Cass Timberlane, A Novel of Husbands and Wives by Sinclair Lewis

He had heard it often enough from his sister Rose, but he had never thoroughly understood that Jinny, with little occupation beyond asking Mrs. Higbee what she wanted her to want, would become idle, empty and bored.

Her chief employment was in war-work. With the others, she did her Red Cross detail and the entertainment of transient soldiers, but it took no initiative, not with such captains of enterprise as Diantha Marl and Zeta Umbaugh directing her how to address envelopes, how to make layettes for soldiers' wives. She worked conscientiously, but the tasks did not take one-tenth of her time, one-hundredth of her energy.