MARRIED—OR NOT?

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVIII, Issue 10984, 2 August 1927, Page 7

MARRIED—OR NOT?

HUSBANDS AS AN EXCUSE. As a woman without a man behind me for the last few years I have found myself constantly at war with people who have tried to cheat me (writes Leonore Eyles in "Good Housekeeping".) I have been badly paid for work; I have found business people of all sorts Teady to take advantage of the fact that I was a woman. There seems to be a camaraderie among men that prevents them from underpaying and cheating each other, and makes them rather tend to cheat a woman; at the same time, women in business positions of power are usually nicer and fairer to the men they deal with than the women. It seemed ludicrous at first to me to know that several well-known figures among the most feminist women were married, and said openly: "My husband does not let me do so and so."lt wasn't J

until I got out into the world that I saw how wise they were in adopting this pose, if it is a pose a tall. Cowardly, perhaps, to hide behind a man. But very sensible. "My husband won't let me," removes entirely from one the stigma of meanness when one refuses to lecture for a charitable cause gratis or give a dozen copies of one's books to a Cause! And when you don't want to go out to dinner you need only say, with a deprecating smile, "I'd Jove to, but you know what a man is! He will dine at home, and he will have me there while lie's doing it!" Yes, a husband is very useful as an excuse for one's little delinquencies. The unmarried woman has to stand and fall by her own mistakes. That's a frightening sort of idea, even to the .boldly indepen.dent woman. There is something rather awful in being responisble for yourself, particularly if you were brought up in the Victorian way and dared not call your soul your own, but said, "I'll ask mother" or "I'll ask father" about every mortal tiling.