THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1909. "MARRIAGE AS A TRADE."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9593, 13 September 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1909. "MARRIAGE AS A TRADE."

In her book "Marriage as a Trade," Miss Cicely Hamilton, presents the life of woman, as a married woman, as being a very wretched affair indeed. It appears that what the world wants, or at any rate what the Eng - lish European part of it wants, is spinsters—more and more spinsters. In the pitiful ignorance of our own manhood, we had hitherto been under the impression that the trouble was due to the fact that theiv were too many spinsters, because there were not enough men to go round But Miss Hamilton's plea is for spinsters and ever more spinsters. Let every woman seek a trade other than the doleful trade of marriage, for then only will she be in a position to make good terms for herself, should she decide upon marriage after all. "Woman is aye beguiled and always it is man." That is the conclusion at which Miss Hamilton arrives. For whatever of evil or inferiority there is in woman man is responsible, dee how he has regarded her through all the age*: "His attitude towards us has been by turns—and sometimes all at once—adoring, contemptuous, sentimental and savage: anything, in nhort, but open-minded and deductive. The Mahometan, after careful observation from his point of view, decided that she was flesh without a soul, and to be treated accordingly; the troubadour seems to have found in her a spiritual incentive to aspiration in deed and song. The early fathers of the Church, who were in the habit of giving troubled and nervous consideration to the subject, denounced her, at spasmodic intervals, as sin personified. The modern man. . . . expects a being who combines the divergent qualities of an inspiration and a good general servant! The imperative necessity of earning her livelihood in the only road not barred to her has been a ceaseless and unrelenting factor in weeding out the artistic products of woman's nature. The deliberate stunting and repression of her intellectual facul • the setting up for her admiration and imitation of tha ideal of the 'silly angel' have all contributed to make of her not only a domestic animal, more or le3s sleek and ornamental, but a Philistine as well. For generation after generation the lives of women of even the slightest intelligence and individuality must have been one long and constant struggle

between the forces of nature en- j dcavouring to induce in them that I variety which is another word for progress and their own enforced strivings to approximate to a single monotonous type—the type of the standard and ideal set up tor them by man, which was the standard and ideal of his own comfort and enjoyment. However squarely uncom ■ promising the characteristics of

any given woman, the only vacant space for her occupation was round, and into the round hole she had to go. Were her soul the bou! of a pirate, it had to be encased in a ! body v*hich pursued the peaceful , avocation of a cook." The instance '; quoted is surely uniiappy. IE any ! woman has the s">ul of a pirate, nho

ought to be thankful for being trans • ported to the kitchen; it may save her from the unpleasant experience of dangling at thejend of a rope. The remedy it seems will only come when woman is recognised as a law

unto herself. Miss Hamilton says: —"The various explanations which have been given for woman's existence can be narrowed down to two—her husband and her child. Male humanity has wobbled between two convictions—the one, that she exists for tho entire benefit of contemporary mankind; the other, that she exists for the entire benefit of the next generation. The latter iB at present the favourite. One consideration only male humanity has firmly refused to entertain —that she exists in any degree whatsoever for the benefit of herself."