One in a series of old Love Letters that I bought at the flea market and am now transcribing for my nosiest friends.
See the archive for every Love Letter to Karen published thus far.
Russ picks up directly from the last letter and declares this to be page 8 of that one!
Oct. 23, 1960
Dearest Kay,
Wie geht es dir?
HE SPELLED THIS CORRECTLY. It means, “How are you?”
“Love is a many splendored thing.”Did you know that? Somebody wrote a song about it.
Did you know it was a song from the movie, made in 1955 and filmed in CINEMASCOPE?
Love is great except for me, because the object of it is 130 miles away, which places a very effective damper on the majority of benefits, especially the tangible ones. I may haunt you before next week-end.
Now I’ve broken the precedent of closing letters talking about love. I’ve opened one with it. I didn’t break the precedent “on purpose.” I just felt like it. You are on my mind.
This is going so well. He’s gonna ruin it.
Some obviously mis-guided, bigoted, uninformed sensationalist called Jane Goodsell wrote an article in The American Weekly in which she “beat the drums and blew the horns” for the poor, undernourished, mistreated, enslaved, but typical housewife.
The 1960s are gonna blow Russ’s mind, right? This letter was written before Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. This letter was written at a time when women couldn’t have their own credit card or even serve on a jury in every state in the country!
From her point of view, she has been unwillingly forced into a situation called marriage by the heinous machinations of an unethical husband.
Or the constraints of a patriarchal culture that limits her options?
She must tolerate him. Men are obviously not worth the time of day but are to be treated with care and left unmolested. They are universally thoughtless, unkind, self-centered and have no inherent intelligence.
They exist only with the encouragement and aid of their loving wives, and their success depends solely upon the abilities they glean, willingly or unwillingly, from the inexhaustible storehouse of their wives. “Women worry about their husband, their husbands worry about themselves.”
Women are the Rocks of Gibraltar in every household. They are not upset by anything and take everything in stride. Men are children and need constant attention and enlightenment. Men are hypochondriacs and always think they’re sick. Women never worry about being sick. All symptoms are brushed off without a moment’s hesitation. They appear helpless occasionally only to keep their husband’s happy. Apparently, men have value only for stud purposes. They can perpetuate the race, even helping to create the ideal human being, a woman. This is their only excuse for existence.
Similar articles have appeared taking the opposing stand. Why such extremes. The article wasn’t, although it should have been, written in a facetious manner.
I looked up Jane Goodsell, and from what I can tell she was an Erma Bombeck-type in 1960, so I bet the article he’s so hot about was written at least somewhat satirically.
If all these things are true why do women bother getting married.
Because they didn’t have access to birth control pills, couldn’t get hired at jobs they were just as qualified as boys to do, and so they couldn’t take care of themselves? Has Russ never seen Mad Men?
Certainly it isn’t out of altruistic desires to perpetuate mankind. That is no problem and does not require marriage if that is the only end for marriage.
However, it’s not true and there is no basis for the childish evasion of reality comprising the essence of the article. Why assume any “battle of the sexes” and proceed to stimulate and improve on it. Why draw such a line between the sexes and proceed to place men and women at the extremes of this territory.
Russ is the guy who tells you he’s a humanist but not a feminist because feminism is divisive.
This so-called “battle of the sexes” is an imagined excuse for all kinds of slams against other people. People seem very anxious to find some basis for division between themselves and others and sexual differences do not escape notice. Apparently the more the merrier. The objective seems to be find an opposite in everybody so that you can attack them, saying I’m good, so you must be bad.
A long list of opposites is needed to “have something for everybody.” Sex is good because it takes care of half the population (roughly) in one sweep and consequently cuts the bigotry proceedings to half the work.
Russ’s penmanship sucks in this letter and he is dropping a lot of words and has quite a few scribbles and I’m thinking he was drunkenly pontificating here. Also: Ladies, IMAGINE continuing to date someone who sends you this letter?
The newspapers are always happy to please the people. What is unfortunate is that many individuals read a thing like that and, since it compliments their egos and is presented in a logical if falsely assumed manner, supposedly representing the norm, they believe it. Since the views of their opposites is distasteful, they develop a certain amount of superiority to their “opponents.” Being basically irrational and emotional, the inevitable result is dissention.
Is he actually calling women irrational here? I need to lie down before I get all hysterical and have an emotional reaction to Russ’s infallible “logic.”
Certainly, articles like these do not cause, but they do irritate, unhealthy relationships. They provide emotional fuel for the argument and verbal battle. They require defense. And offense-defense situation leads to only one thing, a victor. The loser is resentful. What value is there in creating situations where someone must defend himself. They cause a circumstance of argument.
LADIES, STOP BEING ARGUMENTATIVE IN YOUR DESIRE FOR BIRTH CONTROL AND JOBS!
And, most important, why create these things with fallacious material. For this I can find no excuse. The editorial policy of the Chicago American and many other newspapers as well is obviously deteriorating.
