Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 312, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1918 — TAKING THE HUBBY SHOPPING [ARTICLE]

TAKING THE HUBBY SHOPPING

.ft t —— . * ' Big Chief of the Household Learns What Trouble the Wife Always Has .to Experience. As to the advisability of taking one’s husband to the shops, much may be _said nn both-RldoA observes Simeon - Strunsky, in Harper’s Magazine. On the one hand, it is certain that after he has spent thrrie hrturs in a chair while his wife tries on spring suits, a man Will have a very definite Idea of what women suffer In the daily task. The next tttne his wife comes home from the shops with a headache he Is likely to be more sympathetic. But then again It may be that the memory of his own bitter ordeal will prevail, and he will carry away with him a more vivid sense of the futilities In which the life of woman is spent. Tt all depends on the man, of course. But the husbana endowed with just a bit of philosophic reflection, planted three solid hours in a tapestry chair, In an audience of 300 women and 50 salesgirls, .will, watch the strained and tired faces, the trylngs-on and dtvestings, the search after the unattainable ideal, the final purchase made more out of weariness than out of satisfaction; and he cannot help asking himself; “For whom is it all?” And he will say to himself, “For us males?” And it will make him thoughtful.

Taking along one’s husband to the store as critic and appraiser Is of no use at all. In the first place, his principles of criticism are utterly unlike a woman’s. His criticism is of the romantic, impressionistic school. He looks at his wife in the green cloak with fur edging and says, “I like that.” Or else he says, “You look well In that.” As if the mere fact that a woman looks well in a green coat or that she likes it were the deciding factor!

Woman belongs, in the matter of dress, to the scientific school of criticism, which bases itself on universal principles—Aristotle, Taine, Brunetiere. It is criticism which does not ask whether a woman looks well in a green cloak trimmed with fox, but says: “How does this green cloak fit into that woman’s life, her temperament, her likes, her friends, her duty of being duplicated by the woman next door, on the other hand?” A man likes his wife’s new dinner gown when it looks well on his wife In the shop, A woman is bound to think of the gown in relation to the wallpaper and the lights at home, the fact that she had a dark-red dinner gown year before last, the fact that her color is somewhat higher than tt was two years ago, that she has taken on three pounds in weight, that her husband’s income has materially Increased since last year, and that next year people will be wearing greens and purples.