THE NEWER EVE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19798, 19 November 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NEWER EVE.

TOILER AND ICONOCLAST.

BY NESS MACKAY

Daughter of the finciont Eve. We know the gifts you gave—and give. Who knows the gilts which you shall give, Daughter of the nevy'er Eve ?

The girl of to-day uses too much powder. She uses too little textile material. She smokes too many cigarettes. Slle has too much dancing and too little sleep. She is too wide awake. So old-fashioned mothers and new-fashioned grandfathers say. They write to the newspapers about her, and sometimes even persons under the pseudonyms of young men write about her too. She is attacked from all sides. Without a blink, like a Chinaman going to execution, she seems utterly indifferent. Bless her! that is what she is here for —to stand attack. In the degree in which she stands attack unmoved, she fills her place in the scheme of evolution, well or otherwise. People forget that she is the link between the slavery of the past and the freedom of the future. Her mothers of twenty-five years ago—for she is legion, filling all countries with dismay, from America to China going eastward, from Iceland to the Chathams going south —were the " Woman's Cause" women of yesterday. And with them were the first cycle riders among women, and the first strong swimmers, and the first tennis players to win championships, and they the first women to ride horseback untrammelled by a tangle of broadcloth.

Sharer ol Man's Slaveries. They were pictured (in comic papers) with shapeless ankles, with straight hair and sour expressions There was a belief current that such conditions were liable to be brought about, in everyone feminine, by means of an open-air life, much sport, or an interest in science or politics. These things have not come to pass.

The daughters of the day can tire a man on the tennis court, can swim as far, can work as long, can think as fast as any man; but many of them' have curly hair, most of them have shapely ankles, and none of them have sour expressions. Their white teeth gleam behind their upturned lip-salved lips, a lovely incongruity! But—and this is the " all the better to eat you up with " bit—as Marie of Rumania said, " over the world they have the uniformity of a well-equipped army," and they are not for nothing, " the shingled or bobbed head, the scanty skirt of typiste and of peeress alike." Because the girl of to-day has suddenly come into a world which men have inhabited for centuries, it is not surprising that she has not a perfect discrimination. That she decides upon taking up man's minor slaveries as well as his larger freedoms, denotes that she has not reached the goal of freedom yet. The custom of smoking in tea-rooms bears witness to this fact. For who would smoke in a tea-room for pleasure ? As well say the rosary in a tea-room! The magic of a cigarette is the same as all magic, and the object is the same—to lull the mind to rest and set the spirit free. Nobody really wants the mind lulled to rest in a tea-room, least of all her majesty the newer Eve. She only asks to be allowed to keep her mind wide awake and her wits about her, and show herself armed to the teeth and ravaging the country of the free.

She has invaded man in his kingdom. She tramples his territory. She tramples flowers and weeds alike, as armies must. The fine flower of chivalry is even now under her lovely heel. But other things less beautiful are trampled too, and chiv airy has a living root. The primordial serpent is under the same foot. Garishly she goes shod in bits of his outer covering. Not leather but snakeskin is her latest marching fancy. Is she too blatant in thus flaunting the death of him, the ancient enemy of man ? The serpent's skin may be upon her foot, but the cunning of the same is no longer in her heart. She now meets man on equal ground. The armour that her mother forged for her is strong. Her trappings are her own. Her war gear is complete. So armed, she goes forth to her work in the scheme of things.

Accomplishing a New Thing Daily. She works well. It is only play that she does less than well. She is too serious to play with real abandon, with real joy, as girls in other ages played. The young queen and her maidens of the legends and the histories lived in leisured gardens and strong castles walled with safety. Her time in the world is differerent. Hence the hectic jazz, and frantic Charleston and the fatuous cocktail. To these most primitive amusements she stands up like a soldier in the cafes and the cabarets behind the line.

The noise of jazz is over all the world, it is relayed from wireless on to wireless station. To many people it is the noise of the breaking-up of civilisation, but to some it is as the first sounds at the dawn, as the crackling of the little wings of beetles in the grass, and the buzz of cheery groundlings that precedes the chorusing of birds to a new day. However this may be, the girl accomplishes some new thing in every country every day; and if some of these are feats for bravado, some are tests for endurance. The Channel swimmers need hearts no less strong, suppose they look for glory, and the girl aviators heads no less cool and hands no less steady. Though she should dance from dark till daylight, or swim from France to Africa, or climb the clouds in thousands in her little aeroplanes, none of these things is of such great importance to her, and none so remarkable, as her capacity for work. Work is meat and drink to her; and it is no less so in our own islands, where convention still counts so much, than in other, freer-thinking countries. Here, if the girl lives in a town, she manipulates a typewriter maybe and tho thousand things that that commands. She cooks, and in her spare hours irons and works with beeswax, to give her mother rest. If she is in the country she bakes the bread maybe, and keeps the books and rides among the stock. She knows its value, and goes on foot to care for lambs, and pick up lost ones. If she is a student from either town or country her work is almost a religion. At the least a fine code goes with it. Side by side with men she works and wins. The girl student, in every country, is tho most finished fighter of them all. She has something of the gallantry of old-time heroes in long-past, proud, traditioned wars.

Here to Break Things. In each of these separate spheres, the girl does all these things with all her might, but she does more! She breaks things. She is above all things an iconoclast.. That also is her mission. She breaks records. She breaks banks. She breaks hearts (still these). She breaks the monotony. She breaks all the conventions the world has said she must not break. That is what she is here for—to break things. The ruin, there must be before she has finished fills the bravest with dismay ;• but need it? She <s before all things a worker, and in that measure she sets man free. To work and support herself and smash up everything is her mission. But to discriminate? Do not ask that! Discrimination is the happy quality waiting to crown the woman of to-morrow The woman of to-day is the link that would be missed —more necessary to evo lution that Darwin's missing link, unfound as yet, for all tbe pa', ient search of science. It wonld but prove a theory. She will prove a new world.