WOMAN OF TWO WORLDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 6

WOMAN OF TWO WORLDS

N.Z. War Bride Returns From Utah

HREE and a-half years in the United States, an American husband, and a baby born in Utah, have not changed Mrs. John Ashton, formerly Beatrice Hutchison, of Wellington, from a New Zealander into an American; but they have* given her a much better underStanding of life in the -U.S.A. than the average visitor to that country can hope to acquire. She has recently returned here to settle, and will be followed soon by her husband, not because she has any quarrel with America or found it un-comfortable-on the contrary, she had "a wonderful time" there-but because she feels now that New Zealand is a very good and wholesome place in which ‘to rear children, a country where life is admittedly quieter but relatively fuller, richer, and less artificially exciting. , Mrs, Ashton is a careful and sympathetic observer. In fact, by a combination of several circumstances, she would seem specially well equipped to interpret America to New Zealand. In an interview with "The Listener" she gave some of her impressions; and will later amplify them, and give others, in a series of special articles _ which she is writing for us. * % # cy JHEN Mrs. Ashton arrived in the U‘S., the Pacific was in turmoil and very much. in the minds of Americans -it was the period between Tarawa and Saipan-yet practically nobody seemed to have heard of New Zealand or, if people had, they thought it was either some romantic South Seas island, or a part of Australia or New Guinea. And when she did explain where she came from-as a war bride she was an object of great curiosity-the invariable reaction was "How relieved you must be to get here!"-as if New Zealand were a remote and barbarous place from which anyone should feel glad to escape. "All the time I was in America I heard New Zealand mentioned about twice on the air," Mrs. Ashton told us. "I-don’t know what you have to do in the U.S.A. to make the headlines; it certainly wasn’t what New Zealand was doing. Peter Fraser managed it once when he told the Hearst Press off at the San Francisco Conference. You remember he asked them to report only what had actually happened. "Dropped from Mars" "Arriving as I did was like being dropped from Mars on to another planet. For the first part of the time I was ‘in America I lived in a very small community outside Salt Lake City. (Later we moved round a good deal and I _had experience of some of the larger industrial centres.) The Mormons, of course, still practically control the whole State of Utah-especially financially: they are, however, beginning to lose some of their political influence. They are very strong in Idaho, too, and in Arizona, * found them very pleasant people to live among; very sober and industrious. No drinking, no smoking. If you are out visiting and light a cigarette, they'll producer a saucer as ash-tray. It’s the nearest thing they’ll have for the purpose." ." Reverting to the ignorance of New Zealand she encountered in the States, ' Mrs. Ashton said that knowledge of any-

thing progressive or democratic happening in this country just didn’t exist. Those few people who had heard of us were "petrified by New Zealand’s socialist experiment," as they called it. It didn’t matter what cross-section of the population one came across. there was the same general conviction that America had_ the best answer to all problems, the best way of doing everything. Yet there were some Americans, in fact a good many, who were wanting to come to New Zealand." It is Easier to Conform "Do you find, when you get to the States, a continuous campaign going on to Americanise you — something conscious, deliberate, and planned?" "Yes, I think there is For myself, I certainly learnt to dress and makeup as an American woman. You are conscious of your foreignness, your differences. You find it much simpler and more comfortable to

get along as you drop off and lose your New Zealand edges and at least start to look like and behave like an American. "Another New Zealander, a girl I had grown up with, came over with me. She tried for longer than I did to remain a New Zealander in outward appearance: for instance, to set the table and serve the meals in the New Zealand style. But it’s much easier and better right from the start to settle your household in the American way than to try to hang on to your old methods of doing things. You just can’t go on resisting the kind of social force that operates-and there’s no point in trying to." "In things of the mind is it the same?" "Well, it’s extraordinary how soon your conscience seems to become dulled, and how hard it is to go on fighting to retain the opinions you have grown up with-for instance, the idea that Jews and Negros still have wings. I don’t know how long I could have held on to whatever liberalism I possess if I had stayed-on in America and if I hadn’t had a husband who agreed with me; and also if I hadn’t had the benefit of a fairly good grounding in liberalism in New Zealand as I grew up." Liberals in a Minority "You speak as if liberalism is a weak force in the States; yet when one reads The New Yorker, the New Republic and similar periodicals one gets the impression here that it is fairly vigorous. Is that incorrect?" "Yes, I am afraid the liberals dre only a fringe of the population in the States. Take this as a case in point:

