DO MARRIED WOMEN EARN THEIR KEEP?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 441, 24 August 1928, Page 5

DO MARRIED WOMEN EARN THEIR KEEP?

Out of a recently-published book of j Mr. George Bernard Shaw’s has arisen j an animated discussion as to whether j wives earn their keep! So many of them so obviously earn it, “and then | some,” that they are outside the pale i of controversy on this piquant subject. But there are others who do not so obviously wear the palm of economic enfranchisement in the hearthstone career. They cannot exhibit toilworm hands, nor point to an almost incredible round of daily duties as their contribution to the world's work. Yet in this category may be found quite a number of women whose unobtrusive but persistent influence has been the means of enabling their liege-lords to fulfil a larger destiny than they could have attained to without wifely aid. Such women, though not obviously may be surely said to earn their keep. I know a novelist who has “made good” with the publicly-unacknow-ledged but privately-worshipped talent of his wife as a necessary accessory to his own activities. He can evolve plots, but has no literary “style.” She “writes up” his skeleton stories. And so easily that she presents the typical figure of the leisured middle-class wife with any number of more or less frivolous social interests. No one would suspect that she was her husband’s right-hand at the money-making game! Then there is a well-known business man whose staff organisation and service policy have been built up on the inspired suggestions of his lady wife, who again is seemingly a typical example of the “parasite” who lives a supremely leisured existence under halcyon conditions. There is nothing to indicate the hours of thought and steady application she has given to the solution of so many of the problems entailed in the successful running of a great business house. And, quite apart from the considerable proportion of women who thus amply earn their keep sub rosa, there are those whose wifehood, in terms of husbandly happiness and content, is a career in itself. There are many men who do not heed the sort of active professional help that some husbands welcome with gratitude from gifted wives. What they do need is the subservient but none the less potent encouragement—in the form of subtle flattery—of a charming life partner. And husbands to whom this feminine flattery is forthcoming, and to whom it is the breath of life, would most indig nantly repudiate the Shavian suggestion that these charmers did not earn their keep. Relative feminine values are variously assessed by various types of husbands. I fancy there are surprisingly few who would endorse the theory that married women largely compose the parasite element in the social scheme. 13. V. Half a kerosene tin cut lengthwise just fits under a built-in fuel copper and serves for an ash-pan, saving time and labour on wash-days. * * * A discarded safety razor blade is admirable for cutting buttonholes, ensuring a clean, straight cut easy to work on.