MEEK WIVES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 170, 23 August 1879, Page 3

MEEK WIVES.

We are very far from endorsing the latest development of women's rights" doctrine, that marriage is an absolutely equal partnership in which in all things the authority of the wife is commensurate with that of the husband. Such a state of things, to say nothing of Scriptural injunctions, is contrary to the general nature of the sexes—the man being, as a rule, the most fitted to command—and would, moreover, produce practically a deaklock ; for supposing husband and wife to differ, there could be no appeal in any case of emergency. We fully recognise the broad statement that the "husband is the head of the wife," and the injunction to the wife to obev her husband. But it is a" limited liability"—not an unlimited one. As far removed from the true ideal of the marriage relation as the wife who makes herself the bond slave of her bu- band. A woman who marries is her husband's helpmeet—she has her own individuality, her own rights, and she ought to maintain them. A selfish, overbearing man is in no degree improved by a meek, poor-spirited wife, who .dare'not, as the saying goes, " call her-"soul her own." Arbitrary tempers grow on what they feed on ; the moie the wife yields the more she may yield. A man, for example, will come home in an ill-humour, growl at everything, abuse his wife, and accuse herof being the cause of everything that has vexed him. Yet he' is still ' Dear John ;" the meek wife "trembles with fear at his frown," hastens to relieve him of his great coat, hangs about him with spaniel-like fawning, puts herself in a fever.to have his dinner exactly to his own liking, owns herself wrong where she knows she is perfectly innocent, and altogether allows herself to be bullied. What does she gain by this conduct ? Nothing. The man is in no sense mollified. On the contrary, he finds he possesses an object on which he can at all times safely wreak his ill-temper a kind of "Marchioness," whom he can always knock about (literally, if he be a gentle man) whenever it shall please him ; a creature whose wishes are all subservient to his ; and he simply takes the women at her own valuation. He considers her "his'' not in the lover's, but in merchant's sense of the ;word. His temper and his selfishness grow to gigantic.proportions ; because his wife, who could best correct them, has fed them. It is quite en regie that, if he "'wants to stop as homo, should give up pleasure she may have arranged never occurs to him for a stop at home on her account, ofVq o anywhere with her unless he cares to go for his own> amusement. The wife has been utterly wrong. . She has regarded marriage as though it placed a''wife in the position of an Eastern slave, whom her master-has bought in the marfict and can sell her if she does not please him, or if she thwarts his will. To say nothing of the duty of the woman to assert her own proper dignity, to insist upon her rights as a wife, bond to yield reasonable obedience—and reasonable obedience only—and to exactin return due reverence and consideration, it is no kindness to a man to encourage him in arbitrariness and selfishness. |

When a man shows unjust and undignified temper, he should he simply ignored ; instead of fawning round him, the wife should let him shift for himself; and he would, doubtless, make a great fuss the first tim", even the second time; but he would consider the matter in liis calmer moments, and in <he result respect his wife more, and bo less ready to vent his wrath upon her. In like manner should his selfishness be treated. We have known men who were simple incarnations of selfishnesss, disgusting to all who knew them, because their wives were mere cyphers, their very children beholding with, .pain and humiliation the utter . insignificance to which they had sunk in their homes. We do not want wives to retort, to provoke, to wrangle ; but we do want them to maintain their due place in the partnership of marriage, and to see that they do not cloak, under some pretence of religion or nonsense about " wifely submission," a lack of spirit in themselves. Nine times out often, the woman whom her husband bullies is the woman who allows her father to dispose of her hand, simply because she is a poor creature, fit to be pitied "or despised, who=wonld be certain to yield to anyone wboj rightly or wrongly, claimed authority*