Dorothy Dix Says...

This week's topic: Can a woman keep house and keep a job outside the home as well? Dorothy Dix answers the question in this column first printed on April 18, 1940:

DEAR MISS DIX - My husband and I are both employed and we board in a private home, but I am not satisfied. I wish to do light housekeeping and still hold my job, but he says that it will be too hard on me and if I go to housekeeping I must give up my work. What do you think?

MARGO.

Answer - I think your husband is exactly right, and that no woman should undertake to carry on two jobs at one time. Of course, many women do. They work all day in store or office and then rush home and clean up the house and get dinner. The result is that they are nervous, peevish, overwrought and end up in a breakdown. The reason that men last so much better in business do is not because they are physically stronger or have better health, but because they have so much more sense about taking care of themselves. When a man does a day’s work he calls it a day and lets it go at that. He doesn’t go from his work to his home and cook his dinner and sit up half the night pressing his trousers and sewing on buttons.

No, indeed. He goes and gets a good, hot meal that somebody else has cooked and that he hasn’t had to worry about or plan for. He spends the evening reading or amusing himself, lets the tailor do his mending and the laundry do his washing.

But a woman superimposes the work of a woman on her work of a man. She does a man’s work outside of her home and then comes home and cooks and scrubs, washes and retrims her hat and takes a tuck in her skirt. Then just about the time when she is getting to the place in business where she is capable of drawing down a good salary she blows up in nervous prostration.

So take your husband’s advice, Margo, and board with somebody else until you are able to set up a real home and devote all of your time to it. “Light housekeeping” is well named “light.” There is mighty little substance to it, and I don’t blame a man for not wanting to leave a place where there is real food to be had.

Skin Care

Soap and water may have been okay for the teenage crowd, but 1940s beauty experts did have a few tricks up their sleeves for women looking for a little more in cleansing the face.

If you use a granular wash, such as beauty grains, you will find the skin tone clarified, and the texture improved. (The New American Etiquette, 1941)

An effective routine for the care of the war worker’s skin is frequent, thorough cleansing with warm water and a medicated soap. ("No Ration on Soap," St. Petersburg Times, 27 August 1943)

After cold water is used, an astringent should be applied with cotton, allowed to dry on. Cosmetic counters are full of them. ("To Improve Defects in Facial Skin," St. Petersburg Times, 28 February 1941)

I don't know yet if I'll take them up on any of this advice, but it's nice to know there are plenty of vintage options... The soap and water thing is probably not going to work in the long term for me - at least not just soap and water. I love the clean, but it leaves my face feeling a bit stingy even a couple hours later.

Could it be that I'm getting used to cooking dinner from scratch? For the first time since I started making the vintage dinners, I actually sat down at the table last night without feeling completely exhausted. Here's the menu:

Boiled Potatoes
Buttered Carrots
French Fruit Salad
Gingerbread Square

The Boiled Potatoes and Buttered Carrots are pretty self-explanatory. The Gingerbread was a wartime recipe - made without any sugar or eggs. It was easy to make and yummy fresh from the oven. (No nudges necessary to eat those leftovers!) The superstar of this menu was definitely the French Fruit Salad. The original menu calls for a Jellied Fruit Salad made with the leftover orange, pineapple, and banana from the previous menu (see last weekend). I don't eat gelatin as it's an animal by-product, so I paged through the chapter on salads looking for something I could make using the same fruits. Here's the recipe that caught my attention:

*****

FRENCH FRUIT SALAD

1 orange
1 banana
1/2 pound Malaga grapes
1 dozen walnuts
Lettuce
French dressing

Peel the orange and cut the sections from the membrane with a sharp knife or a pair of shears. If the fruit is allowed to stand in cold water after peeling, the bitter white membrance will come off easily.

Peel the banana and cut in quarter-inch slices. Remove the skins and seeds from the grapes. Break walnuts into small pieces, but do not chop. Mix these ingredients thoroughly and place on ice. Serve on lettuce leaves with a French dressing.

*****

The trick is making the French dressing variation that's suggested for fruit salads. No garlic, no pepper, light on the mustard, paprika, and sugar, citrus juice substituted for half the vinegar. The orange, banana, grapes, and walnuts were a lovely combination. Alas, I couldn't find any Malaga grapes at the supermarket. (Malaga grapes are both red and white grapes originally cultivated in a region of southern Spain. By the '40s, they were a profitable California crop.) My grapes were Chilean. And, no, I didn't peel 'em. What's with the '40s phobia about fruit skins? They're peeling their tomatoes, peeling their grapes. It's perfectly good fiber! And I love the snap of a super fresh grape - skin intact.