The Topeka State Journal

Dorothy Dix Talks
BY DOROTHY DIX
World's Highest Paid Woman Writer,
A Punishment to Fit the Crime—1

The old adage "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" is receiving new and curious illustrations in these days of feminine emancipation.

During the past year more than a dozen women settled their accounts with faithless husbands and lovers by murdering them, and now comes the interesting cases of two wives who have not only divorced their husbands for statutory offenses, but who grimly declare that they are going to see to it that the men marry the "other women."

It would seem from this that the way of the philanderer will not be the safe and pleasant one in the future that it has been in the past, and that husbands who elect to dally along the primrose path, will do so at their peril.

It was one thing to have to face the tears and reproaches of a jealous wife. It is quite another thing to face an automatic in the hands of a woman whose aim is not obscured by the fact that she is green-eyed.

The old recipe for keeping a husband properly domesticated was to make home pleasant for him. Millions of wives tried this with but indifferent success, and so it will be interesting to see whether making it dangerous to leave home works out any better.

Perhaps the wives who use cave women methods in preventing their husbands from wandering from their own firesides are simply reverting to type, and using the same method that their pre-historic ancestress did in keeping their mates from straying off after younger and slimmer females with less hair and shorter teeth than they had.

Undoubtedly, a wholesome fear of consequences does a lot to keep us all in the straight and narrow path.

Women are, as a sex, more moral and lead more upright lives than men do, not because they are intrinsically of a higher and nobler nature, but because society has made them pay a bigger price for wrong doing than it makes men pay.

Just as many women as men have wandering fancies. Just as many wives get tired of fat and stupid husbands, as there are husbands who get tired of fat and stupid wives. Just as many women at middle age would like to have one more fling, and one more bite at the angel food of romance, as there are middle aged men who crave the thrill of another amorous adventure.

But when the average woman marries, she settled down to be a good and faithful wife. She stifles her yearnings, and tries to hold the thought that John is a good provider even if he is prosy, and tedious. She satisfies her hankering for cake with bread and butter, because if she doesn't her husband will yank her into the divorce court, and she will find herself a forlorn, déclassé woman without home, or position, or a meal ticket.

Husband, on the contrary, may nibble at forbidden fruit with comparative safety so long as he doesn't do his apple eating in wife's face, or call public attention to it.

Do not.

(Copyright, 1922, by the Wheeler Syndicate Inc.)