PRISON WITHOUT BARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 409, 24 April 1947, Page 5

PRISON WITHOUT BARS

Sir,-I congratulate Caroline Webb for her excellent article on "Home Life for the Married Woman." One sentence from it ("No cow could be expected to function that did as much running about as a housewife") puts all the. dragging misery of overtired motherhood into a nutshell, and the suggestion for alleviating that misery by introducing commercial cleaning companies is good. The solution given for the solving of the domestic help scarcity problem needs further thought. Mrs. Webb suggests "making all girls serve a period of domestic service equivalent to a period of military or national service called for from boys." The word "make" conjures up an unfortunate picture which Mrs. Webb has perhaps overlooked, Imagine a potential Lili Kraus giving up the year or two necessary for domestic training at a time when every day is important to her future career. Imagine the effect of enforced domestic training on youth eager to follow its desired goal. I would most certainly object to this for my children. The only rational way to overcome prejudice against domestic work is through the type of education which encourages girls with a natural aptitude for it to understand the blind ignorance of both employers and employees of the past, and which encourages them to look on such a life as an important science. It is, in fact, a conglomeration of sciences. "Mother" needs to be a psychologist, dietician, philosopher — combining the knowledge of a Geisha girl with the qualities of the aforementioned bovine. Our generation of housewives is paying the penalty of shortage of domestic help because of the mistakes made by previous generations who were responsible for the stigma which is still attached to the word "servant." Until we are educated to the standard of equality .of housewife and help there must be a time-lag. To bring force to bear would interrupt the natural process of social evolution, and deprive our girls of their most valuable freedom-their

freedom of choice.

L.L.

H.

(Heriot).

Sir,-In regard to the bondage of married women, we were warned in the Nineteenth Century magazine of 1878. I have just read an article by a Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr entitled "The Future of Englishwomen." I found the following extract intriguing: "In what way the leaven (Female Franchise) will work may be exemplified by the experiences of three women, whom we may imagine to be living thirty, forty or fifty years hence, whose actual and relative position will show how irrelevant to the nature of the proposed change are the immediate tests of good and evil, of failure and success,

by which it is sought to measure it These three women will be sisters, educated alike under the progressive conception of female capacities and female rights, without expectations, or with very slight ones, but all qualified to exercise some profession. One of these may love and marry, and be fairly prosperous in her marriage. She will have a kind, if not always devoted husband; averagely good and healthy children; an average proportion of domestic pains and pleasures, disappointments and success — a life, in short, which will stand for happiness in the gradual self-effacement which will prevent her ever entirely realising whether or not it is so. She will never wish to die. She may sometimes feel the kind of weariness which only death cures. "Of the two who will not marry, one, being devoid of sentiment, will pass through life without experiencing an attachment or inspiring one. The other will inspire one, and will return it, but in such a manner as to leave her professional interest and her social liberties untouched. She will be a wife just so far as is consistent with remaining free. Her conduct will create no scandal because the increasing equality of the sexes will naturally, if not logically, have modified the prevailing view of the moralities of female life. The position will be accepted by a large section of society and she will proceed with just so much caution that the more orthodox members of her acquaintance will be either ignorant of its facts, or their eyes not forcibly opened if they determine not to see. She will love rather less than she is loved, whilst the circumstances of their relation will be such as to stimulate his constancy and to remove all sense of anxiety from hers. Both these women will have professional success, social prestige, mental and bodily health which proceeds from the unshackled exercise of natural powers. They will at no time envy the lot of their more feminine sister; they will often see cause to pity it. Their lives will be no more wanting in dignity than in enjoyment. Their intercourse with women will be naturally free from littleness; their manner towards men from ungraceful extremes of reserve or freedom, They will have done some good in the world; they will not consciously or intentionally have done any great harm. "No one can deny that the elements of this new order are already among us. No one can deny that as the self-sustain-ing single woman js an existing fact, the self-sustaining free woman is the natural outcome of an existing tendency — a woman whose conduct may or may not be immoral in the accepted meaning of the word, but who will be so fa below the tenderness as above the weakness imputed to her sex, that she will, refuse to render, whilst she will often abstain from claiming, any sacrifice or the name of love. No one can truly affirm that such a character and the life which corresponds to it, will not in its own way be good. But it will scarcely be considered by those who demand new spheres for female activity in order that the traditional female virtues may hava a larger field of expansion." oi. Sad 5

W.H.

P.

(Dunedin).