of communication or a statesman marks the rise of an implacable rival.

Popular literature, popular art, and popular drama, including in this by
a vigorous stretching of the idea the movie, are in a conspiracy against
reality. This is of course because of the tyranny of the "Happy Ending."
While the happy ending is psychologically and financially necessary, in
so far as the publishers, editors, and producers are concerned, what
really happens is that the disagreeable phases of life, not being
faced, persist. To have a blind side for the disagreeable does not rule
it out of existence; in fact, it thus gains in effect.

To say that housekeeping is looked upon essentially as menial, to say
that it is monotonous, that it is sedentary, and has the ill effects
that arise from these characteristics, is not to deny that it has
agreeable phases. It has an agreeable side in its privacy, its
individuality, and it fosters certain virtues necessary to civilization.
That I do not lay stress on these is because novelist, dramatist, and
scenario author, as well as churchman and statesman, have always dwelt
on these. The agreeable phases of the housewife's work do not cause her
neurosis; it is the disagreeable in her life that do. Or rather it is
what any individual housewife finds disagreeable that is of importance,
and it is my task to show what these things are, how they work, and
finally what to do about it.




CHAPTER V

REACTION TO THE DISAGREEABLE