BOOKS THAT WOMEN BORROW

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 34, 3 November 1928, Page 18

BOOKS THAT WOMEN BORROW

A CENSUS AT A PUBLIC LIBRARY

A big public library in England checked the women borrowers of books du a recent Saturday. . Here is the result :— “The periodic lamentation on the quality of reading favoured by different classes of people—and frequently used as an indictment of our educational system—has recently been turned in the direction of women’s reading, and the factory worker and young ‘skivvy’ have been reproached for seeking the excitement to be found in cheap novelettes as a change from the monotonous tasks wbereby their daily bread is earned,”' says the “Halifax Readers’ Guide,” the organ of the Halifax Municipal Libraries." . “If the conditions are so depressing as represented it is surely up to the employers arid mistresses and other.s concerned with the welfare of youth to ‘get busy’ and make known the better literature available. ' But are things rrially so bad as the pessimists assume? We do know that in Victorian days many - young, • girls and older women revelled in the pages of Mrs. Southworth, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Henry " Wood, Emma Jane Worboise, and ■-slmilaf authors _of a domestic and thrilling type, but nowadays the range .of choice is considerably greater, although the three latter still retain a measure of deserved popularity. “To. get away from generalisations and' discover the' actual choice of present-day women, the writer examined the issue of books to female readers from the Halifax Public Library on a recent Saturday, and the following were among the books selected. “In the region of non-flctional works came Andrew Lang’s ‘Cock Lane and Common Sense,' Whitehead’s ‘Symbolism,’. and Watkinson’s ‘Fairness of Trial.’ In sociology, Macdonald's .‘Socialist- Movement’ and Shadwell's ‘The Breakdown of Socialism’; Royden’s ‘Political Christianity.’ and Kirk ‘

Patrick’s ‘Foundations of Child Study.’ Two volumes on Esperanto and Quain’s Anatomy were selected; several books on gardening, and more volumes on music and musical scores. “There was a good demand for literary works, including Macy’s-‘Story of the World’s Literature,’ Shaw’s ‘Getting Married,’ two volumes by Ibsen, Shakespeare’s ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ Greene’s ‘Complete Works,’ Lamb’s •Essays,' and St. John Ervine’s ‘Some Impressions of My Elders.’ Historical literature was represented by Dark’s 'Queen Elizabeth,’ and John Buchan’s ‘History of the Great War.’ In travel the choice was Amundsen’s ‘My Polar Flight.’ Dix’s ‘My Joy Ride Around the World,’ Shaw’s ‘English Caravanners’ and Irving’s ‘Windmills'and Waterways.’ The biography chosen included Bellamy’s ‘Byron and Man,’ Annie Besant’s ‘Autobiography,’ and Popp’s ‘The Autobiography of a Working Woman.' • “The greatest demand was, Of course, for fiction, but not of the sloppy or even second-rate variety imagined in some quarters. All the leading modern writers were represented, including Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Walpole, Conrad, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and manv other older novelists: Charles Kingsley, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, Stevenson and Dumas. In addition, Buchan, Locke, Halliwell Sutcliffe, Leacock, Chesterton, Farnol, ' Barrie and Doyle were chosen. As representing the possibly more popular element should be named P. G. Wodehouse, Buckrose, Bindloss, Rex Beach. lan Hay. Zane Grey, Gertrude Page, and Jack London. “An impartial survey of this account of the actual reading of women reveals not only a good choice but, what is' perhaps equally important, the fact that women and girls nowadays seek, their literary nourishment from a wider field of literary endeavour than is com1 monly supposed.”

TUP SEVEN AGES OF WOMAN.

—AND ALL OF THEM WRONG!

By a Grandmother. Never, it seems, have I managed to be at the right age for anything that I wanted to do. Always there has been the family cry: ‘‘Oh, you are much too young!” Until, with disconcerting suddenness, just when I was getting used to that, came the cry: “Oh, you are much too old to start that now!” says a writer iu the “Daily Mail.” I cannot recollect my occupations and thoughts during the first few years of my life, but I can imagine many conversations on the following lines : Mother: “I think baby should be giving up her bottle now, nurse, and try a hard biscuit”—or banana skin, or piece of raw steak, or whatever was the fashionable poison for babies at the moment. And nurse would reply : “Oh, no, mum.” (Yes, they said “mum” in those days, strange though it may seem to our uncultured ears) “Oh, no, mum, baby is much too young yet.” Later, when I clung with the despair of youth to my bottle I was told to “behave like a big girl,” as I was much too old to be still sucking a bottle. And to cure me of my love of the bottle they filled it with a concoction of mustard and water, and thus ruined for ever my infantile trust in mankind.

