to like the people he
likes, to amuse herself with the things that divert him. He wants to
hear her laugh, to see her eyes sparkle, and for her to treat him as
on a par with herself, as if they were joyous fellow sinners together,
instead of her being a living reproof to him as a poor low-browed
creature, with musical-comedy tastes that make her shudder.
Yet do you ever notice the ordinary married couple out together? It
is one of the most piteous sights on earth. The man is spending his
money trying to give his wife a good time, and she meets his noble
efforts with the rasping qualities of a crosscut saw. That is what
gives eternal pungency to the old Weber and Fields joke about the man
who, when asked if he was going to take his wife with him on a trip to
Paris, replied: “No, I am going on a pleasure excursion.”
Of course whether it is any more a woman’s place to get along with her
husband than it is his to get along with her is another fight, which I
am not trying to referee here. So also is the question of how a wife
likes to be treated. What I have tried to show is how a husband would
like his wife to pull the wool over his eyes and put on the velvet
glove before she tries to manage him—because men really enjoy being
bamboozled by women who turn out a nice artistic job. What they object
to is not being henpecked, but the raw way in which their wives do it.
II
CHARM
Over and over again girls ask me these questions: What is charm? What
is the secret of the attraction that some women have for men?
What is the “come-hither” look in the eye that some women have that
makes every man who beholds it get up and follow them?
Why do some girls always have hosts of beaux flocking about them, while
other girls just as good-looking, just as clever, just as good dancers,
just as anxious to please, never have a date or a single sweetheart to
bless themselves with?
And to all of these questions I have to answer, sadly and
disconsolately, that I do not know. I have to give up the conundrum,
which is perhaps the riddle that the Sphinx, who is partly a woman, has
brooded over through the centuries in her desert solitude, without ever
being able to solve it.
In Barrie’s delightful play, “What Every Woman Knows,” Maggie’s
brothers, discussing her with the brutal frankness with which brothers
approach the subject of a sister, agreed that she wasn’t young, nor
brilliant, and that she was homely, yet all the men were after her.
Finally one of the brothers said: “But she’s got that damned charm.”
And that was that.
When a woman has that damned charm she can snap her fingers in the face
of flappers and living pictures, and marry as early and as often as she
pleases as is witnessed by the many fat, pie-faced women we all know
who have had two, and three, or more, husbands apiece, and who still
have a waiting list in case anything untoward and fatal should happen
to the gentlemen to whom they are at present united in the holy bonds
of matrimony.
But what is this charm, what is this rabbit’s foot that some lucky
women carry, and others do not? To say that it is personality is to
attempt to explain one mystery by another mystery, for we do not know
in what personal magnetism consists, or by what power one individual
draws us, while another repulses us.
We know that it isn’t beauty, because the best lookers among girls
are seldom the most popular, and men who profess to worship beauty
are generally content to adore it from a safe distance, and show no
disposition to marry it. It is notorious that beauties seldom make good
matches. Nor does charm consist of intelligence. Being a highbrow booms
no woman’s stock, socially or matrimonially, while a witty woman cuts
her throat with her own tongue.
To be a spellbinder is for a girl’s fairy godmother to have wished a
curse instead of a blessing upon her, for no woman is more anathema to
men than the human phonograph. Even dancing, chief of accomplishments
in these jazzy days when it is of more profit for a woman to have her
brains in her heels than in her head, is but a passing attraction,
while amiability and a sweet nature, woman’s traditional one best bet,
are like a sticking plaster, potent to hold a man after marriage, but
of small value in luring him into it.
Undoubtedly, charm in its perfection is a gift of the gods, but
happily, in these days, when nature proves a cruel stepmother who is so
mean and stingy that she does not give us all that is coming to us, we
have learned to circumvent the lady. No woman need be as ugly as God
made her, nor as unattractive as she was born. Drug-store complexions
can put the inherited ones to the blush, and any girl who is willing to
take the trouble can acquire a line of lures and graces that will make
any bona fide siren tremble for her job. To the girl, then, who wishes
to acquire charm, and who especially wishes to attract men, I would
say, first, stress your femininity.
