UNEMOTIONAL WOMEN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19407, 17 February 1925, Page 5

UNEMOTIONAL WOMEN.

By One of Their Friends. “She is very charming, but such a hard woman," That is the verdict upon Monica of many people who admire her enormously ns a wife and hostess, but fiiid in too much to add any deep attention to thoir respect. Where does she fail? Her critics sum it up in the word “manner.” “She is cold and reserved,” they say; “time after time she meets you with that restrained nolo of welcome that might mean anything or nothing. You got no farther. “She novel lets herself go like the rest of us. For her there are no moments of self-revealing confidences, no outbursts of indignation, or rash gusts of enthusiasm. “She is always the same; self-contained, courteous, charming, an icicle who doesn’t understand the moaning of emotion!” On the other hand, if you know her at all well, there are times when you get a glimpse of quite a different woman, tender and impulsive, whom the critics do not know, and you are left wondering which is the real Monica. It was a school friend who had not seen her for years who furnished the key to the puzzle. “I suppose Monica is just the same?” she inquired. “Quick-tempered, ready to make a friend of anyone who wants friendship, and alrfiost too sensitive for anything?” She found it nearly impossible to believe in the woman I described, who was so unlike the schoolgirl she had known; but the paradox of Monica is the clue to her Vhardness” nope the less—and that of women like her. There is a callous type of woman whom nothing can explain away. Her absence of outward feeling is merely the index of her character. Self-absorbed, and living entirely on the surface, she has the true hardness that comes from a nature too shallow to find room for anybody else in her affections. The ease of Monica is different. Her reserve is the outcome of a disposition that restrains itself because it .has proved the risks of impulsive friendship in the past, and holds itself in as a selfdefence against its own too-ready generosity. Her coldness is neither pride nor affectation. Sensitive by nature, she has suffered the disappointments of those who feel deeply, and her apparent coldness is the cloak of reserve not to bo thrown aside until she is sure. It is a mistake to judge the “hard” woman too soon. She may bo of Monica's type— a woman whoso friendship is worth the more because she has learned not to offer it rashly.—Daily Chronicle.