LOL, you haven’t seen nothin’ yet, Russ.
They take such great concern in the divorce rate in this country, and yet feel no compunction in providing a reference source of emotional insults for a domestic argument.
The divorce rate in the United States in 1960 was 2.2 per 1,000 Americans.
“Mental cruelty” is the most frequent grounds for divorce and the “battles of the sexes” is the greatest contributor to that. Typically, the case of the mistreated, over-worked wife who is being led into a battle by the press, radio and TV.
This is so offensive. He’s saying women are claiming men are mentally cruelty but it’s just that the media has them all hyped up? This jackass hasn’t even had sex yet but he knows what’s up in marriages across the world? Sure.
Repetition is an effective form of indoctrination and if domestic battles as a primary result of marriage is repeated often enough it will at least be assumed by many to be almost requisite in marriage, which is far from a rational assumption and completely unnecessary in our society. Stressing compatibility would be a better course of action.
I totally agree: Marry someone you are compatible with! But also: I bet a bunch of housewives were unhappy in 1960 because they wanted something else and never got a shot at it. The deck was stacked — in Russ’s favor!
Making incompatibility seem distasteful might destroy a great many useless television shows which depend on incompatibility in marriage for their humor, but at least no stimulus would exist to lead people to think that incompatibility is really funny and far from serious.
The Top 10 TV Shows of 1960 barely featured any women and were largely westerns: Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun — Will Travel, The Andy Griffith Show, The Real McCoy’s, Rawhide, Candid Camera, The Untouchables, The Price Is Right, and The Jack Benny Show. The only shows I could figure that were about the battle of the sexes in the fall of 1960 were The Flintstones and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The #11 show is the first one to even have a main mom character (that isn’t dead): Dennis the Menace. Did you know The Honeymooners only aired for two years and a total of 39 episodes and was canceled by 1956? Maybe he’s talking about The Flintstones? I don’t know.
And now you’ve been more or less forced into reading another uninhibited essay on a ridiculous issue which really doesn’t concern you.
But now that I’ve written it, someone has to read it and the letter is yours. Q.E.D. you have the dubious pleasure.
Karen, me and the 10 people who are reading these are shaking our collective heads at the idea that the status of women in 1960 doesn’t concern Karen.
I am going to finish this letter in a canteen over Sunday supper.
While Russ
heads to
the canteen
I’m gonna
take a
break.
I have never written a letter in the canteen before, although many others have participated in this great sport. And sport it is, because it’s a constant competition between writing the letter and being distracted by people milling around. Don’t expect too much from this section of the letter.
People are interesting, especially college students taking underserved breaks from studying, myself included.
But when the printed page becomes a blur of black and white and one’s pen begins writing personal insults and invitations to stop studying then a break is in order. Actually, this is an exaggeration (profound statement!), but very often this is nearly the case.
The music played in here by the students seems to alternate between fine and positively unfit.
Remember that Russ hates rock and roll? Oh, Russ. #bless
Apparently, we have here the freshmen and upper classmen contrasted. A certain allowance must be made for those who, in high school, developed bad taste, and have not yet outgrown it. Some freshman are good student (college level, the only level on which there are true students, of course) material, but they are in a definite minority.
His fixation on being cooler than the lowly freshman continues to crack me up.
Re: Next weekend. What time does the dance start? That’s all for now. Every time I think about next weekend I want the days in between to go a little faster. Only 5 days till D-Day (i.e. Dream-day. Ok, so it’s corny, but I mean it anyway.)
This weekend was better than last. Partly because it was the first chance I’ve had to relax all week and partly because my parents came down. We had a very enjoyable day yesterday.
I hope his angry young man nonsense faded, but I don’t have a lot of faith.
Christmas and Thanksgiving. (True to the spirit of writing things as they come into my mind, Christmas and Thanksgiving suddenly came into the poor, incompetent thing.) I think about them often, especially Christmas. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday season, and especially while I’m at school.
THIS IS MARKED PAGE 20!
Would you prefer shorter letters?
Yes. Today I really would.
Seriously. These letters often retrogress into nonsensical babbling, which can be very distasteful.
No kidding.
Would you rather have shorter letters which come to the point and say things without excessive elaboration? Personally, it doesn’t bother me to write long letters, but you may appreciate the shorter variety, which don’t repeat themselves over and over again. Please give answer. I’m really in a poor position to judge them objectively and favorably. Naturally, they are nothing new to the author.
You guys, I seem to have lost the last page of this letter! Maybe I threw it out in a fit of rage, because it took me like two weeks to transcribe this letter? Maybe it’s sandwiched between two other pages somewhere? Maybe he went back to bitching about the media putting ideas into the heads of housewives and Karen ripped it up in a fit.
If I find it, I’ll let you know!
Russ hates feminism, and I'm not super pleased with him either.
I wish I could see her response to this one.
This guy is exhausting. I hope she broke up with him by mail.