Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 161, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1911 — WHAT IS A HUSBANDETTE? [ARTICLE]

WHAT IS A HUSBANDETTE?

We are Indebted to the undaunted! sisterhood matching on toward emancipation, and whole successwe can now scarcely doubt, for the hew worth "husbandette.” Compacted into that rather imposing-looking Word, wes may imagine some of the' asperity! that doesn’t otherwise get-itself pressed tn the caastic oratory thaC marks the meetings of the-more vanced battlers for the 'right .MWI against masculine oppression. We are tpld that a hust&ndette id ' “a married man who will neither fain low nor accompany his wife in her political flights, nor is he grilling to permit her to broaden mentally and politically. He prefers her to keep her ideas of freedom shut up in a tiny space: Also,” continues thin enlightener, “the husbandefte is'to the modern) woman what the kitchenette is to the modern apartment.” With this further explanation, we are rather more confused than if the architecturally domestic simile had not been subjoined to the description - that preceded it< t r,. To the grave and for thd most partunimaginative male rirfnd', “husbandette," from its very orthography,, would more readily suggest the deferential person united by the law and. by annexation and subjugation to the superior being who says: “I and Mr. Smith think thug and so.” The suffix “etta” in its English usage indicates something inchoate, not fully in possession of its powers and faculties, still nebular, perhaps, with potentialities that may er may * not find development according to the removal or nonrcanoval of hindrances natural or artificial. In this inanimate world* its meaning is clear enough. A wagonette is a little wagon, or a lighter one than the standard; a serviette a small napkin, pantalette an abbreviated trouser. It is for this reason of its implication of diminution that “kitchenette” means an abridged kitchen. Huabandette would thus by . extension, as the lexicographers say, be an abridged husband, which is as near as we can come to what We are driving at—St Louis Globe-Democrat. /