Hits: 1106
2014-07-22-thrilling-mary

Source:  “His Five Wives” part 2, Physical Culture, Volume XXXV, February 1916

“…You see, I had to avoid all negative suggestions; I mustn’t lead him to think that Gwendolyn was less interesting. I must lead him to think that I was more interesting.”

“And how did you do it?”

“I became a suffragette.”

“What?”

“Don’t you see that that’s the newest way for a woman to make herself interesting; to be thrilling and romantic, and bold and new, and dangerous and startling?”

“But, Sister, you mean you did that deliberately?”

“It was genuine to a certain extent, even while it was deliberate. Ralph was letting Gwendolyn take him out in her automobile; so I made up my mind. It was only a few days before the first parade, which was organized here in New York, and seemed so very bold that it made everybody shiver. I got myself a beautiful white costume with a yellow sash over my shoulder; and so I broached the subject to my husband. You perceive that I was not broaching it only intellectually, but sensuously. It was not merely that I had got hold of a new idea—he might have though the idea was a crazy one, and been irritated about it; it was that I appeared before him in a new and striking guise, and gave him a brand new thrill. He didn’t realize, of course, how much it was my appearance that stirred him, and how little it was my arguments.”