"'m Tired," She Innocently Said

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

During one of their many discussions, the Baron and Lady Angela spoke with Professor Hamblin on may subjects. At one meeting Lady Angela advanced the notion that if a woman says she is tired, men seem to give it a slightly different interpretation than women do. I should mean that after a long hard day of work, she is just plain tired.

Men somehow miraculously expect women to always be full of enthusiasm and energy. Men think that the woman’s remark means that her advancing age is showing. This is quite false and unfair.

Women work all the time raising families and keeping things in order. Their work never stops.

Lady Angela, a bright and well-educated person, didn’t understand why, in these early years of the twentieth century, in many countries women could not vote or have much of a say in government. They were not asked to give their point of view in laws by which they had to live.

Lady Angela asked, “If the United States is so advanced, why are there no women signers of the Declaration of Independence. And, in 1910, women cannot vote, get a mortgage to buy a house, or get a well-paying job.”

Men seemed to have all the authority and women were expected to go along with their choices.

Lady Angela seemed to be hitting on some important points that many men did not want to speak about. Some women who raised these points were simply asked to be quiet and speak no more. This was just the way it had been and this was the way it was going to be kept. Some women would say instead of, “I’m tired,” “I am very busy at this time.”

If women wanted to make a major purchase, she had to have the man’s approval, but if a man wanted to make a decision and sought his wife’s approval, he was considered less than a man.

Lady Angela said, “It is just not fair here, there and everywhere. Someday, men are going to realize just how very brilliant women are.”