DOMESTIC ECONOMICS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 32, 9 February 1929, Page 14

DOMESTIC ECONOMICS

DO WIVES EARN" THEIR KEEP?

Out of a recently published book of Mr. George Bernard Shaw's has arisen an animated discussion as to whether wives earn their.,keep! So many of them so obviously, earn it, "and then some," that they are outside the pale of controversy on tins piquant subject, says an exchange. . But there are others who do not so obviously wear the palm of economic enfranchisement in the hearthstone career. rJ,'hey cannot exhibit toilworn hands, nor point to an almost incredible round of daily duties as tlieir 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 obvious, may be surely said to earn their .keep. Take, for instance, the novelist who has "made good" with, the publicity, unacknowledged, but. privately worshipped talent of his wife as a necessary accessory to his own activities. He enn evolve plots, but has no'literary, "style."' She. "writes up his skeleton stories. And so: easily that she represents 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 woll-known . business mau whose staff organisation and service policy have been built up on the inspired suggestion of his lady wife, who again is seemingly a typical example of the "paraKite" 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. Aud.^quite apart from the .considerable proportion of women who thus amply earn their keep sub rosa, there are those -\vn6se wifehood, in terms of. husbandly happiness, and content is a career Jh itself. There are many men who do riot need the sort of active professional help that some husbands welcome: with gratitude from gitted 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 indigunntly repudiate the Shavian . suggestion ' that these charmers did. not earn their keep.