Mothers and Babies in Fiction

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 486, 15 October 1948, Page 11

Mothers and Babies in Fiction

A MORNING session, For the Confirmed Novel Reader from 4YA, proved very rewarding. I anticipated that the speaker, Margaret Dalziel, would be dealing only with the better

class of novel, and I was right. On the person who reads novels only for the sake of reading, I imagine the speaker would waste little: sympathy. Her tone’ of voice, when deal-' ing with the "mill-| girl weds heir to; dukedom" type of fic-’ tion, Was somewhat | scathing, and it was

with obvious pleasure that she was able to assure listeners that this kind of domestic novel has had its day. dNovels dealing with women’s work, nowadays, are mainly realistic, she told us, and they place the accent (possibly too heavily) on the drudgery and difficulty of most women’s jobs-including housework. I thought one remark a little too bitter. I refer to the statement (not the speaker’s own, but qa quotation) "The best view a mother ever sees of her children is their back view going out the gate." Surely there is a lot to be said for motherhood--even in realistic fictionas a vocation. If the 80-hour week of the housewife and mother of small babies could be reduced by half, I imagine few women would prefer to give up home-keeping in favour of working for a boss. Why doesn’t someone write. an attractive novel telling us how this can be done? I guarantee it would be a best-seller.