Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[118] her household, the clothing to include probably that of her younger children. She needs such an income as will make her in some sort the equal of her husband as to her general expenditures, dress included. Probably the item of dress is the one department in which women are habitually more liberal in expenditure than their husbands; and this results in part from the customs of society — customs from which the husbands would by no means wish their wives to depart. But, apart from dress, there certainly prevails among men a much freer standard of small expenditures than among women, and this where there are no habits properly to be called profligate. “A cheap lunch for a man,” said a hotel-keeper once to me, “seems a (dear lunch to a woman.” I never visited a woman's club-room that did not look impoverished beside the furnishings of the plainest club-room for men that I ever entered. Who that has collected money for benevolent purposes has not noticed the difference between the sexes as to the standard of giving? Half the time the wife does not venture to give at all until her husband comes home. If, however, she is accustomed to acting independently, she draws from her purse a dollar with some hesitation, whereas he would perhaps give five with none at all; or she tales out five dollars where he would write a check for twenty. Women are certainly as much interested