A School for Widows

In Which the Fair Bereft Will he Taught the Technique of Remarriage

EDWARD E. PARAMORE, Jr.

THE underlying motive of the girl's finishing school is to equip her adequately for her first venture into matrimony. Consequently, there is no nonsense of utility about her education; it is frankly concerned with the acquisition of the most effective ornaments and gestures to capture the eligible male. She studies literature, piano, the history of art, and is taken to the opera once or twice a week, on the sound principle that the richest prizes are often to be found in the newer f i n ancial circles, where "culture" (provided it is not too deep or too unconventional) is esteemed as a desirable feminine attribute. Thus, by the constant union of good breeding and gilt bonds, is assured the perpetuation of a strong republican aristocracy.

This, at least, is the theory upon which, in the past, we have wisely founded our untitled peerage, but now, alas, it is beginning to crumble unto dust about our feet. Need it be said that the chief cause is the deplorable rise and spread of flapperism? Instead of the innocence, the artfully artless grace, the carefully cultivated charm, the studied helplessness manufactured by the girl's finishing school, flapperism has substituted a vulgar, masculine sophistication, a hoydenish disregard for tradition and good manners, and a self-reliance so stubborn and far-reaching that some flappers actually prefer to work for a living rather than accept "the delicious irresponsibility and freedom that goes with economic dependence upon a man.

Wild Oat Marriages

FOR a long time this problem has engaged our Board of Social Strategy, and, after an exhaustive analysis of the situation in the light of modern psychology, historical precedents, the science of domestic diplomacy, market conditions, and the position of women in previous civilizations, we have arrived at what is at least a tentative solution.

What we propose is a School for Widows, both grass and sod, where the fair bereft may learn the proper philosophy and technique of remarriage. Realizing that flapperism is too strong to be combatted successfully in the finishing schools, we have concluded to accept the first marriage as an inevitable failure, and to concentrate our attention on those that follow. If the flapper, in her youthful folly and ignorance of the nature of man, will persist in contracting these wild oat marriages, our only hope is to let her get well burnt the first time, and then catch her while still in the full penitence inspired by the divorce court or more natural bereavement.

As a flapper-wife, the widow will have discovered that men do not really prefer worldliness to innocence, or independence of thought to demure trustfulness. The man who looks forward to the delights of leading his bride, gently and patronizingly, out of her modest ignorance of life, of acquainting her with the sinister things that go on in a man's world, does not like to find that she knows more than he does, and is already twice as disillusioned and cynical. This delicious process of corruption by which he shocks and amazes her and elicits her sweet reproaches for his cynical platitudes, is a priceless adventure which no man likes to forego, and which the flapper has virtually extinguished.

Again, no rising young stock-broker nor real estate agent likes to be contradicted in matters of art, politics, and literature by a wife who has her own opinions and does not hesitate to suggest that he doesn't know what he's talking about. For the truth is that nine times out of ten he doesn't.

One of the most important courses at the Widow's School, therefore, will be First'Marriage, A-1. In this course the causes of the initial matrimonial failure will be thoroughly analyzed.

While the text-books on the subject will probably include Mencken's Defense of Women and this magazine, we do not contemplate spending much time on theory. Firm believers in the case system as taught in the Harvard Law School, we will have our widows take up the case of every first marriage recorded in the Social Register, and study its collapse in the light of the divorce court evidence, front page space in the yellow journals, gossip reputation of the bride among the dowagers while still a debutante, cause of husband's death (if any) and coroner's verdict, verdict of husband's relatives, statistics of the couple with regard to bridge losses, turnover of cooks, chauffeurs, and other servants, amount of business done at the neighborhood bootlegger, etc. In this way the pupil will become familiar with several hundred demonstrations of conjugal disintegration, with all the organic causes, symptoms, and histology.

Another important course will be Innocence, B-4, which, in view of the pupil's past, will be largely taken up with elaborate instruction in the art of dissimulation. At first glance it

looks as if the attitude of innocence would be a hard thing for a divorcee or a widow to maintain, but such is the blindness and credulity of the ordinary man, that it is actually very easy, if a moderately acute intuition is combined with the most elementary technique. Our pupils will be well grounded in all the sure-fire stratagems, such as telling an outrageous story and then naively asking the point, or relating some perfectly innocuous incident as a shocking experience.

The Romance of Crepe

AFTER consulting with our staff of psychoanalysts, we have decided to include courses in the Evolution of Mourning (see accompanying sketches), Modern and Victorian Vine Clinging, and the Metaphysics of the Late Husband. Mourning, indeed, is such an important rite that we suggest that all divorcees adopt it as well as legitimate widow's. It will not only help to forestall the suspicion of guilt that enters even the most chivalrous male breast in the presence of a divorced woman, but it will provide the most fascinating method of wanning a second husband. Love and grief are so closely related, in fact, that in France there exists a special cult of widows—called Les Tombales—who frequent the cemeteries and often receive the proposals of their new husbands on the very headstones of their late lamented. What could be more alluring than the spectacle of a lovely woman slowly emerging from the melancholy seclusion of grief, gradually shedding her great swaths of black crepe until only a thin, chiffon veil and a black-bordered handkerchief remain, her eyes suddenly rekindling with the joy of life, and finally the faint glimmer of new7 love shining through her sadness? It is a drama which no man over forty can resist.

Vine Clinging is obvious enough as a blandwhich needs ishment, only to be lifted out of its antiquated Victorian ritual and modernized to become highly effective, but the Metaphysics of the Late Husband is a more delicate matter. He must inevitably appear as a sort of ghostly rival whognaws at the heart of the new lover's every pleasure, unless the widow is adroit enough to make of him a plausible memory of decent respect but emotional indifference.

To this end our pupils will be taught to remember the late husband either as a stranger or a brother, in no wise associated in her mind with the tender passion of love. Such is our provisional curriculum for the new school.