WHICH TYPE ARE YOU?

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 4, 1 October 1924, Page 25

WHICH TYPE ARE YOU?

By V. QUIRK

There are Four Sorts of Women I

To the wife-woman, man is the most interesting thing in the world; she will love her children, hut they will always he to her an interference. The woman who prides herself on being “different” may resent the

statement that there are rendu onlv four sorts of women, but she will inevitably recognise herself as belonging to one of the groups described in the following article. It is worth while discovering which!

YEOMEN are as varied as the shells on the seashore, and, like them, they fall into classes. There are really only four sorts of women, judging their temperaments as a whole, and not meddling with idiosyncrasies of character. There is the spinster, the mother-woman, the wife-woman, and most rare, the wife-and-mother woman. The spinster is not always unmarried. The term old maid could be applied to many a grandmother. For all women don’t marry because they must, or because they have attracted a man so much that he has overcome unwillingness. The spinster-woman may marry because she has money, or because she thinks old maids are looked down upon, or because she has an unquestioning mind and takes it for granted that as her mother and grandmother are married it must be the right thing to do. She becomes a married spinster. She regards her husband’s display of affection with something like horror, and loves saying, her eyes two O’s, “You know what men are!” She sees something shameful in all human passions, but since she is generally intrinsically conventional —for if she weren’t she would never, with her nature, have marriedshe does not rail against them, but accepts them with mind averted. She loves immaculate tidiness, and her husband’s tobacco-ash and forgetting to wipe his feet on the hall-mat are little tragedies to her. Everything masculine is something alien and distasteful. When she has children she makes a painstaking mother. She is careful of their physical well-being, but any mental waywardness is either unseen by her or else regarded with dismay and fear. Her children are outwardly dutiful, but they take their little secrets to their schoolfriends or to somebody else’s mother. When they grow up they frequently say: “Mother is so good, but she doesn’t understand ” She doesn’t, for she is only physically a mother. The mother-woman is the most common of all types, and she is often unmarried either because, though loving children intensely, she isn’t interested in men, or because she is sexually unattractive. When she doesn’t marry she is either embittered and thwarted, or else she makes an adorable, if pathetic, auntie. She mothers everyone within her reach. To her, everybody is a child, excepting those who resent her possessive, protective attitude, and these she disregards. She doesn’t want to be petted by others, she wants to pet them. She wants to control younger people affectionately, and feel that they are influenced in their doings by her advice and warnings. She is generally happy, but she looks at babies with disquieting longing.

When the mother-woman marries her husband falls into the background the moment she has a child. Her affection for him has| all the time been largely maternal, or else her vanity has been pleased by his love of her. But either of these mild emotions fall into insignificance beside the passion of her adoration for her child. The house is no longer a thing to take delight in for its own sake, it is merely a dwelling place for the baby. Her husband becomes “Dada,” and is useful inasmuch as he provides food and shelter for the baby. She herself is no longer an individual, but a handmaid for the baby. He amounts to an obsession, and destroys any interest she might once have felt in abstract matters. Her husband may remain technically faithful, but he never contrives to love her in the old way. The flame of the desire of life no longer illuminates her and burns in her eyes. She has made it into a comfortable hearth-fire, by means of which she can keep her child warm. She is perfectly happy while her family is young, but when they get older and develop individualities of their own and meet people cleverer and more interesting than they are themselves, they unconsciously move away from her. She is no longer any use. She can bath and dress and care for babies, she can play with children and enter into their talk, but she has stooped down so long- to childhood’s mental height that she can no longer stand upright. Her children tower above her. She knows it and they know it, but they don’t admit it, for they are fond of her and wouldn’t hurt her for worlds, and to her they are still “my children.” To the wife-woman man is the most interesting thing in the world. She is vivid, vital, passionate, and without the selflessness or selfish unselfishness of the mother-woman. She cannot, like her, sink her individuality into that of any other being, even her own child. She doesn’t only Avant to love, she wants to be loved. She enjoys the society of men, and loves their indulgent attitude. There is a lot of the child in her, and she never loses her desire for being fussed over and petted. She is always a flirt before marriage, and, if her husband is over-domestic or has lost the flash of adventurousness with which new love temporarily endowed him, , she flirts after marriage as well. If she is happy with her husband, if he is a man that knows how to love and never loses himself entirely in games or business, they live deliciously, especially if they have no children. If they do have children they are still happy, but not with completeness. For though she ’ will love her children, they

will always be to her an interference. She would be shocked if one told her that, for she generally does her best to be a good mother, but she simply hasn’t the capacity for being content in children’s company. They don’t stimulate her, they irritate her. She gets impatient with them in spite of herself, and they feel “out of it” when she and their father are together, for she casts an invisible net round the two of them. If she had only a father’s part to play she would be quite contented, but she subconsciously resents the sacrifices the birth of children makes necessary. It is not a time of rapture, but a lost year, and the claims of infancy fill her with bewilderment. Motherhood to her is not the supreme result of love, but a trick of malicious nature. However, when the troubles of their early years are over, and her children reach adolescence, she often becomes suddenly attracted to them. That is because they are then not only her offspring, but interesting individuals approaching what was to her the most interesting and complicated phase of life. Her daughters say delightedly to their girl friends: “Mother and I are getting so chummy! She’s taking as much trouble over my clothes as over her own, and she talks and listens to me!” One of her sons may say to some indignant and injured-looking chum whose mother still wishes him to be her baby, and who has wept and been unreasonable over some escapade: “Now, the mater’s such a pal over those matters.” The same boy might have been scolded in his babyhood for crying over some seemingly incomprehensible trouble, while his chum in a similar predicament would have been petted and soothed and kissed. One is the mother of babies and the other is the friend of youth. The wife-and-mother type of woman is truly rare. She is capable of passionate attachment to a man and, at the same time, intense love of children. She never forgets herself in her babies, but she delights in them and admires them. And her husband is not merely the father of her children, but the lover of her youth. Wifehood means as much to her as motherhood, and both are of absorbing interest. Because she is a comrade to her man, the outside world never loses its thrill, for she looks at it, helped by masculine eyes. She is a complete woman, and when she is very old, still retains her vivacity, because the memory of a full life is enough to live richly upon. In discussing types, one always makes them quite distinct, but, of course, some are blended and some are imperfect. But these four types do, approximately, comprise all women. To which do you belong?