WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 331, 19 June 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Conducted by "Eileen"). YOUTHFUL AUSTRALIAN WIVES. A MUDECKOOM 01'' Oil. The Federal Statistician's vital statistics bulletin for the List quarter of 1910 contains interesting figures in regard to marriage.

Under the religious denominations classification it is shown that during the quarter the marriages in the Church of England throughout the Commonwealth, namely, 3051, were nearly double those in the Horn,lll Catholic Church—l6ss. The Presbyterian Churcn celebrated 1298' marriages, the Methodist Church 1581, and the Congregational Church 738. The remaining records were considerably below any of these figures. Two hundred and forty-eight were performed without the benefit of the clergy in the registrars' ollices. Altogether there were 35 religions in which marriages were celebrated. j.ney include, however, several missions, such «s the ''Joyful News Mission" (Queensland) and tive "Helping Hand Mission" (Tasmania). Twenty-one Jewish marriages were celebrated. There was also one under the heading of "Aboriginal Mission," N.S.W. The total number of marriages for the quarter in the Commonwealth was 9458.

In respect to thet age at which people marry, during the quarter they started in the Commonwealth at 14, there being two brides in the State who entered the wedded condition so early in life. Tht; youngest bridegroom was 15, and he was in South Australia. The statistics showthat men marry most at the ago of 25. In the quarter's record tilery was one bridegroom of l(i, four of 17, and 40 of 18. At 1!) the bridegrooms numbered 112, at 30 there were 105, and then eoines a jump of 560 who were married at the age of 21. Thereafter as the age scale is run over there is an increase up to 80!) at the age of 25, after which the marrying propensities decline steadily until at the age classification of 40 there were 110 more than 100 men who gave up their single condition. The figures dwindle down steadily, but the Statisticians shows that there was a man married in the quarter at various ages up to 99.' The interesting bridegroom of 9'J resided in Victoria. Between the ages of 40 and 50 ithe bachelors were stilly marrying strongly in comparison to the widowers ami the divorces. After 51, however, the widowers took up the running, and above that age they went more frequently to the altar steps than the bachelors. In New South Wales there were no bachelors older than 07 married in the period under review, but there were eight widowers who re-married.

Women, according to the quarter's statistics, marry most at the age of 21. Commencing at 14, mere were two, at 15 there were ]-), anil at 1C there were CD. Then the marrying age for ladies is on the increase, mi til the succeeding figures being 212, 383, u!)2, G54, there were 850 brides aged 21. At the age of 22 there were 904, and thereafter woman's chances seem to sternly diminish, for at the age of 23 there were 100 less married than at 21 or 22, and year by year the marrying age goes back. At the eventful time (for a woman) of the thirtieth year brides are considerably less in demand. The marriages during the quarter of brides «.ged 30 were 201, while there were only 60 married at the age of 40. There were! brides, however, right up to the age of 83, a widow in New South Wales having again entered wedlock at that score.

Five hundred and sixty-seven widowers, 485 widows, 57 men who had been divorced, and' 66 women who had been divorced were married in the Commonwealth in the quarter.

THE ANKLE SKIKT. Mr. Harry Fiirniss, the artist and cartoonist, is the In teat champion lo entef tlie lists on behalf of the harem skirt, or rather the ankle skirt, as he prefers to call it. He thinks that if a few prominent portrait painters could persuade their sitters to do painted in the new costume, so that everyone could see for oneself how becoming it is, the public objection would soon disappear. "In the name of common sense, comfort and hygiene," he says, 'let us adopt the ankle dress as a permanent muzzle to the silly, changing, uncomfortable and microbe-gathering costumes the ever-deigning dressmaker invents.""

English women, he believes, object to the harem skirt because they have been told that they have large feet, but the feet can be as effectively hidden by the harem skirt as by any other. It is probably hopeless to try to persuade women that reasonably large feet are not a disfigurement, but perhaps the spirit of a/thletiieism will do this for us in time. It is a part of .the old idea of feminine subjection, the old idea that women were captivating in proportion to their helplessness and dependence. The Chinese go the whole way and prevent their women from walking at all, and this is found to discourage overmuch gadding about and gossip. White women liave the same idea, but they don't carry it so for. They like to have the semblance of helplessness without reality. It is strange how women will enthuse about the physical perfections of, say, the \enua do ifilo, and j-et refuse to imitate eitlier her large feet or her substanstantial waist. All 'the classic beauties of the world have had large feet. Trilby's feet were her glory, and they were large. The best artists always, err. if at all, in the direction of largeness when painting the feet to his figures, and a prominent art critic said recently that second-rate, work was usually to be detected by an indifference to the feet that, were too: small and too inelTcctive to express character.

