I'm honestly surprised I'm the one to say this, since I do it all the time myself, but at the risk of asking something you've been asked before: why does the existence of these Platonic Housewives bother you? You know you're not one of them, you know you're never going to be one, you know you're never going to stay with a guy who expects you to be one because you don't have to, and you know there are plenty of guys in the world who would never expect such.
Because people who get in trouble and are too damned ladylike to get themselves out of it make me angry. It's not that they're too beaten down to do anything. It's not that they can't figure out what to do. It's that they won't bother, because that would crack their image.
It's like... it's like wasting food and water. It's like throwing away a shirt you've worn a couple of times because you can turn your nose up at it. It's the creation of a situation that someone needs to be saved from, needlessly. It's wasting a precious resource: effort. It's senseless, and it's stupid, and it's decadent and destructive. I don't ignore it like I don't ignore other sorts of rich idiots, throwing things down the drain since they have no sense of perspective.
I feel similarly about men doing the same thing, by the way. The only thing is that we call men who don't strike out for themselves losers, and women who just hang back are lauded by society as a feminine ideal. The helpless little waif with bound feet, the hand that has never held a tool, the skin that has never felt the sun.
I know I sound like Marx, but I don't really care: it sickens me.