SPOILED WIFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 March 1939, Page 10

SPOILED WIFE

REGENERATION NECESSARY TO HAPPINESS. Surely the man who marries a spoiled girl deserves a V.C. —if not a greater honour! One meets the spoilt girl far too frequently; and she should remember that the spoilt woman—like many other unpleasant things—must change her ideals if she wishes to foster any simple happiness in her life. The wife who was regarded as the pet and the playmate of a man’s leisure hours is fast disappearing with other modern changes. Even the most frivolous of the fair sex is beginning to realise that there is more in life than she had imagined, and that her place in the world is of greater importance than perhaps her old-world parents had taught her. But such lessons can be learnt only by experience—with a good addition of useful common sense.

There are many varieties of the spoilt wife. Some are bred by the anxiety of money matters, which before her marriage had been chiefly devoted

to her wardrobe. Consequently she cannot possibly understand the correct value of pounds, shillings, and pence. Such household difficulties cannot fail to annoy the young husband, who finds her accounts in disorder, her tradesmen unpaid, and herself in despair. In several so-termed fashionable suburbs it is an open secret that the tradespeople have the greatest difficulty in getting regular settlement of their accounts. And yet many of these homemakers are well known for their hospitality and their lovely clothes. RUSH AND BUSTLE. Here is one young married man’s complaint. “It never occurs to my wife,” he said, “that I have had a very tiring day in my business and that I look on my home as a haven —where I may spend some peaceful hours with that relaxation of mind and body which is necessary'for my next day’s work. “Yet,” he added, “my wife’s idea of relaxation is to rush me, to our evening meal as soon as 1 arrive home and then dash off to a dull show and finish up with dancing somewhere until she is ready to return home.” The lack of reciprocity is, of course, only too well accounted for. She has been at home all day, with very little to do —so, like other spoilt wives, she insists on being taken out to some entertainment.

Who, too, does not know what the “tyranny of tears” mean in a home where the spoilt wife displays her spoiling? Very attractive women are often spoilt by their husbands. Admiration is their mental ailment. They cannot live without it. Such food often contains a serious supply of deadly poison which may be dangerous. To the husband, after a few years, her beauty becomes just an ordinary item of his life. He does not even see it—except through the eyes of others.

What is he to do? The necessary regeneration of his spoilt wife is too great an effort to anyone but herself to undertake.