Novelist Kathleen Norris Suggests a Wartime Ban on Divorce

Kathleen Norris, a once popular romance novelist now more than a decade past her literary heyday, wrote in the Sunday Mirror magazine that she thought that it should be illegal for a wife to ask for divorce while her husband was serving overseas. This ban should extend to a six-month period after he had returned. It was cruel, she wrote, for a fighting man who had sacrificed so much to learn that he had lost the affection of his wife and might not be able to enjoy the company of his children upon his return. She also believed that a few months of patience and an effort at genuine understanding might lead to a "readjustment" of affection.