Women of Destiny

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 441, 5 December 1947, Page 11

Women of Destiny

] CAN think of no better description "of the effect of hearing The Trojan Women than the ancient one "purged with pity and terror." After sitting spell-

bound for an hour and a-half under the combined beauty and horror of this play, wishing to escape the unbearable weight of its accumulating tragedy, yet unable to do otherwise than go on listening, 1 found myself completely out of sympathy with the remainder of the week’s programmes. Later, under the influence of the doomed and hated Helen, I tuned to a talk on "Women in Politics," from 4YA, and found myself listening to a description of various women whose influence on the destiny of nations was of a later date. The back-stairs intrigues, the string-pulling, the settling of national issues in the boudoir, which were the miserable efforts women had perforce to adopt in order to get their way, all suggested that the famous, or infamous, Helen was, in comparison with women like de Maintenon, Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and Charlotte Corday, a passive pawn"in men’s affairs. This programme by Mrs. Freed was the first of a series, and I hope, by the time this appears in print, she will be dealing. with the more spacious, happier, modern times when women’s political influence is exerted openly for more ideal Tteasons than personal advancement and the ambitions of friends and relatives, and when one sex does not have to scheme and intrigue behind closed doors, or resort to violence and bloodshed, in order to make its wishes known to the other.