Candidly Speaking – Author's wife shows real courage (8-8-41)

The Pittsburgh Press (August 8, 1941)

CANDIDLY SPEAKING —

Author’s wife shows real courage

By Maxine Garrison

Once they’re separate from their husbands, wives are apt to adopt as a primary characteristic an air of wounded pride. A woman in such a position seems to want it clearly understood, above all, that she is the innocent victim of a man’s beastliness.

It was she, she will have you know, who made the break, who left the brute to his own devices. It came about through no fault of her own. She is the one who is sinned against, and she could have her husband back in a minute. All she needs to do is to snap her finger.

No one who realizes that there is seldom but one guilty party to a quarrel actually believes this. Most people figure both husband and wife had something to do with the tiff, and the malicious are quick to infer that it was probably the husband who left the wife.

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Virtually no one questions her attitude when she’s around. Her friends sympathize and encourage, telling her she’s better off without the pusillanimous misrepresentation of masculinity she used to call husband.

Mighty hard words

Her own pride and the sympathy of her friends (which she secretly resents) encourage her to commit herself publicly in such a manner that reconciliation is made virtually impossible. She says she doesn’t ever want to see the man again, that she has made up her mind and nothing could change it, that she would be a fool even to think of going back. Those are mighty hard words to swallow and, as a rule, she finds herself out on the well-known limb, carefully sawing it out from underneath herself.

That is the typical build-up for a marital separation. And because it is so typical, Mrs. John Steinbeck’s reaction comes as a major surprise.

It’s been about two months since Mrs. Steinbeck became separated from her husband, the writer whose Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men were recent best-sellers.

But in New York the other day, Mrs. Steinbeck said:

Most women would go to Reno and call it a day. I want to see it through. If we wait, perhaps John and I will be the better for it. I know our love won’t be the same. There won’t be the blind devotion, the dumb trust, but there will be a new understanding.

As if that weren’t enough, she admitted that the separation had brought her suffering.

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No show-off attempt

Now there is a woman with courage! Even in front of reporters she is not tempted to show off, to play the role of the martyr, the injured wife. She does not attempt to throw blame in one direction or another, she does not list grievances nor whine, and she is brave enough to admit that she hopes for reconciliation.

Most women would never be able to swallow their pride to such an extent. It doesn’t matter to them that pride is the coldest comfort in the world for unhappiness, or that they behave like foolish children in refusing to admit a possibility of wrong on their own side.

Most women, in fact, once they’ve taken one step toward unhappiness seem dead set on taking all the rest of them. They’d rather go through misery than admit that they were at least part wrong in the beginning, and show a willingness to try again.

If Mrs. Steinbeck’s attitude were more general, a lot fewer divorce decrees would be chalked up in the courts. And even if the reconciliation she hopes for doesn’t take place, she seems already to have won one of the biggest battles anyone faces – the battle with her own pride, stubbornness and bitterness.

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