Then I was “too old” to be playing with dolls ,and must needs give them up and go to school. But I was considered “too young” to be allowed to board there. So I had to work there yet miss any fun that might be going at recreation time; I had to return home and lie down.

At sixteen began the period of being too young for anything. I was at one minute assured that I did not know my own mind, and for the same culpable reason.

At twenty I wanted to get married, and a storm of abuse broke over my head because I was too young. At ' twenty-two I had a baby. Although criminally young -for such a proceeding, I managed quite creditably. Then my husbaiid died. I wept unrestranicdl; t.id was told I was too old for such an .-.xhibirion. I determined to live alone with my baby and youth was thrown in my teeth. And so it went on. Too old. Too young. How many hundred times in the course of conversation does one hear the remark : “Ridiculous, at her, age too.” „ Later on in life I stood for Parliament. “Absurd at your age,” said my family. I played tennis, I danced, I refused to be laid on the shelf to collect dust and employ my time making kettle holders. “The height of folly,” said my family. “And look how old she is. ’ Now I am eighty. I go about alone and will not -wear glasses. “Madness ! say my grandchildren, “nt her age, too!

Dutch women theologians have recently started a professional organisation of their own, as they found that their interests were not being looked after by the ipen. The official Church has never been specially in favour of admitting women to-any office, it has considered them inferior to men and only fit for less important positions. After having passed through the university they are expected to take a different examination to the men, which only gives them the right to give religious instruction and carry out less important duties in connection with divine service. After ten years’ probation women are allowed to qualify as ministers.

A WOMAN M.P. Miss Preston Stanley, the only woman member of the last New South Wales Parliament, is at present in New Zealand. She gave a lecture to a gathering of women in Auckland on Wednesday. Miss Meville occupied the chair, and, iu introducing the speaker, reminded those present that Miss Stanley was not only well versed in political knowledge, but in commerce as well, as she was the director of a large Sydney business concern.

Miss Stanley (says the “Star”) possesses a deep, cultivated voice and a command of languege rarely heard from a political platform. She remarked that Parliaments had been called “The great palava,” where nobody believed what he said, where nobody said what he believed, and where nobody did what he said—the last refuge of a scoundrel and the grave of the ideal. But, for all that, she believed Parliaments were the best means yet evolved for the settlement of the affairs of the nations. The speaker explained the peculiar position she occupied as the only woman member of the New South Wales Legislature. She was banned by the Labour- Party and silently undermined by her own, for there was one subject upon which all the male members agreed, and that was that they did not want women in the House. Mrs. Stanley explained the efforts she had to make to keep a subject in which she was deeply interested on the business paper. This was the Maternal and Infant Welfare Bill, to try and reduce the mortality amongst mothers, which reached 297 in New South Wales in a year. This loss of life in motherhood, she felt, could be prevented, but she was always blocked in her efforts to get it on the Statute Book.

The married women teachers controversy has reached a new stage in Leigh (Lancashire) which opens the possibility of a second legal test case, says the “Women’s Leader.” The Leigh Education Committee has for some time been committed to the policy of dismissing women teachers on marriage. The question which now arises is, how far is this rule enforceable against teachers in non-provided schools? According to existing regulations a local education authority can dismiss any teacher in any non-prbvided school in its area “on educational grounds,” i.e. for incompetence. But the managers of the non-provided school representing its founders or providers, reserve the right of dismissal on other grounds. Thus in the Leigh area, the managers of the Pennington Mission Church of England school have chosen to retain in employment a certain valued infant school teacher, formerly Miss Varley, now Mrs. Bent. They hold that in this matter the Education Committee’s power of dismissal on “educational grounds” does not apply. In support of its cherished policy the Education Committee has, however,' seen fit to refuse to pay Mrs. Bent’s salary and a deadlock has in consequence arisen. The matter has been referred to the National Union of Teachers, which has in its turn demanded a ruling from the Board of Education. Failing which, says an official of the National Union of Teachers,” “the case may be fought out in the Courts.”