Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/556

552 side of married infelicity. Of course, there are millions of happy marriages, but such happiness, like good health, is inarticulate and does not advertise itself in the market place.

Every self-supporting girl must also be deeply impressed with the difference between her own economic position and that of her mother. For years, as a girl, she has seen her father and mother working together as life partners; and she has seen all the net income recognized as her father's personal property. Her mother's relation to the family purse has generally been that of a medieval serf to his lord's estate. Even the house furnishing and the mother's own clothes have often been secured by stealth and indirection. Now the girl has her own pay envelope, and in possessing it absolutely she holds the key to life as she desires it. It is not to be wondered at that a young woman in full possession of youth and health finds it difficult to give up a salary which, even if small, is absolutely her own, to accept a feudal relation to some man's salary, often not much larger than the one she has earned, knowing it must suffice for two and probably for more.

Of course, this feeling fails to recognize the danger of the passing years. With the blindness of youth, it over-emphasizes the value of present liberty. Later, she may see the day when she will realize that she has sold her birthright for a pay envelope. But it is not so much the amount of the income that really troubles the modern woman as it is her personal relation to it. Surely some means might be devised by which a woman could be related to the family income so as to preserve her independence and self-respect as well as that of her husband.

Another difficulty that confronts the young woman of to-day in her search for the altar is her superior intelligence. This is generally less important than it seems, but in a country which worships popular education and where all parents hope to give their children at least a better education than they have had, correct grammar and a speaking acquaintance with Robert Browning and Michael Angelo acquire a value out of all proportion to their power to function in life. When a likely young man comes courting who says, "You and me will go," and prefers the movies to Ibsen, it makes the young woman who aspires to culture question the long evenings of a lifetime.

This is especially true of the young woman who has risen intellectually and economically above her social class. Skilled preparation has given her an income superior to that of the men in the group where she was born; and she has been too busy studying and working to make social connections in the class where she thinks and works. The social emancipation of woman lags far behind her intellectual and economic freedom, so that these young women whom we are considering still move socially in their family planes. The men in that group are too ignorant and too poor to suit her; and the men with whom she works