Women In The Country

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 138, 13 February 1942, Page 18

Women In The Country

Sir,-In your last issue "Aurora" (Otorohanga) complains that my picture of Martha in "Ill Fares the Land" is a wicked libel and a slur on the women of Hawke's Bay. "Aurora" evidently believes that one should. write what is pleasant rather than what is true. I admit that Martha is a purely fictitious character, but that does not alter the fact that there are many people like Martha. Some of them may even come from Hawke’s Bay. I admit that there are many women on farms to-day who are _ doing their best, with a great measure of success, to keep things going until the men come home. I admit that there are many women, on farms and off, who, in spite of their lack of previous experience, are performing miracles to get necessary work done. And even spineless Martha at the end of my story shows signs of being influenced by a desire to reorganise her life round the central tact of the war and its needs. But I was stung by some of "Aurora’s" allegations. I decided that in spite of Martha’s unpromising beginning she, too, should become one of these super-women with ten children hand-milking twenty-four cows a day and cherishing a large garden and orchard. But when I started again on Martha I found she wasn’t up to specifications. She didn’t have ten. children, and I didn’t see how she could until her husband came home. And the farm was only twelve acres and wouldn’t run more than eight cows. The orchard would have had to be planted, and as it wasn’t her farm she would hardly reap the fruits thereof. But, in spite of this, I deter_mined to make something of her, and her subsequent story appears on this page. Actually I don’t like her as well now as I did before. She’s unpleasantly like her Biblical namesake, and I think the Lord meant something when He said that Mary had chosen the better part.

M.

I.

(Wellington). | |