WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 56, 24 July 1912, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(CoaAueted by "EiUei.")

VANISHING FEMININE TYPES

THE XA(!GER. THE MARTYR A?... THE CAT. The last- two or three years have witnessed the gradual elimination of three pronounced feminine types—the Nagger, the Martyr and the Cat. All were more or less the result of a narrow, circumscribed environment and the curiously limited conception of life which this produces. Monotony is responsible for many failings usually labelled feminine—failings wihch are the outcome not of sex, but of circumstance. Men would probably be similarly 'afflicted if they were compelled to lead the colorless, narrow lives which the majority of women led in the past. In a circumscribed environment the power of controlling thought is weakened, ,and the mind becomes captive to one or two ideas. The horizon of the married Victorian woman was limited to her husband, her home, her next-door neighbor, The wider issues of life never truched her. The capacity for viewing life in its broader aspects effectually safeguards womcr {!; • »U-i« of the Nagger, Martvr < i_ - . THE NAGGER ' : T 'lMAiri'". The Nagger was not, on the whole, "a bad sort." She was merely a victim of the "fixed idea." A thought came into her head, and she could not resist it. Her husband forgot something, or he was late, or be spilt some tobacco ashes on the carpet. Not content with reprimanding him for it once, twice, yea even thrice, she returned to the assault again and again. Yet probably she was greatly attached to her husband —more so, perhaps, than the colder woman .who does not nag because she cannot be bothered. Nagging presupposes a certain amount of interest in the person nagged. The nagging mother who is continually telling her little girl not to do this and not to

do that is generally actuated by an excess of motherly zeal. Let the wellI meaning woman watch herself that she • fall not into the snare of the Nagger. ) THE MUMMIFIED MARTYR. The Nagger and the Martyr have much in common, though on the surface they appear to be opposites. The one is garrulous, the other grimly silent. Better I on the whole have a Nagger on your ) heart than , a Martyr. The Nagger, at ' any rate, is lively. She gives opportunij ties of retaliation; she keeps alive the lighting instinct. But the Martyr is | petrifying and funereal. Her look of s pained resignation is a perpetual re- ) proach. Her whole attitude suggests: I ''Please—please, do not mind me; oil, dear, no! I'm of no account whatever." Her life is one long succession of unnecessary, self-sacrifices. The most uncomfortable chair in the room is invariably captured by the Martyr. She foregoes visits to plays and concerts in order that she may ''sit up" and wait for the others. She never nags 'her husband, but she sits lin pained silence. Now and then she ] adroitly allows a large tear to "well up" l in her eves and roll down her cheek. In

her patience and pallor she suggests a marble tombstone. Her husband, if lie is here to-day, is generally gone to-mor-row. PURRING AND CLAWING. The Cat is more complex than either the Martyr or the Nagger. On the surface, she is much more agreeable, but, like her pretotoype in "Alice in Wonderland," though she looks good-natured, she has very long claws and a great many teeth. She docs "unkind things with kindness," as William Blake puts it. Not so long ago there were few women who had not a touch at least of cattiness. One catty woman makes many. It is a highly contagious quality. Now the type is becoming comparatively rare. Women are more given to barking than purring. Apart from such considerations as the developed intelligence and the broader interests of women nowadays, the times we live in are somewhat too strenuous lor eattiness, wihioh necessitates some subtlety, to flourish. Brutal frankness is somewhat fashionable, and though it may be a painful process to listen to home truths, it is in a sense preferable to the cruel clawing of the Cat It is better to be bitten than to be scratched, and generally much less dangerous. (THE POPULARITY OF THE BITER.

The reaction against Early Victorian' insipidity is also to a certain extent responsible fffr the disappearance of the purring woman. "I love you because you lire biting," wrote Prosper Merimee to Madame Beaureaincourt. "There is nothing I djsiike so much as people who are always sweet." This dislike to the saccharine quality in women is shared by many others. The catty woman is usually a "sweet" woman. The sourer she feels inwardly the sweeter she shows outwardly. One may shed a tear over the Nagger, who often concealed a good heart under a hard exterior; one may even "make moan" over the poor Martyr who was her own worst enemy, but no one will regret the passing of the Cat. She was altogether unlovable.—London Daily News.