WOMAN'S WORLD AND ITS WAYS

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

WOMAN'S WORLD AND ITS WAYS

some momentarily unattached man who can spend some money on her, and she takes hold of him as efficiently as Messalina took hold of her come-and-go lovers in the old Roman world. Often enough she doesn't worry to transgress. She just tells her husband he must get her a divorce, and he, poor fish, does it —that is, if she manages him well. This love again! The Avoman must be released from , the wicked bonds of a "loveless" marriage—that is to say, a marriage that has ceased, in.the natural order of things, to hold the fresh thrills of a honeymoon—in order that she can find true happiness in the arms of her' affinity, her soul mate. And she is released. And presently the same process begins all over again. The truth is, of course, that the question of love, in its real sense, has never arisen. These are passing sex fancies, which in a sterner world were effectively suppressed in the interests of the moral code on which civilised society is founded, or which the woman controlled through her own sense of right and duty, or because she feared the consequences.

If every woman gave way to every passing sex fancy, took advantage of every opportunity she had for transgression, society would collapse like a house of cards. It is when the idea is insidiously propagated that these temptings—to taste exquisite forbidden pleasures, to live high moments of intoxicating rapture, to escape for a brief hour fiuai the world ot humdrum contentmen'. into the encaauted world whose door is opened by a passiondrunk kiss—are not really sins, but are. rightful things, and even admirable things, that the damage is done which leads to decay ruin in the long run. One finds a tendency to glorify the transgressions of women in many of. the leading novelists of the day. By the time one is through a modern novel one feels that anyone who maintains a moral code, who marries and is loyal, is not only beyond the pale, but ought to go and see a doctor. It was once said of a public man that if he were found with a card up his sleeve during a game, he would say that God put it there. Too many of the modern generation are like that—ready to justify a misdemeanour in the sex sphere, even to glorifying it in the sacred name of love. But the sterner elements of society must cp.ll a halt. There is no Godordained "right to love." Honour, loyalty and faith are not to be lightly betrayed because a woman hears the alluring whisper of sex temptations and is stirred by strange fancies. . . . ("Star" and A.A.N.S. Copyright.)