THE COLONIAL LADIES OF THE PERIOD.

Dunstan Times, Issue 895, 13 June 1879, Page 3

THE COLONIAL LADIES OF THE PERIOD.

The abstract question of Woman’s Right’s is one ivc should bo sorry to take up. We are, however, glad to see that the claim of the sex to personal, not political, independence is being advocated by all the leading journals of Groat Britain. It is obvious that woman in Xew Zealand, among well to do classes, are being brought up about as badly as they can bo. The Colonial young lady of the present day is a fair fragile being, whose existence is devoted to talking, dressing, eating, drinking, dancing, and flirting. In this little round of occupations she is perfect, hut take her out of these she is very helpless and useless. All Colonial young ladies, some time or other, get married, and look forward to that consummation as a matter of course. Howls it, ho vever, when that period in their existence arrives, and a happy bridegroom fancies that he lakes to his home some one I who is perfection, slowly and surely ho discovers that the companion of his existence, the mistress of his house, can't cook, can’t sew, can’t manage her house herself, can’t make a servant manage it; can’t nurse him when he is ill ; can’t wait on him when he is well—and when she possibly has a baby does not know what in the world to do with it. If the husband, when all this disappointment breaks upon him. sickens of homo and home life, who is to blame ? The butterfly of a girl becomes the wife of I a miserable husband. It is a pity that | men and women’s lives should bo soured and spoiled by the silly training which Colonial girls receive. Who is to blame?

The girl who permits herself to sink into the existence of a doll—who lets her intellect narrow down to the mere twaddle of society—who depends on either parents or on a husband for everything she eats, drinks, or wears ; or is the mother culpable who, as mothers usually are, is prouder to see her daughter belle of a ball than queen of a household—who fosters all that is frivolous in her daughter at the expense of all that is good, genuine, useful and honest. Or is the father free from censure, who supplies the means for foolish parade and silly extravagance, and spends more on making perhaps, his favorite a useless, idle, miserable woman than would be required to make ber what nature intended her to be, the helpmate and companion of man, not a mere dependent on his bounty, but a companion with him in all his life’s labor. The mere question of the political franchise for woman is as nothing by the side of this greater claim they have for personal independence, for freedom trom those influences which enervate both mind and body. The Colonial girls of the present day are far from what they should be, or what they might be, and it is a reproach to the men of the Colony who are their fathers that they do not always use ’their infleoees on the right side. Till men do their duty in the matter of educating and training up noble women, wo cannot expect much improvement in the bomelife of New Zealand.