"The Distaff."

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2361, 27 August 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

"The Distaff."

WOMEN AND THE TRADE OF MARRIAGE.

The usual retort, when women complain of want of remunerative employment, is that they should not work, but find men to support them. As there are five hundred thousand more women than men in England, it is obviously impossible that every woman should have a husband. This state of things is as bad in Germany also. The preponderance of the women over the men is greatest in the professional and upper-middle classes. Among the richer aristocracy of England, and the absolutely working people, the sexes are still equal in number, and women can still marry. But the sons of clergymen, officers, civil servants, lawyers, doctors and some of the country gentry find the struggle for existence too great in this kingdom ; they emigrate, or leave the country by joining the military or naval service. Their sisters all remain at home, unable to find husbands, and uneducated for work, oven domestic work. The * superfluous women ’ most undoubtedly, as a body, perform the first duty of their sex —that of being charming ; they are often handsome, are generally well mannered and well dressed. They are 1 charmers ’; but there is no one to charm. They know very well that their chances of marriage are almost nil; therefore, should a solitary suitor with even a modest competency appear, they feel driven to accept the first man who asks them, whether they care for him or not, and most generally they do not. Their purcntsjwish to get rid of Them, so they marry without love. An evil arises out of this more ghastly than can be described. The marriage of convenience is a recognised social institution abroad. In England, in this nineteenth century, the women] of the uppermiddle classes adopt it without acknowledging it. However we may affect to deny it, there is a vast amount of married unhappiness in all classes. Ths fault is sometimes ascribed to the present degeneracy of women, and sometimes to the deterioration of the men. The fault really lies in our social system, which gives a woman neither work nor money, and obliges her to sell herself before she has lost her only saleable cemmodities—youth and beauty. As there exists four ‘ superfluous women ’ to one man, the female has no choice, while the lordly male has the greater number from whom to pick and choose. Therefore, in this century, many women have not only no chance of marrying at all, but no freedom of selection whatever. Amongst foreigners every girl, from the highest to the lowest, has some marriage portion, even if it is only furniture and house-linen. In England., among the working classes, too often a women does not bring even a change of under-linen, and in most cases she brings next to nothing. Primogeniture, ef course, tends to the degradation of women, and in these days drives those of the upper classes into loveless marriages. With us, the eldest son may have five thousand a year; his sisters seldom more than two hundred each. It is true that the younger sons have only about the same amount as the daughters, but they are given work of some sort, and, more especially, are sent out of England. In monied families the girls do not get an equal share; they are allowed only half what their brothers receive, as it is supposed that they will marry and some man will provide for them. But there' is no one to marry, the men of their class having loft England. The Americana leave all the family money to the girls, and tell the sons to go to work. Hence the influx of American heiresses who compete so successfully in the English peerage marriage market, not because they are charming as some assert, but because they are richer. It has been said that there are only two positions in life to which it is desirable to be born—(,'xar of All the Russians and an American woman. Across the Atlantic the sexes are more equal in number, and the women are more useful, better educated, and richer; consequently, American women are more esteemed than their less fortunate British cousins.— National Review.