THE MODERN WIFE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1751, 27 September 1905, Page 26

THE MODERN WIFE.

Tho intell.eont w,f 'aptf? * h ’ is js the torc-st m her her type. She poeuluu- t . , / wedfmows wj‘ |. |mis ;t piquant to bo very I .USI married, and refer to her husband toy. his Christian name. She smiles indulgently upon his faults, she speaks approvingly of his little talents, and thus proves the friendly, free and charitable quality of her affection at every turn. Her husband is, in fact, her eldest child; but should she be blest with other children he will at once be relegated to the mortifying position of ex-baby. She will not neglect him, or expect him to behave as if he were grown up; hut she cannot help being more interested in the new fields of observation and experiment now open to her. Motherhood becomes her hobby—not, of course, in its sentimental, but in its sociological, aspects; for it gives greater opportunities for discovery than the most hardened vivisectionist can hope to possess. Thanks to the new literature of education, the intelligent, mother sees all her infant’s faculties spread out before her, neatly labelled; she can play on them as easily as on her pianola, and with far more orginal results. Whether natural science, unnatural aestheticism, or the new morality be her subject, they can all be tried upon her child. She can apply thought waves to its sub-conscious personality, and Danish health exercises to its limbs. Best of all, her own comparative ignorance adds the charm of speculation to the game. As the dummy at the bridge table, so is the child in the intelligent home.

To such a mother, of course, her child can never be a toy; it is an interesting psychological phenomenon. “Baby is beginning to take notice,” says the uninformed nurse —last anachronism of the modern nursery. But the new mother knows that Baby is doing something far more subtle; he is beginning to co-ord-inate his sense impressions; his synthetic faculties are waking in response to the stimulus of the objective world. This scientific attitude has other advantages than that of mere accuracy. When papa and mamma talk over their little one’s progress after dinner, phrases about consciousness and volition, ideation and the external universe will hurtle through the air, and prevent the discussion from deteriorating to purely parental levels. Also “disturbances of the nerve centres” is a better term than “temper”; and our new veneration for the imaginative faculty a decided improvement on the old-fashioned prejudice against lying. As her children outgrow hygienic baby clothes and reach the age when they can be annoyed with Nature study and operated upon for adenoids, the intelligent mother will dress them in garments that hang from the shoulders and give, by their uncouth shape and primitive embroideries, probably erroneous impression that she made them herself. She often appears to be doing little maternal acts, and saying little maternal things—an amusing, almost a touching trait in a person of so much cultivation •—hut she must be careful not to force the note. Needlework, however, has its use. It is a tacit patronage of one’s own womanhood; and, seen side by side with Nietsche, the Nig-Veda and “The Mathematical Basis of Modern Morality,” seems as interesting and exotio as a country girl at the Gaiety; another asmakes the sweet softness of the intellipect of that passion for paradox which gent wife’s appearance vary in inverse ratio to the violence of her views. Our anarchists are all well dressed, and often, at first sight, give a disappointing impression of womanly good sense. They have learnt that gentle manners lend additional value to lurid remarks. They are fond of pet animals, too, for one must have some cutlet for one’s natural affections. Hence the guest who finds the Persian kitten in the best armchair, and who hears the baby screaming upstairs, need have no doubt as to the intellectual status of his hostess. The woman who covets the position of intelligent "wife has, at the present time an easy task before hei*. Lectures are cheaper and language more hazy than at any period since Babel was built. Life is a pleasant undertaking enough, for all women, it is said, have the creative instinct. Primitive woman wished to create sons and daughters; the intelligent woman purged by the new idealism of eucli uncivilised desires, only wishes t-o create an impression. This being her aim, to a close study of the standard type a® described in. this

article she must bring an intellect at once dreamy and dogmatic, arrogant, and inaccurate, credulous of the incredible, and sceptical of all accepted beliefs. She must also cultivate that breadth of mind which reduces all things to its own level, and enables its possessor to patronise the heights as well as the deeps of the spirit of man. Above all, she must consider the cuckoo, a bird whose reputation rests as much on the insistency of it® voice as on the originality and independence of its nursery arrangement.—Evelyn Underhill, in the “Outlook.”