TRUE SPHERE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 228, 19 May 1932, Page 7

TRUE SPHERE

WHAT I HEARD AT SUPPER THE OTHER EVENING 1 Dear Readers, — I was at a party the other 'evening and while we were having supper a vigorous discussion arose as to what was woman's rightful sfrhere. Of course we rose to the occasion to d'efend Our rights, and as 1 the party was a mixed one, you can ' imagine how opinions differed. j I shall try and tell you a few of | the views expressed by both sides i that night. "What do you think is woman's true sphere?" asked someone. "The home !" chorused the men. The ladies looked up with mixed expressions, and although I think, in their innermost hearts, they agreed with the chorus, the light of battle was in their eyes. Said one damsel: 'I don't see why we should always be associated with domestic life (in pique):.It seems to be the opinion of men that woman's rightful place is the home, and there she must stick for hetter or worse. I suppose it is true to some extant, but really, you must agree that men i can't have all their own way in these I days, for we have proved that we can ! enter public life and hold our own in ! tbe professions equally as well as j men; and, what's more, they can't stop us!" A tall, dark youth, from the eorner (I shouldn't have been at all surI

prised if he wasn't a lawyer, for he had that argumentative and didactic air): "We do admit that women have proved their worth in public life, but, nevertheless, the professions would not wither and die without them, whereas the home would; for men have not the same assuranee of their ability to run a home that a woman has regarding her fittness for a profession. (Sarcastically) . If the women took more care of their part, and left the men to theirs, in my opinion it would be a much happier world. Besides, the occupations of a proper home should he such that it should not he necessary for women to hanker after the professions of men — still (with an ironical smile) I don't suppose they would he women if they didn't." "It seems to me," said a brunette, "that all we are expected to do is housework and cooking and so forth all our lives. I don't see why we shouldn't have chances the same as the men!" Then a qui'et, deliberate voice spoke from the fireside. It belonged to an old gentleman who had been m Mitatively smoking the pipe of peace, quite forgotten during the discussion: "Woman may be able to do man's work as well as he can," he said, "but he certainly cannot so well do hers. It would be unsuitable and unseemly to have man's rougher, stronger hand tending the many duties of the home, while a woman was wielding a swoi'd in the worldly battle. The home needs the tender sympathetic care which only a woman can give, and ! it is there that her true beauty and perfection shines. Man has no aptitude for domestic duties, and so long as they are requix*ed to be done — and that is as long as the world lasts — women are the chosen ones in that sphere. A woman supplies the essentials of existence, and what more can she ask? I don't know why she should pretend that the home only contains two things, cooking and housework, for all the things that make life worth while are bound up in the home and woman it- its queen. "In her youthful vanity," he went on, "when she is intoxicated with dreams of greatness, she may like to aspire after a different destiny, but when her object has been reached and experience enables her b'etter to estimate it at its true value, she will see how much to be preferred is the eommon lot of woman, the hom'e, where she gives and receives sympathy and affection. 'We have seen many women in these latter years strike out in public professions of all kinds, but to many the call of home-life has been too persistent. I think she who has tasted the blessedness of home-life will not long for a more public sphere nor any longer believe there is a more honourable occupation." It struck me that this dear old man ha'd been thinking more deeply than we had during our argument, and his advice fell like a balm on troubled water s. No one felt disposed to pursue the subjeet further so there the matter ended. , "There's no place like home," he finish'ed. No - one spoke, for I think we all agreed.