_ Mr. jilarcus Stone, R.A., is anoblier ar* tist who breaks out into periodica! lamentations over the decadence of 'the female form. It has proved nearly impossible to find the requisite thirty women who are beautiful enough to' take part in .the pageant of dress at the forthcoming Fair of .Fashions in London. Mr. Stone says he believes that women have never carried themselves so badly as they do now, with their elbows out, their shoulders tip, and their necks pushed forward. When do you meet a woman who carries lier head and neck nobly or who allows her arms to fall simply by her side? Anns, he says, were not 'made

to stick out on either side like jug handles. And here Mr. Stone lets us into a secret of the studio, lie says that the corset has so destroyed 'tilie outlines of the figure 'that artists have great difficulty in obtaining models capable of bending,-graceful postures that they may require, and therefore they employ a male model when drawing the position, action, and so on, and correct the outlinas from a female model afterwards.

MR. SHAW ON MARRIAGE Marriage is Mr. (i. Bernard Shaw's pet subjects. His critics sometimes assert that it hits pet aversion, but that may be judged from tlie following quotations from a recent book:

''lr marriage cannot be made to produce something better than we are, marriage will have to go,-, or else the nation will 'have to go. ''English home life to-day is neither honorable, virtuous, wholesome, sweet, clean, nor in any creditable way distinctly English.

"Most women'are so thoroughly homebred as to be unfit for human society. .So little is expected of them that in Sheridan's 'School 1 of Scandal' we hardly notice that the heroine is a female cad. "Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a cockatoo.

"Xo healthy man or animal is occupied with love in any sense Mr more than a very small fraction indeed of 'the time lie devotes to business and recreations wholly unconnected' wi'tifc love.

''The number of : wives- permitted to a single huslxind is not air ethical problem; it depends solely on the proportion of the sexe.s in the population; "Polyandry enaliles tlie best women to monopolise all the men,, just as polygamy enables the best men to monopolise the women. That is why all our ordinary j men and women are unanimous in de-1 fence of monogamy.. ''l'amily life will never be decent, much less ennobling, until the central horror of tlio (economic) dependence of women on men is done away with." Tlie conclusion Mr. Shaw leads up to is that divorce should be made as easy, as cheap, and as privatb as marriage, and should be grafted at the request of either pa.rty, whether the other consents or not. Air. Shaw believes in divorce; but he believes also in marriage. "Marriage," he says, "remains practically inevitable." His complaint is not- against the institution, bnt against what he re-' gards as antiquated laws, conditions anu} assumptions bound up with it.

EDUCATION OP GIRLS Mis.-; Hcghnrn. president of the English 1 c:tcltcis 1 Institute, is in tw> sense :i feminist, as wu generally understand the word. She is just a wic-vinly woman of great common sense and'considerable academic distinction. She holds strong views regarding the basis on'which the education of girls is built. In the course of an interview she said that the education of girls ought to be based on those principles and piethods that would produce tlio most womanly women capable of becoming the true helpmates of men in every sense, and equipped'totake their places in great social'and benevolent movements.

| "The girl of to-day," she continued, j "and of the futuro should be taught on the most liberal basis consistent with those objects. She should be taught primarily that her lirst duty is to the home; that it should* be her aim to fit herself to he one of the mothers of a futuro generation of English men and women. No matter what positiosuh life the schoolgirl may hold or hope to hold she should be trained in all the duties which appertain to the home lift;, for it is in the homes of the people that the future of the nation lies.

"What is the matter with the" girls' schools is that 'tliry have .lie™ made hy men as if they were for the education of Ihus. People .think tluit women eti/n; manure a, household, cook, jind bring up children by instinct, but a girl requires just as much training to'make a pudding ;i :l man does to make a locomotive."