Are Women Mysterious?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 14 September 1940, Page 3 (Supplement)

Are Women Mysterious?

WOMEN are not mysterious, and the "nicest women" know that they are not. Mind you, "mysterious" is a lovely word. It s not only the ideas one connects with it, it is partly the actual sound of it. If you say it slowly and rather softly, you will find that your imagination is stirred as softly as leaves are stirred in a still forest by a little wind. And if you say it the Scottish way, as if there were a double "e" in it, it becomes more fraught with magic than. ever. Perhaps that's why it has been so often applied to women, just it's so lovely. Men have felt that lovely words belong to women, just as do lovely flowers and scent. But apart from the general mystery of everything —for everything is, of course, mysterious in some way or other — women are no more mysterious than men or children, or cats, or swallows, or bees. First and foremost, we are human, with all the thousand and one characteristics which go to the make-up of any living thing. Of course, some of ns have puzzling ways sometimes, but does anyone suggest that puzzling ways are characterise of one sex only? There's mystery in all sorts of things. There are beautiful mysteries like love and sacrifice, awful mysteries like the permitted sufferings of the weak and inno-

cent in the world, quaint mysteries like the shape of penguins and the utterances of parrots, and mere personal mysteries, such as the reasons a man has for choosing cornet-playing or drumming as a career, or why we say "backwards and forwards" insteal of "forwards and backwards," and long division sums (how they work out right that way), and how it is that if a man ridiDg on a donkey carries a parcel in his hand, the donkey has to bear the weight of it all the same 1 And many other things. But women . . . Most of us dont want to be thought mysterious. If we really did, we shouldn't talk so much about ourselves, we should hide away our powders and lotions in secret places, we should never expatiate on the awful thrills incidental to being "permanently waved," we should conceal our hopes and our fears, and we should never, never appear with colds in our heads. No! We love our friends to think us beautiful, we like them to tell us we are magnetic and soothing and clever and sympathetic and charming and well dressed, interesting and original, and restful and stimulating and capable, generous-minded and graceful, and a little helpless. But it's doubtful if we find very much about being considered mysterious. Seriously, we like our menfolk, and our womenfolk, too, for that matter, to love us, if they can love us, for the dear, everyday human things.