END OF HENPECKERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18965, 12 March 1925, Page 14

END OF HENPECKERY.

Mr. and Mrs. Henpeck, those universal figures of humour a generation ago, are as dead as the dodo. Their disappearance marks tho great change that has come over married life. Modern women are generallv given tho credit for this welcome fact, but modern men are entitled to a share. They make a point of understanding and sympathising with their women-folk in a. way that used to be unknown. There is no doubt that Mr. Henoeck brought his troubles on himself. Mrs. Henpeck, disagreeable though she was. must often have been more the victim of circumstances than a Henpeck at heart. When a woman of parts finds herself wedded to an inferior personality, and deprived by law and custom of all outhits for her energy and of all freedom of thought, it is natural that she should turn sour and henpeckish. But nowadays so many fresh fields lie open to a womfin of character that she has literally no time for potty-mindedness or domestic tyranny. So the once familiar figure of the absurd little cowardly man suffering untold miseries at the hands of a hectoring wife passes into the historic limbo. Besides, the ineffectiveness of henpeckery has been badlv exposed. Men are not' easily driven, arid you may be sure that Mr. Henpeck had many subterranean methods of getting his own back. Mrs. Henpeck may have been outwardly master. but she" got little happiness from it. Modern women have subtler and far more potent methods of achieving their ends. The element of comradeship bulks largely in their scheme of things. It should always be remembered that, though Mr. and Mrs. Henpeck were very real characters in their day, Mr. Bully and Mrs. Mouse were a pair far more representative of the Victorian period.