Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 290, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1914 — Notes and Comment [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Notes and Comment

Of Interest to Women Readers

WHY WOMEN DO NOT MARRY. Gertrude Atherton Bays the “Sharpened Intellects'’ of Modern Glrle Encourage Independence. Leaving entirely out of the question the substantial improvements demanded by the suffragists, and those illbalance children of their old age called suffragettes, there are certain more Intimate disadvantages pertaining to the immemorial status of woman, which, unconsciously or otherwise, Influence the thousands of girls that deliberately enter upon the Independent life before man shall have a chance to marry, desert, neglect or bore them. It is possible that the woman never lived who was bom without the instinct for romantic love, and its less romantic sequels, marriage and maternity, says Gertrude Atherton in The Delineator. Being the only hope of the race until science learns to manufacture estimable Frankedsteins, every sort of woman, when young, is as prone to the disease of love as to the microbous afflictions of childhood; but the sharp* ened intellects of the modern female teach her to observe not only that Indulgence In the primitive blessings is often productive of a tame happiness at best, but that it is mere chance if she does not waste several years of her active youth waiting for some man to exert his inalienable right to woo and propose. A man may trample down barriers, make opportunities, persist, overwhelm, but a woman, with double the fascination and intelligence, must either stoop to contemptible scheming or proudly bide her time,, as likely as not to miss her one chance of happiness because circuH&ignces do not give her the opportunity to reveal herself to the kindred spirit If she can not pursue a man as a man pursues a woman when he wants her; if she has not the supreme attractions which bring a man to a woman’s feet with a flash of the eye, she can at least avoid the mean subterfuges of the husband-hunters, and lead a life in which man as a lovefactor is practically eliminated. She can also enjoy much the same privileges as men, until, * perhaps—who knows? —one day she may meet in this larger, fuller life a congenial, many-sided erasure who wants something more thau a reproduction of his grandmother.

The Process of Evolution; or, the Descent of Woman.