THE DISCONTENTED WOMAN. (Saturday Review.)

Waikato Times, Volume VI, Issue 315, 21 May 1874, Page 2

THE DISCONTENTED WOMAN. (Saturday Review.)

The discontented woman would seem to be becoming an unpleasantly familiar *ype of character. A really contented woman, thoroughly well pleased with, her duties and her destiny, may almost be said to be the exception rather than the rule m these days of tumultuous revolt from all fixed conditions, and vagrant energies searching for interest in new spheres of thought and action. It seems impossible to satisfy the discontented woman by any means short of changing the whole order of nature and society for her benefit. And even then the chances are that she would get wearied of her own work, and, hko Alexander, weep for more worlds to renrrango according to her liking, with the power to take or to leave, as her humour might decide, the duties she had voluntarily assumed, as she claims no v the power of discarding those which have been given her from the beginning. As things are, nothing contents her, and the keynote which shall put her in harmony with existing conditions, or make her ready to bear the disagreeable burdens which she has been obliged to carry from Eve's time downward, has yet to be found. If she is unmarried, she is discontented at the want of romance in her life ; her main desire is to exchange her father's house for a home of her own ; her pride is pained at the prospect of being left an old maid unsought by men, and her instincts rebel at the thought that she may never know maternity, the strongest desire of the average woman. But if she is married, the causes of her discontent are multiplied infinitely, and where slie was out of harmony with one circumstance she is now in discord with twenty. She is discontented on all sides ; because her husband is not her lover, and marriage is not porpetual courtship ; because he is so irritable that life with him is like walking among thorns if she makes the mistake of a hairs-breadth; or because he is so imperturbablygood-natured that ho maddens her with hi* stolidity, and cannot be mado jealous even when she flirts before his eyes. Or slio is discontented because she has so many household duties to perform, the dinner to order, the books to keep, the sen ants to manage ; because she has not enough liberty or because she has too much responsibility ; because she has so few servants that she has to work with her own hands, or because she has so many that she is at her nit's end to find occupation for them all, not to sprnk of discipline and good management. As a mother, she is discontented at the loss of personal freedom compelled by her condition, nt the physical annoyances and the mental anxieties included in the list of her nursery grievances. Slip would probably fret previously if she had no children at all, but she frets quite ai much when they come. In the former case she is humiliated, in the latter inconvenienced, and in both discontented. Indeed, the way in which so many women deliver up their children to the supreme control of hired nurses prores practically enough the depth of their discontent with maternity when they have it. If tbe discontented woman is rich, she speaks despondingly of the difficulties included in the fit ordering of large means ; if she is poor, life has no joys worth having when frequent change of scene is unattainable and the milliner's bill is a domestic calamity that has to be conscientiously curtailed. If she lives in the metropolis she laments the want of freedom and fresh air for the children, nnd makes the unhappy father, toiling at hit city office from ten till seven, feel himself responsible for the pale cheeks and attenuated legs which are probably to be referred to injudicious diet and the frequency of juvenile dissipations. But if she is in the country, then all the charm of existence is centred in tho metropolis and its thoroughfares) and not the finest scenery in the world is to be compared with the attractions of the shops, or the crowds thronging the streets. This question of country living is one that presses heavily on many a female mind, but we must believe that, in spite of the plausible reasons so often assigned, the chief causes of discontent are want of employment and deadnessof interest in the life that lies around. The husband makes himself happy with his yacht or gun, with his garden or his books, with the bunt or the bricklayer, as his tastes lead him ; but tho wife — we speak of the wife given over to disappointment and discontent, for there are still, thank heaven, bright busy, happy women both in country and in town — sits over the fire in winter and by the empty hearth in summer, and finds all barren because she is without an ocenpation or an interest within doors or without. Ask her why she does not garden, if her circumstances are of the kind where hands are scarce and even a lady's energies would do potent Bervice among the flower beds, and she will tell you it makes her back ache, and she does not know a weed from a flower, and would be sure to pick up the young seedlings for chickweed and groundsel. If she is rich and has men about her who know their business and guard it jealously, she takes shelter behind her inability to do actual manual labour side by side with them. Active housekeeping is repulsive to her, and though her servants may be quasi savages, she prefers the dirt and discomfort of idleness to the domestic pleasantness to be had by her own industry and practical assistance. She gets bilious through inaction, and then'says the place disagrees with her and will be the death j of her before Ions;. She cannot breathe among the mountains ; the sea gives her a lit of melancholy wheuevet she looks at it, and she calls it cruel, crawling, hungry, with a {>aBBion that sounds odd to tbose who love it, she hates the eafy tameness of the woods, and longs for the freer uplands, the vigorous wolds of her early days. Whereever, in short, the discontented woman is, it is just where she would rather not be, and she holds fate and her husband cruel beyend words because she cannot be transplanted into the exact opposite of her present position. She mopes and moons through the day, finding no pleasure anywhere, taking no interest in anything, viewing herself as a wifely martyr and the oppressed victim of circumstances ; and then she wonders that her husband is always ready to leave her company, and that he evidently finds her more tiresome than delightful. If she would cultivate a little content the might probably change the aspect of things even to finding the mountain beautiful and the sea sublime ; but dissatisfaction with her condition is the Nessus garment w hicb. clings to the unhappy creature like a second self, destroying all her happiness and the chief part of her usefulness. Women of this class say that they want more to do, and a wider field for their energies than any of those assigned to them by the natural arrangement of personal and social duties. As administrators of the fortune which man earns, and as mothers — that is, as the directors, caretakers, and moulders of the future generation — they have as important functions as those performed by vestrymen and surgeons. But let that past for the moment ; the question is not where they ought to find their fitting occupation and their dearest interests, but where they profess a desire to do so. As it is, their discontent takea one form among many of this desire for an enlarged sphere, yet, when they are obliged to work, they bemoan their hardship in having to fftid their own food, and think that men should either take care of them gratuitously or make wny for them chivalrously. In spite of Scripture, they find that the battle is to the strong, and the race to the swift, and they do not like to be overcome by the one or distanced by the other. Their idea of a clear stage is one that includes favour to their own side, yet they put on airs cf indignation and profess themselves humiliated when men pay the homage of strength to their weakness nnd treat thorn as Indies rather than ns equals. If women would perfect themselves in these things which they do already know before carrying their effort* into new fields, we cannot but think it would be better both for themselves and tho world, Lifo is a bowildcring tangle nt the best, but the discontented woman is not the one who is disposed to moke it smoother. Tho crnze for excitcmcnl and for unfeminine publicity of

life lias possessed her, to the temporary exclusion of many of the sweeter and more modest qualities which were once distinctively her own.