I don’t mean be namby-pamby and weepy and dish-raggy, without any
backbone. That type of woman has gone out of fashion as completely as
bustles and hoopskirts. No man now would be bored with the sort of
perfect lady his grandmother was. But the eternal feminine remains
still the eternal attraction for men, and the more womanly a woman is,
the gentler, the tenderer, the sweeter, the more she appeals to men. If
you will notice when a man speaks of the woman he loves, he invariably
calls her “little” no matter if she is six feet high and weighs 200
pounds. What he means is that she gives him the reaction of depending
upon him, of looking up to him, and that in some subtle way she
flatters his vanity by giving him the sense of masculine superiority.
You never see an aggressive, double-fisted woman, who fights her way
as a man does, get anywhere. And in his soul every man adores frills
and furbelows, and likes to see women dolled up. That is why girls make
such a terrible mistake when they ape mannish ways, and wear mannish
clothes. When a girl puts on knickerbockers she throws her trump card
into the discard.
To the girl who wishes to acquire charm I would also whisper this
secret: Make of yourself a mirror in which other people look upon
themselves. Especially let men see a flattering reflection of
themselves in your eyes. Can your own personal vanity. Listen with
bated breath while other people tell you of their exploits, but never
mention your own. Enthuse over their cars, their dogs. Marvel at their
adventures. Sympathize with their disappointments. Give the glad hand
to their successes, and you will be universally regarded as a woman of
perfect taste, wonderful insight, profound judgment, a brilliant talker
and a companion of whom one could never weary. It is the tireless
listeners, and not the endless talkers, whom men take out to dinner.
To the girl who wishes to develop charm I would likewise earnestly
recommend an intensive course of self-analysis. I would say to her:
“Study yourself. Find out what you can wear and what you cannot wear.
Find out the things that you can do and get away with, and the things
that you cannot do without making yourself appear either a dumbbell or
a figure of fun. Then, having ascertained what are your best points,
turn the spotlight on them. Emphasize them until you make everybody sit
up and take notice, so that even casual acquaintances will remember
you as the girl who always wears pink, or the girl who always dresses
in black, or the girl with the Mona Lisa smile, or the girl who is so
jolly and such a cut-up, or the girl who listens to you with such an
absorbed expression on her face that you could go on talking to her
forever. I would urge girls to try to be themselves, plus, as they
say in business, and to raise whatever charms of body, or mind, or
heart, they have to its _n_th power. That is the best way to acquire
personality, the “something different” about us that sets us apart from
every other human being, instead of our being just one of the herd.
Don’t be a copycat. Don’t understudy the mannerisms of another girl
just because she happens to be popular. Imitation airs and graces have
about as much sparkle to them as imitation diamonds. Besides, you never
can make a go of it. You can’t put on another woman’s characteristics
any more than you can her clothes, and make them seem as if they were
your own birthday suit. They are always a grotesque misfit. Charm has
to be made to order and cut to the measurement of the individual. That
is why one girl may do bold, outrageous things and everybody only
shrugs his shoulders and laughs at her, while another girl is sent to
Coventry for not doing half so much. That is why some women always have
a masculine shoulder offered for them to weep upon, while men tell
other women not to be fools whenever they shed a tear.
So the trick is for the girl to find out what her own class is and
qualify for the blue ribbon in that instead of trying to force her
way into a bunch of prize winners where she doesn’t belong and where
she will be thrown out by the judges. Yet many girls make the mistake
of doing this very thing. A quiet, serious-minded, mouse-like little
girl observes that some gay and dashing girl, who has quicksilver in
her veins and over whose lips laughter bubbles as spontaneously as a
mountain spring, is much admired and sought after and is the life of
the party wherever she goes.
“Aha! Vivacity is what makes a girl popular,” says the demure one to
herself. “I will also be sprightly, and merry, and make a hit.”
So she tries to imitate the high spirits of the gay girl, but she can’t
do it. Her home-made vivacity is as flat as home-brew beer beside
imported champagne. Instead of being bright, she is loud. Instead of
laughing, she giggles. Instead of being sprightly, she jumps around
like a monkey on a stick. She is so afraid she won’t talk enough that
she chatters incessantly, and instead of amusing people she bores them
to death.
