Untitled

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 250, 22 April 1912, Page 6

WOMAN'S CODE OF HONOR

Of later there has been much discus- * sion in sundry papers about "woman's code of honor." and in the main it has been far from complimentary. The gravaman of .the charge (and it was ostensibly a. woman who made it) was that woman could not "play the game" ashman played it, but must cheat and twist and turn and break her word, gracefully, of course, and lithely, but all - the same it was not "cricket." It was j averred that she could not keep the. j most sacred secret confided to her; that J if she quarrelled with h'er best friend she ] must immediately disclose to all and sundry the most* delicate- or important \ j confidences with which her friends in j their earliest days had entrusted her; that her regard for truth was feeble J compared with man's, as also was her j whole moral outlook; and much more . to the same effect. If these things were really written by a woman, it° would only confirm the common adage that women are harder on women than men . are on men. Was there any truth in these large assertions? There was—once upon There is no getting away from the proverbs which are current in every language and in almost every age, and Which are nearly all of a depreciating nature. Even so, however, we must not forget the fable of the statue of the man with the lion under foot. The lion had r a perfect right to argue that if he, and not a man, had (been the sculptor, the positions most likely would have been reversed. And they were men who made the proverbs. But who is to blame if women for centuries were, all and worse than the proverbs made about them? Is it not man? We may revert here in our thoughts to the tale of the dog which grew tricky. In himself he was a good dog and "a noble one, but as much could not be said of his master—in his dealings with him, at all events. It was the master's mistreatment which made the dog bad. And j it is the charge which can be made against men in every age and clime for all the alleged misdemeanors they have laid upon women. They (the men) have taken advantage of their physical superiority to treat woman almost as if she were a dog. She was not allowed to have any will or individuality of her own; she must be but the meek pcho of her lord and master. He might strive after education and other mental advantages, but wife and daughter must be helots. What could the result be but that the one who was debarred from equality by her lack of physical thew and sinew should cam ( » in time to develop rare skill in artifice, so as (sometimes) to gain by finesse what she could not by force? . . . [But to the end there will always be a. difference in the viewpoint of the sexes, the color of the outlook—a difference which no theories will e'l'acc, just because it is in the blood a:id woven into the fibre of their beings. Man is and must be more or less impersonal, looking to measures rather than to those who frame them. Woman is. and must lie to the last, strongly personal. With her it is no mere ideal l»arnt by much cogitation; it is the law of her life, written in her heart. Her husband and her children are her world. Taking (his as the immovable centre on which she stands, who has been more "honorable" than she? Who has suffered more for her fidelity, or gone to her grave with fewer stains on her love? There have been honorable men in the world—many of them—but woman in this respect has excelled them all.