SOFT-TIME WIVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

SOFT-TIME WIVES.

(By ROWAN GLEN.)

Can any clever person locate and exterminate the unhappiness-producing germ which is so busy to-day among married women in what we call the middle-classes? There is such a germ— figuratively speaking of course—even the most casual observer will admit, and having said that I must make it quite clear that there are some millions of women who are impervious to its poison. Let their husbands give due thanks to heaven! There are, according to natural history pundits, no female drones, but in actual fact there are by far too many female drones in the matrimonial hive. They toil not, neither do they gather honey, nor attend in any way to the well-being of their. unfortunate mates. They simply sit round and chatter, and dab on face-powder and complain that they do not have nearly such a good time as that to which they are entitled.

Many shudder at the thought of wor k— sa ve when assured that it will be done by someone else. There are two sisters well known to me whom I shall name A and B. A is married to an architect, who has of recent months known many financial reverses. She has tackled the whole work of their home, and there has never been so much as a whimper or a whine. She knows that her husband is doing his best under difficult circumstances, and she is playing the game. B is the wifo of an accountant, who is also temporarily hard-up. Does she dust, scrub, polish, cook, wash up and do all the other things that a mans mate should do under certain conditions? JNot a bit of it! She wants a soft time, .and somehow or other she gets it ... but she has no longer the love and respect of the man whom she married. He knows her now for what she is—a scltsatisfied, dissatisfied woman, with whose life lie linked his own while his mental eyes were hooded. In a suburban home the other day I saw a happy-faced woman in the kitchen, working away between the gas stove and the sink, and dodging off every now and then to tend a naughty baby. There was nothing ot the soft-time wife about her!

In another house I spoke to another wife. She told me—though I had invited no confidences —that her husband was becoming more and more mean. She is one of those would-be "I am so helpless about everything" kind of women, who are so wise that they pretend to be stupid. Her particular grievance was that the man whose name and income she had accepted, was cutting down her household allowance. "Isn't it too horrible of him?" she asked.