Yet the very girl who is such a failure as a live wire could have
charmed every one if only she had given a master performance of girlish
sweetness, and gentleness, and quietness. She could have been a great
success if she had remained the shrinking violet that nature made her,
but she was a rank failure as a gaudy sunflower.
Then there is the big, Amazonian woman who tries to be cute and
cunning, because she sees some baby doll getting the glad hand when
she curls up on sofas, and sits on one foot, and perches on the edges
of tables, and who only succeeds in looking like a performing elephant
instead of a playful kitten when she performs these stunts. And there
is the woman without an inch of funny bone in her whole anatomy who
tries to tell good stories because she sees some jolly woman raconteur
set the table in a roar at dinner parties, and who wonders why people
burst into tears instead of into peals of mirth when she recites her
carefully memorized jokes.
They couldn’t fill other women’s rôles, yet the big woman could have
made us worship her as a goddess if she had stayed on her pedestal
instead of coming down and trying to do double somersaults in the
ring. We would have listened eagerly enough to intelligent talk from
a serious thinker who didn’t try to be funny, for Heaven knows we get
tired enough of amateur jokesmiths who think we want to be perpetually
tickled in the ribs. Believe me, girls, there is much wisdom in the old
proverb that advises the shoemaker to stick to his last. We are most
admirable when we are what nature made us with the aid of a few little
arts and embellishments to throw the original model up into higher
relief. So I counsel you to make the most of yourselves. Abandon the
foolish attempt of trying to make yourselves over into a poor copy of
some woman who is admired. Charm isn’t standardized. It has a million
forms, and every woman should illustrate her own particular version of
it.
After all what we call charm is largely a matter of personality and
the girl who wishes to cultivate that elusive something that we call
personality does well to pay much attention to her dress. This sounds
like superfluous advice to the sex whose brains are mostly cut on the
bias and shirred in the middle, and which is more concerned over the
hang of a skirt than it is over the state of its immortal soul. It is
not too much to say that three-fourths of women’s thoughts and interest
in life and heart-felt desires and envies are concentrated upon
clothes, and the marvel always is that they can put so much effort on a
subject and get such poor results.
For the great majority of women only think of dress in terms of
fashion, and they follow the mode of the moment as sheep follow their
leader over a wall. They wear blue or purple, pink or green, short
skirts or long skirts, tight ones or full ones, without any reference
to their complexions or whether their ankles are sylphlike or like
the legs of a piano, or whether they are living skeletons, or have
featherbed figures. The result is that thousands upon thousands of
women look as if their worst enemy had bought their clothes, and their
hats are a premeditated insult to their faces. But they go their way,
serene and happy, having done the worst they could by themselves, but
blissful in the knowledge that they are wearing what everybody else
is wearing. Apparently it never enters the average woman’s head that
by clothing herself in the feminine uniform of the hour she makes
herself indistinguishable in the mob, or that she could call attention
to herself by breaking away from it, and dressing to suit her own
particular type. Still less does it occur to her that her clothes offer
her an invaluable mode of self-expression, and that by them she can
emphasize her good points and camouflage her defects.
Yet every moving picture, every play she sees, offers a girl an object
lesson in the psychology of clothes that she does not heed. She never
asks herself why the innocent, trusting maiden, too artless for her own
good, always wears a white muslin and a blue sash; why the ingenue is
always a mass of fluffy ruffles; why the betrayed heroine always wears
a slinky black dress; why the adventuress is clothed in crimson and
spangles; why the vamp invariably wears long jade earrings, and a quart
of beads, and very little else.
Yet astute stage managers have found that the surest way to make an
audience visualize a woman in a certain way is to have her dress the
part. A girl might, of course, be as innocent in a crimson dress as
a white one; a woman might be as heartbroken in a pink silk and lace
negligee as she is in a bedraggled black alpaca, but it would take a
long argument to convince us of it, and we wouldn’t weep nearly as
freely over her woes as we do when we get an eyeful of her in the
clothes that tell us at once just what a poor, innocent, persecuted
heroine she is.
Surely this should suggest to every girl the wisdom of retiring to her
closet, and having a heart-to-heart session with her wardrobe, and a
vivisection party with her character, and thereby try to find out how
to dress her soul as well as her body, so as best and most effectively
to press-agent her individuality, so to speak.
