WIVES AND SHEEP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 719, 24 April 1953, Page 5

WIVES AND SHEEP

Sir,-I sympathise with "Sundowner" in his difficulty in answering the farmer’s wife who wanted to go back to Birmingham, but more with the woman. She belongs to the great world-wide sisterhood whose minds are more curious than the one-track mentality of their husbands, There must be Englishwomen on English farms who wish the domestic horizon was a little wider, and quite probably some New Zealand women have married into a huntin’, fishin’ and shootin’ set in England, and as a result haye grown somewhat rebellious, Corresponding to the farmer who thinks of nothing but sheep js the well-to-do chap who goes round the world fishing all day and talking fish all night. We must not suppose that there are not New Zealandborn women similarly afflicted -on farms. Grim stories could be told of the unsympathetic and even hostile attitude of husbands towards any interest in the arts by their wives. In a short play about a New Zealand dairy farm which had a vogue on the amateur stage some years ago, the central figure is a universitygraduate wife who has had to let such things slide, and now sees her daughter, denied such education, getting engaged to a neighbouring oaf. The dam of frustration and disappointment bursts when she meets an old friend. "To have somebody to say these things to! To get away from cows, always cows! The people about here talk cows while they wait for

babies to be born, and as they turn from the open graves of their dead.".A manwho knew this passage once told me*he had been with two farmer brothers as they walked away from theig father’s grave, and one said to the other, "About. thatline of ewes... Ad ‘. Writing as a man, I should say that; as a rule, in town or country, the woman, gets the worse. of it. The many examples, to the contrary in farm life just shdw: what can be done. if a liberal wind is: allowed to blow in. The sheep or cowbound farmer can, get outside, talk to his, dogs ot horses. or cows or sheep; gossips. at Saleyatds or over a gate or a beer. The woman * has. to stay at home’ anide look after the children and cook, and

when the man comes back to meals and the eternal talk of sheep or cows is resumed, I wouldn’t blame the wife if she was strongly urged to throw the teapot at his head, The leg of mutton would be the appropriate missile, but unfortunately that is placed at his. tf of the table. . = ay

WIDER

HORIZONS

(Wellington)_