When Marriage Is a Failure—Cherchez la Femme
Have You a Little Failure In Your Home?
A CATALOGUE OF WIVES
There are only six kinds of wives. They are all shown on these two pages, but only one of them can be—on a crossed heart—warmly recommended. Fortunately marriage—which is at best but a primitive substitute for friendship—is becoming less and less fashionable, so that every year fewer of our young society leaders are sacrificed on the wedding pyre. This is especially true among clever people. And now, reader, here is our first exhibit in wives, a very terrible kind, to be sure. She is known as the DEVOTED wife. She loves—and watches out for—her husband, especially in the early morning hours. Note the restraint exercised by our artist in refusing to introduce a cuckoo clock, a device usually inevitable in pictures of this kind.
THE LAPLAND MODEL
Here we see a living embodiment of Model No. 2—the BIJOU DOLL. She is often a blonde, but always a deceiver. Despite persistent complaints—by husbands—against wives of this model, the demand for them continues to be brisk. She always has a serious grievance against Fate! Why is it that her husband is so groundlessly jealous? Is it her fault if his men friends pester her and bother the life out of her? Was it her plan to share a chair with Mr. Reginald Stuart? And how absurd her husband is to carry on in that ridiculous way, just because, being tired, she had to sit somewhere, and, as there was nothing else to sit on, the thought suddenly flashed on her: Why not sit on Mr. Stuart?
THE SECRET SOLVED
And here we see the only perfect wife, the model known as the “LET YOU ALONE.” She is positively the final word—the dernier cri—in wives. Have you ever tried one? No! Ah, then you can’t imagine what married happiness really is. She is guaranteed never to ask any of the four, fatal questions, namely: Why? Where? Who? and When? Hers is an incomparable model that robs marriage of many of its horrors. Give her a cigarette, a glass of chartreuse, on improving little French novel, a pet dog or two and she won’t ask for another thing during an entire afternoon—until the gentlemen callers begin to arrive. More and more sociologists are realizing that married life can be made one grand, sweet song, if the two combatants will only let each other alone.