If she is of the bold and dashing type, let her flaunt herself like a
sunflower in daring costumes and flaming colors, but if she is of the
quiet and gentle sort, soft fabrics, chiffons and laces and pastel
shades belong to her, and make her look like the traditional modest
violet that every man dreams of securing as a wife. Let the girl who
is flat-chested and athletic rejoice in her sport clothes. That is her
note, and brings out a certain piquant boyishness which is her greatest
attraction. But let the girl who is plump, with gracious curves, make
the most of her femininity by decking herself out in the frilliest
frocks that she can find. Each will lose in charm if she swaps her
plumage for the other’s.
Dangling ornaments, floating ribbons and jingling bracelets belong to
the gay and foolish and frivolous, but they detract from the dignity of
the stately, thoughtful, serious-minded woman. A tailor-made suit is
equal to a certificate of virtue, and when a girl is applying for a job
a plain, dark-colored suit will do more to land her the position than a
gilt-edged reference. Nobody ever believes that a girl in a low-necked,
no-sleeved frock can ever be a competent business woman. She doesn’t
look it. Every woman knows that her eyes seem twice as blue if she
has a blue lining to her hat, and that she can turn a spotlight on
her every freckle by wearing a spotted dress. In the same way she can
bring out her characteristics by the way she dresses. If she wishes to
emphasize her cuteness, she can do it by dressing like a baby doll.
If she wishes to be thought a goddess, she can add to her divinity
by long-trailing robes. If she wishes to be thought a good sport and
treated as a pal by men, sport clothes are hers, while if domesticity
is her long suit, she can turn the trick by wearing ruffled little
white aprons at home. So study your type, girls, and dress the part,
if you want to make the most of the attractions with which nature has
endowed you.
III
THE ORDINARY WOMAN
I wish that I had the distributing of some of the Carnegie medals for
heroes. I would give one to just the Ordinary Woman. It is true that
she never manned a lifeboat in a stormy sea, or plunged into a river
to save a drowning person. It is true that she never stopped a runaway
horse, or dashed into a burning building, or gave any other spectacular
exhibition of courage.
She has only stood at her post thirty, or forty, or fifty years,
fighting sickness and poverty and loneliness, and disappointment so
quietly, with such a Spartan fortitude that the world has never noticed
her achievements. Yet, in the presence of the Ordinary Woman, the
battle-scarred veteran, with his breast covered with medals signifying
valor, may well stand uncovered before one braver than he.
There is nothing high and heroic in her appearance. She is just a
commonplace woman, plainly dressed, with a tired face and work-worn
hands—the kind of woman that you meet a hundred times a day upon the
street without ever giving her a second glance, still less saluting
her as a heroine. Nevertheless, as much as the bravest soldier, she
is entitled to the cross of the Legion of Honor for distinguished
gallantry on the Battlefield of Life.
Years and years ago, when she was fresh and young, and gay, and
light-hearted, she was married. Her head, as is the case with most
girls, was full of dreams. Her husband was to be a Prince Charming,
always tender and considerate and loving, shielding her from every care
and worry. Life itself was to be a fairy tale.
One by one the dreams fell away. The husband was a good man, but he
grew indifferent to her before long. He ceased to notice when she put
on a fresh ribbon. He never paid her the little compliments for which
a woman’s soul hungers. He never gave her a kiss or a caress, and
their married life sank into a deadly monotony that had no romance to
brighten it, no joy or love to lighten it.
Day after day she sewed and cooked and cleaned and mended to make a
comfortable home for a man who did not even give her the poor pay of a
few words of appreciation. At his worst he was cross and querulous. At
his best he was silent, and would gobble his food like a hungry animal
and subside into his paper, leaving her to spend a dull and monotonous
evening after a dull and monotonous day.
The husband was not one of the fortunate few who have the gift of
making money. He worked hard, but opportunity does not smile on every
man, and the wolf was never very far away from their door.
Women know the worst of poverty. It is the wife, who has the spending
of the insufficient family income, who learns all the bitter ways of
scrimping and paring and saving. The husband must present a decent
appearance, for policy’s sake, when he goes to business; certain things
are necessities for the children; and so the heaviest of all the
deprivations fall upon the woman who stays at home and strives to make
one dollar do the work of five.
