BETTY'S DIARY
The Editor, The Listener. Sir,-Am I class-conscious? If so, what class am I conscious of? I don’t know. And I don’t know what class I belong to, but I find that I cannot read Betty's Diary without irritation. Are all women snobs, or even the majority of them? And if they are, must The Listener pander to them? Let us hear about a Betty who hasn't a servant, or a refrigerator, or a bunch of snobby friends, or a husband with a car or a weekly butcher's bill equivalent to a labourer's salary, I'd like-just for a change-to read the diary of a woman who found
butcher’s and grocer’s bills rather a worry, whose husband wasn’t in a position to sling tenners at her on her birthday, who hadn’t a frigidaire, and who found it impossible to include dry martinis, braised fowl, péche melba and liqueur brandy in her dinner menus. No doubt women need ways of escape at times, but can’t we escape somewhere else? Yours etc., £250 A YEAR. Auckland, June 7, 1940. (Betty replies: "I report and do not preach. Your correspondent should cultivate her sense of humour. A dry martini occasionally might make her feel more charitable.’’)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19400621.2.24.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 52, 21 June 1940, Page 12
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203BETTY'S DIARY New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 52, 21 June 1940, Page 12
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