NOTE: Author Dorothy Dix was the Oprah of the 1920s-1930s. She was the most widely read advice columnist of her day, with her writings syndicated in newspapers across the globe.
FULL
TEXT: A correspondent says: “It is women who are the petitioners in the great
majority of divorce cases. It is wives who clutter up the courts with their
matrimonial woes. Not men. It is seldom that you hear of a husband having the
law on his wife. Why is this? Do women, taking them by and large, give better
satisfaction as wives than men do as husbands. Or do men bear the wear and tear
of marriage better than women do. Or does the fickle sex extend its mania for
change even to changing husbands.”
Nobody
can authoritatively answer these questions, but a light was thrown on them
recently by a questionnaire that was sent to a large number of married couples
asking if they were satisfied with their males, and to which far more men
replied “yes” than women. This may have been mere gallantry on the men’s part,
or, it may be, that men are less choosy about wives than wives are about
husband, for certainly general observation shows that the mill run of wives are
not easier to live with than that of husbands. They are much of a muchness. And
neither one is any prize package.
Probably
when a husband and wife agree to disagree, the reason he lets her ask for the
divorce is to save her face. The divorcee has to have some plausible excuse for
breaking up her home and half-orphaning her children that will appeal to public
sympathy, whereas the man who resents the Little Woman bawling the life out of
him is regarded as a quitter and a poor sport w no couldn’t take it.
~ Marriage Hope Too Much ~
There
are many reasons why women are the chief patrons of the divorce courts. One of
them is because they expect too much men and marriage. In spite of all they
have seen in their homes and on their walks abroad, every starry-eyed little
bride thinks that her marriage is going to be a perpetual petty party, and that
her husband will be a happy combination of a go-getter and a cinema hero. And
when she finds out that marriage is mostly babies and cooking and wearing last
year’s clothes, she turns to Reno as a cure for her sorrows.
Another
reason why women get divorces oftener nowadays than they, did in the past is
because it is the vogue. Everybody’s doing it. Especially in Hollywood, which
sets the style in conduct as well as clothes for half of the women in the
country. In Grandma’s time, when a divorce was looked upon askance, wives
suffered and were strong, no matter how much they had lost their taste for
their husbands. But now, when getting a new husband causes no more comment than
getting a new dress, they feel that to stay married to the same man makes them
seem as old-fashioned as if they were still wearing last year’s hats.
And
another, and a bitter and a shameful reason, why women ask for divorces oftener
than men is because they have found out how profitable is the alimony racket
and how easily it can be worked by any pretty woman. Thousands of women marry
men for whom they have no affection, and with whom they have no intention of
living, just because a marriage license delivers their husbands into their
hands as the victims of the lowest holdup game ever practiced.
Undoubtedly
there are times when a divorce is a necessity, but if you will take the profit
motive and the fashion out of it, it would save many a broken home.
[“Dorothy Dix Says:” (column), syndicated (Bell Syndicate
Inc.), The News (Frederick, Md.), Jul. 6, 1944, p. 4]
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