That is the way of the Ordinary Woman; and what sacrifices she makes,
what tastes she crucifies, what longings for pretty things and dainty
things she smothers, not even her own family guess. They think it is an
eccentricity that makes her choose the neck of the chicken and the hard
end of the loaf and to stay at home from any little outing. Ah, if they
only knew!
For each of her children she trod the Gethsemane of woman, only to go
through that slavery of motherhood which the woman endures who is too
poor to hire competent nurses. For years and years she never knew what
it was to have a single night’s unbroken sleep. The small hours of the
morning found her walking the colic, or nursing the croup, or covering
restless little sleepers, or putting water to thirsty little lips.
There was no rest for her, day or night. There was always a child in
her arms or clinging to her skirts. Oftener than not she was sick and
nerve-worn and weary almost to death, but she never failed to rally to
the call of “Mother!” as a good soldier rallies to his battle-cry.
Nobody called her brave, and yet, when one of the children came down
with malignant diphtheria, she braved death a hundred times, in bending
over the little sufferer, without one thought of danger. And when the
little one was laid away under the sod, she who had loved most was the
first to gather herself together and take up the burden of life for the
others.
The supreme moment of the Ordinary Woman’s life, however, came when she
educated her children above herself and lifted them out of her sphere.
She did this with deliberation. She knew that in sending her bright boy
and talented girl off to college she was opening up to them paths in
which she could not follow; she knew that the time would come when they
would look upon her with pitying tolerance or contempt, or perhaps—God
help her!—be ashamed of her.
But she did not falter in her self-sacrifice. She worked a little
harder, she denied herself a little more, to give them the advantages
that she never had. In this she was only like millions of other
Ordinary Women who are toiling over cooking-stoves, slaving at
sewing-machines, pinching and economizing to educate and cultivate
their children—digging with their own hands the chasm that will
separate them almost as much as death itself would.
Wherefore I say the Ordinary Woman is the real heroine of life.
IV
TEACH THE CHILDREN TO LOVE FATHER
Are you teaching your children to love and admire their father? Do you
ceaselessly point out to your children their father’s good qualities?
Do you hold their father up as a hero before your children’s eyes? Do
you teach your children to appreciate their father? If you do not,
you are not giving your husband a fair deal, nor a run for his money.
Fatherhood calls for just as many sacrifices as motherhood does. The
only coin in which these can be repaid is affection and gratitude, and
if he is defrauded of these he is poor indeed.
From the time the first baby is born the average man becomes literally
the slave of his family. He sells himself into bondage so that his
children may live soft; that they may have advantages that he never
had in his youth; that they may enjoy luxuries he never knew. He works
overtime and grows prematurely old and bent, that his boys may go to
college and belong to smart clubs and have automobiles, and that his
daughters may attend fashionable schools, and dress like fashion
plates, and go in the right circles.
It is father who stays at home and works through hot summers and cold
winters, when the family goes to Europe. It is father who wears the
shabbiest clothes. It is father who has the worst room and the smallest
closet space in the home. The percentage of money that father spends
on himself and in gratifying his own personal tastes and desires is
negligible. Virtually all the money he has earned by a lifetime of hard
toil has been lavished on his family.
Whether this pays or not, whether all of this labor and anxiety and
self-denial have been worthless or not, depends altogether on his
children’s attitude toward him. If they love him; if they are grateful
to him; if they appreciate what he has done for them, it is the best
investment that a man ever made, and it makes him richer than any
millionaire. But if his children are indifferent and callous; if they
take all that he has done for them as no more than their due, and
without even a “thank you”; if they see in him nothing but a shabby
little man who hasn’t been particularly successful as a moneymaker,
then all his life work goes for nothing. His sacrifices are without
reward. He is bankrupt in heart.
Now, the attitude of children toward their father is almost entirely
determined by their mother; and whether they look upon him as a
superior being to be adored and worshiped, or merely as a cash register
that they can punch whenever they want any money, depends altogether
upon what she has taught them. There are women who teach their children
to hate and fear their father by making him an ogre to them. When the
children are bad the little culprits are always threatened with what
their father will do to them. The mother thus makes the father the
hanging judge who inflicts punishment on the small sinners.