THE NEW JEALOUSY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19275, 12 September 1924, Page 10

THE NEW JEALOUSY.

"I hate going to a house where there is a girl, with you," says a very much in love young man. "You always disappear, and I don't see you at all for the afternoon. It is the new jealousy. Time was when the young bride, or bride-to-be, was jealous of his friends, afraid of them. Now it is the other way round* It started, I believe, as a weapon in the sex war—a challenge iking to the enemy—. "Seo how well we can do without you!" Girls played tennis together, singles or fours, without a glance at the neighbouring court where four men played likewise. . . . they rode together, walked together, swam together. If it started that way, they came to know what a good thing female comradeship could be—and they were independent! No looking for a man for escort as in tho old days, no humiliating waiting on his pleasure. The two-seater car, w-ith its feminine occupants, is too familiar to be strange to us now. Yet it represents a new epooh. In the old days one of tho things women rosented most was that men should enjoy themselves together without their company —now they have turned the tables on them. There was a tradition—founded and fostered by men, no doubt—that female friendship was a poor thing. Only "till you come,'' and then ! . . .! Men who worshipped straightness in their own sex liked to think that women were dishonourable to each other when it came to the question of a man. Personally, lam inclined to think that it was 50-50, and that when it came to love, men and women were much the same. Only women are cleverer, subtler creatures . . . and men ruled the world. But it was man who invented the adage, "All is fair in love and war," and we may draw our own conclusions This new flaunting of female friendship is the girl's answer, and the friendship is not a less real thing because she flaunts it even to her lover, because even in love to-day tho Sex War is not altogether for- ■:;;■;'..■'«. •■■ - , She Is'prickly-,''this now girl, not for her self, but for her sex, and ready to fly to the defensive. When she falls in love she is a little ashamed of herself, and apologetic to ht?r friends (as her male counterfort might have beon a generation ago). She is so a,n.\ious to prove that it makes no difference . . . that she is just the same to her girl friends, that her lover fares badly sometimes. And he is jealous. : "I hate going to a house where theri? is a girl,'' he says again. "I know I shan't see you the whole afternoon." It is the new jealousy. —Patricia West, in the Daily Chronicle.