Mrs. Elder's Idea

1912
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mrs. Elder's Idea
B-

Like "old" Mrs. Crosley, not-yet-elderly Mrs. Elder is a middle-aged woman with grown children and nothing to do.  Her idea is more radical, since it involves not only a career as a personal shopper, but a partial separation from her husband.  He'll live in the country and she'll live in the city, visiting each other a season out of the year, rather than both living unhappily in the suburbs.  He, of course, resists the idea but gives in, of course, finding that "two half homes and half a happy wife" to be "really more satisfying than one whole home, and a whole unhappy wife."  She and their children, who've moved in with her to pursue their careers, thrive.

Only one hundred years of this blog to go!