DIVORCE AND DIGESTION

Evening Star, Issue 20985, 26 December 1931, Page 2

DIVORCE AND DIGESTION

[Written by A.J.D., for the 'Evening Star.’]

Incompatibility of temperament is frequently advanced to explain the failure of a marriage. But often enough the trouble is only indigestion. Love may at first be sufficionty strong to buoy the heart up, but sooner or later that organ falls back upon the stomach for support.

Mr John Studholme, a well-known, settler of Mid-Canterbury, was many, years ago deeply concerned with his failures to secure capable domestic servants from among our girls. His subsequent generosity to the University of Otago enabled that institution to establish a faculty of Home Studholme House has now been in existence over twenty years, and has turned out, hundreds of graduates and trained students. Many of these girls barely, escape from the halls of learning before they are Jed before the firing squad by some grateful bridegroom. In choosing a wife the young New Zealander is often sensible enough to allow love and utility to co-operate, so the marriage rate of the Studholme House product has been particularly high. The authorities can proudly paint to a long record of happy marriages, though many of these girls (as in iho case of my wife) have married men of. no consequence whatever. Nor, on this record is th&ro onoj divorce to blot it. They do not even expect it. Surely, then, the moral to be drawn from the matrimonial achievements of this Otago institution is that a higher level of domestic art in this country would mean happier marriages,; less divorce, and fewer v ife murders.Is the murder of a wife who cannot cook an egg justifiable homicide?, When we read the story of a divorce trial we.seldom find the real truth. The presiding judge has to be provided with some cause of divorce, found in the statutes, and couched m legal phraseology, This is the ostensible reason.The real reason could probably be couched in much more homely terms, with a distinct domestic flavour, but unsatisfactory from the legal aspect,for, however sympathetic His Honour may be, he has no power to act in the case of gastronomic disappointment.The divorce court is only a hospital at the foot of a cliff, and amputation its only remedy.

The home science wife has liitie fear that her courtship will end jn the courthouse. The husband who comes homo and finds himself confronted with a plain tea is at once appeased by an explanation of the dietetic scheme and the calorific value of the mea l . Meat, bread, salad, and butter are very ordinary articles of diet, which we absorb mainly to keep alive, but the wife who serves them up as so much carbohydrate, glucose, or vitamins at once alters the whole aspect of the meal. Eating becomes then more than the more satisfaction of a low appetite; , it is a duty. No one minds chewing # glucose if he knows just what it is for. The trained wife can_ lose no ground at meal times. She is master of the situation throughout. But the frying pan brigade of housewives who rush iionre on the workers’ tram, and the members of the tin-opener club wiio play golf in are not so secure. They have no idea of what or why they eat. The divorce rates of these types are therefore high. Many a home has been wrecked because the husband gazed on the interior of a halfcooked egg or on the inside of an underdone chop; but the most violent outbreak is quelled if the wife can explain that a hard-boiled egg is a tough proposition for the gastric juices, while an underdone chop is just a joke in the food canal.

Science also brings dignity to tha common processes of cleaning. Such menial processes as dish washing, pot scraping, and floor scrubbing are a joy, to those who know that grease emulsifies in alkalies and germs are slain by hot water. Tho path to the divorce court is always slippery for those wives who harbour grease. Only the wife who knows that cqal burns well with a free supply of oxygen can sing when she is cleaning the flues. The shaking of mats brings more pleasure to the domestic expert than the shaking of cocktails; tho swinging of a mop is greater fun than the swinging of a mashie. Even, the preparation of food has a new significance. Take potato peeling, for example. To the lay mind the common tuber is an ugly, dirty, domestic vegetable of the lowest type, but when science conies to tho kltclieu the beauty, of the potato is more than skin-deep.-Those who understand its true position on tho menu as a starch-protein-mineral composition will never slip out of the bonds of matrimony on a p i..to peel.Many a marriage has been dissolved in alcohol, but home science again can come to the rescue of its students. A* study of alcohol and its effects is most useful, in the handling of thirsty husbands. No husband, however intoxicated, can long resist lectures on the effect of drink on the brain, on the tissues, on the dilated stomach, on the contracted stomach, or on any other kind of stomach. The husband of the untrained wife never hears of the perils of alcohol until counsel for the petitioner opens the attack. From whatever aspect we regard it divorce is a tragedy. To the husband and wife it is a tremendous mental and moral shock; to the children the loss is incalculable; and to society there is a weakening of the very structure itself.Surely education for marriage will stop the ever-increasing drift of matrimonial shipwrecks. Home science brings joy, to the menial duties of the home, and a dignity to the arts of cooking and sewing. .Nothing ruins the peace of a household more than the defeat of tha mistress in some argument on a point of home management. The prudent man never emerges victor in an argument with one of the fair sex, but he who claims victory in a sphere that is exclusively her own is doomed. Her pride ,will never be restored. But the amour of_ the scientific mistress is not to be so pierced. She has only to mention protoplasms or micro-organisms and no husband, however successful in business or skilled in debate, can make further progress. This _ country is anxious to save money in education, but it continues to squander thousands annually in training girls for professions they have no intention of adopting.Be they'over so emphatic about their future, few girls pursue their so-called “ career ” when a favourable chance of matrimony offers itself. Then they find themselves incompetent, bored, extravagant, and unhappy. New Zealand could well considerably alter its education schemes and later tighten up its divorce code. It would be a proud day, when we could proclaim to the world that onr judges grant divorce only “on the death or one, or the insanity of both.”