apart from subscription copies, only three New Yorkers were sold in the whole of Salt Lake City. I know that because I met one of the other two persons who bought the paper. He was a professor from Harvard, and he introduced’ himself to me in the bookshop, saying he wanted to meet the girl from New Zealand who shared this experience with him. I have often wondered who the third person was. "Yes, the liberal and progressive in America to-day is a rather lonely as well as a much-tried man. Here in New Zealand, after all, the liberals and progressives are in a majority; the real conservatives are in the minority, It isn’t so in America, though from reading a few of the mere progressive American magazines you may have come to feel that it is. The American liberal -has already endured much and I think he needs some réal courage to maintain his position to-day, as he watclrés Taft and Vandenberg and Dulles at work and sees what has been slowly and laboriously built up in the interests of Mr. and Mrs.. Average American (even though they didn’t realise what had been done for them or ask for it) crumbling away and disappearing. But make no mistake; these things aren’t happening contrary to the will of the people. This is what the majority of people want." "And Henry Wallace? What hope for liberalism is there in that direction?" "T’m afraid Wallace just isn’t accepted by the average American. He is small physically, but is, I think, a man of considerable stature. He is woolly, of course, in much that he says, but he has courage. Like Eleanor Roosevelt, he has

great mana-but only among a small section. Mr. and Mrs. Average American are not impressed." Not the Plunket System Returning to the domestic scene, Mrs, Ashton mentioned that one of the factors which had done much to give her an understanding of American life was "having and bringing up an American baby." There was in America now a big movement to let the child itself regulate its own day. "I had, of course, been brought up to believe in the Plunket system of regulating the child every hour of the day, and this was something new to me. But I think my American sisters-in-law had a more eager and natural way with their children; they weren’t kept behind their mothers’ skirts all the time, but were made more part of the family. The Plunket system, as I say, was my Bible at the start, and I remember once when my baby cried I was asked why I didn’t pick it up and comfort it. I replied that I shouldn’t because it wasn’t ‘mothering-time.’ That was something new to them: they told me that all the time was ‘motheringtime.’ In that sort of way the New Zealand edges were gradually worn off me." "N.Z. Women Look Overworked" Time-payment was a natural and accepted system in the States, continued Mrs. Ashton, During the war there had been various safeguards for the protection of purchasers, including a 15-month limit for repayment. When a young couple got married they estimated how many labour-saving devices and gadgets they could afford for a start-whether they could afford a washing machine as well as a refrigerator, and so on. But they never thought of going without them completely. And they were not feckless; on the contrary, American housewives were very good budgeteers. "In fact, I would like to emphasise that I haven’t come back to New Zealand because America is a hard country for women. By comparison I think New Zealand women lead a hard life. I thought when I returned here that the women looked overworked. Not the men -it may be a dangerous thing to say, but I think New Zealand men look better dressed than New Zealand women, and certainly not overworked. And the children are healthy and clean, and welldressed also. But the women, I notice, appear too tired and overworked, and a little drab, It would not, I am sure, endanger our hardilbood as a ‘nation if New Zealand women had the washingmachines, the refrigerators, the laboursaving kitchens, and the other gadgets which the American housewife takes for granted." For the last six months of her three and a-half years in America, Mrs..Ashton worked in a nursery school. It was then, she emphasises, when she went ta work among Americans, that she really began to feel she knew America, Up till then, as a war-bride from New Zealand, she had been something of a curiosity, somebody apart. "But in those last six months I learnt more and understood more than at any other time. If I had stayed six months more it might have been hard for me to leave at all,"