NAGGING WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 276, 27 November 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

NAGGING WOMEN.

Women are born with a different nervous organisation from that, of men. While they are probably less susceptible to severe pain of many kinds than are men, and therefore give an appearance at times of greater courage (as in the dentist's chair), their nerves are essentially weaker and therefore less capable of prolonged etrain than those of men. If there were no other reasons this alone would prevent them from effective competition with men in such careers as those of the military commander, the statesman, the great financier, the explorer. Now the daily lives of many, if not of the most, ■women do demand no little strain on the nervous system. A few women are rich, secluded, -with no occupation, and with a legion of attendants to minister on every want. The poor sometimes envy them, but they are not to be envied, for they are the victims of settled ennui, which shows itself in all kinds of nervous disorders. A fashionable doctor's records would furnish some strangre stories as to the means adopted by women of this kind to give some zest and interest to their jaded aimless lives. Probably the prescription said to have been given to the Queen of Sweden—a little household work every day—would be their salvation did they but know it. Disordered nerves and a vacant life bring out latent infirmities of temper, and a woman who might have been bright, eager, affectionate, becomes peevish, fretful, fault-finding, disturbed by a zephyr, agitated by a crumpled rose-leaf. Such a woman will soon degenerate into a confirmed adept in the art of nagging. It is vain to try to please her; to live with her is a purgatory, to serve her is worse even than that. The best thing that could happen to her would be to be stripped of her riches, to be obliged to share in the daily common life of mankind, with its joys and sorrows, its tasks and simple pleasures. For a poor burdened woman of work who exhibits faults of temper much allowance can easily be made; but we find it hard to make any for a peevish, nagging woman surrounded by every object of luxurious desire. And yet probably the one needs the charitable pardon Of her exasperated fellow-creatures no less than the other. So far as we trace human faults to environments rather than to personality, we cannot help seeing that the life of the idle, rich woman with an initially fretful temper is about as unfavourable a medium for the growth of beautiful human qualities as can well> be conceived.—'Spectator.'