THE CURSE OF EVE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1648, 30 September 1903, Page 26

THE CURSE OF EVE.

“Infants have not yet gone out of j fashion,” said a speaker at the Publio i Health Congresls. The remark is only a i partial truth. In every country, the } tendency towards fewer children is ap- > patent, and in particular is the decline j in the birth rate a serious factor in I Prance and America. Why is this ? Is the explanation to . be found in a remarkable article by Miss Margaret BLsland in the “North American .Review ?” “Does not the tree of knowledge still ‘bear* fruit accursed for the daughters of. Eve, who did e;at thereof and lost her Eden ?” askes Miss Bisland. What is happening in America, and France today may occur in Britain to-morrow. TU'.iss Bis,land believes that materinty dwindles in proportion as women are over-educated and abnormal in their public avocations. To her view, equality and competition between the sexes is a mistake from the racial standpoint. “The denial to woman of an equal share in man’s intellectual and physical career is not, as the nearsighted advocates of feminine enfranchisement would have us believe, a useless relic of barbarism and savagery. It is not an indication of mere male covetousness, selfishness and blind prejudice, upheld and exercised through ages bj* force of sheer phycisal superiority, suid serving now as a stumbling block in the path of beneficent progress. True enough, perhaps, it is ja tradition inherited from 'our barbaric and Asiatic ancestors; nevertheless, it flow's from "an ancient and .prefound j realisation of and respect for an . | INEXORABLE LAW OF NATURE j —a law that never fails to deprive in- I tellectually developed woman of her j fecundity. It flows also from a know- , ledge, gained through the tragedy of . experience, that only in the domestic shelter does civilised humanity find the ! environment congenial to re-pro ductivity and proper development. Why . this is so, only nature herself can give i lisa satisfactory answer. Why, to ful- | fill her most obvious mission, that of ; mat-enmity, all the best and freshest ■ forces of the female are required-, and , why participation in the pleasures and * responsibilities, exhilarations and la- j hours of a non-domestic career renders ; fulfilment of this function repugnant j and all but impossible to women, I do not asume here to make clear. It is my .'intention only to show that it is a ; fixed law, established for the preserva- j tion of human life. It was first out- ! raged, then interpreted and accepted, 1 by wise and patient Asia. Thence we receive our initial record of tits tion; and strong historical evidence bears witness to the dir© results meted out by avenging nature to the European nation that attempted to gain a great civilisation without duly guarding against the curse of Eve inevitably following upon feminine participation in : the life of men.” j Miss Bisland works out two very suggestive theories —(1) That the downfall -of man, a;s allegorically exemplified in the Garden, of Eden, was the earliest , lesson in the consequences which follow j on the calling of the female from her normal mission; and (2,) That as Asia j populated the world, so to-day should : Europe, America -and Oceania be robbed i of their last inhabitant she could popu- { late them anew, “for the Asiatic refuses | emancipation to his women.” In Christ’s Advent, Miss Bisland sees “a new ideal, by the light of which men and woman began to find again the rock on which is founded all true racial morals, racial strength and racial hopes, tbe worship and protection of pure motherhood. Tlx© story slot a halo of bright and touching beauty about THE ROLE OF MATERNITY. i . i Motherhood thereafter was invested j with holy dignity. The least- peasant woman in her maternity rejoiced to follow the worthy and uplifting example of the Madonna, which glows in splendid and startling contrast- to the abuse, tine degradation of the woman’s mighty instinct and duty under the Roman j Empire. With the rise of this new j ideal and the re-establishment of wo- : man upon her true throne of equality

and in her sphere of natural power, man laboured aga-in., Adam-like, by the sweat of his b-ro-w to maintain the organisation of the family and afford privacy and protection to the wife and mother in. her own home. The shifting peoples of Europe were thus enabled to settle -down, to strike root deeply into the soil, to aim :at a surer civilisation than that of Rome, and to develop a more powerful, and yet- only slightly ltetas prolific type than that which Asia has produced. A grotesque falsetto masculinity has seized not the American woman only. “For this perversion of her true character and influence she is no more directly responsible than was the woman of Rome. So- long as she found honourable, independent, profitable employanient in her domestic environment, she rested there supremely, content-. Her hopes and dreams, and her pride

and patriotism, and her ambitions, were 'realised in her children. lit was when the greedy current of commercialism tore out of her hands all her home employment that she follow-

ed her tasks to the mills and factories.

Then she first began to envy and grasp at iihe estates and prerogatives of men. Ah skilled 1 hands are guided best by

trained minds, it behoved men to give this willing, cheap efficacious feminine laborur a fitting education. Forced thus to gain bar support outside the home, it is no matter for wonder that she has found it necessary to demand legal and social privileges, property rights and new marriage laws-. So farreaching and thorough has been her al ieniation from the TRUE AIMS OF HER SEX, so complete has been the hasty sacrifice made to the mere temporal and transitory prosperity of this republic, that we now detect as a consequence certain tendencies to decay gnawing already at the roots of its new civilisation. First, in tbe diminution of the

family; and, again, in tbe weakening of tbe marriage tie. The prodigious increase in divorces among Americans of every ©lass and religion is, perhaps, the most serious menace to the moral and physical stability of our race, that has resulted from the non-domestic avocations of t-hie average woman. Vain and! empty have been proven the hope and faith that from the highly educated mother profound advantages must accrue to the nation, in the consequently superior mental equiqment of her child. The highly educated woman avoids, or . is incapable of, maternity. Tbe exhilaration of monetary profit in -exchange for her physical and mental toil, and the pursuit of her purely selfish pleasure or fortune, lure her from the self-sacrifice of maternity and the restraints of "wedded life. Or, when wedded, she brings forth few or no children.” It is a humiliating con-olukio-n for the good American at which Miss Bisland .arrives. “On the superior vitality of the well-nigh illiterate European woman do w© now depnd largely for the maintenance of our population.” True as this may be of America, is the message which Miss Bisland brings one for America only ?