THE TYRANNY OF CLOTHES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2398, 15 February 1900, Page 55

THE TYRANNY OF CLOTHES.

Women were made with an infinite capacHy for martyrdom. The shadow of the old squaw days has darkened us so long — Aye had driven in the tribal tent pegs and rubbed the tribal firesticks so many ages — we have vegetated so many succeeding ages in the narrow zenana grooves, that Libeity conveys no meaning that is not sinful to the average female mind. While the truer chivalry of the nineteenth century has affirmed the justice — nay, the racial necessity — of an easier life for women, the conscientious timidity of the majority deprecates any widening of the woimn's charter. This deprecation is terribly pathetic. Too vividly it recalls tales of medieval prisoners burdened with a belated pardon after a lifetime spent in a sunless dungeon. Restored to the world too late, they were utterly unable to bind up the links broken so long ago, and. shivering in blowing air and glancing light, they pined weakly for the blank quietude of their dungeon cell. In like mannei have the limitations of women pressed into the fibres to such an extent that when old bonds are slackened they feel they must forge new.

Of all these new bonds for vrliich we consciously or unconsciously take merit to ourselves, lev/ are more exacting than tlie

tyranny of clothes. We are not, of course*,, concerned with such wild visionaries as Edward Carpenter and others of that ilkri who have a standing quarrel with clothes as cloches, and draw fond pictures of a regenerated humanity which has cast tha slough of garments, as well as discarded houses We are no more inclined for such" a change than we are for a return to tha pristine diet of nuts and raw roots ; and feel that the law of evolution sanctions every external than can be called legitimate clothes. But it is an interesting and profitable reflection that the needless must disappear or impede progress, and immediately one speculates on the number of ordinary wearables that neither on the score of warmth nor decency can be regarded as clothes. A line runs through the midst of many customary externals according to their utility. The "woollen mitten and the loose washable summer glove stand the sartorial test, while the kid glove disappears with all the pudding-fingered stiffness that was the ideal of bien gantee. The sailor hat and the sunbonnet remain ; the picture hat that sat so miraculously on the lovely curls of Georgian* Duchess of Devonshire is a doubtful quantity, while the dainty confections of flowers and chifton that pass for summer hats must rank no higher on the ground of utility than the shark's teeth hung round a savage's neck. Indeed, the shark's teeth might fairly take the palm, since they at least do not disturb their wearer's, peace of mind, while the anguish of being caught in a storm with a five-guinea ephemeron of iace and feathers on, or tLe struggle of trying to believe that the costly ti'ansparency actually protects the head, is' one of the things that bring crinkles before the time. There are women who apparently spend thenwhole lives trying to escape the sun rays and sweet moist airs of heaven, and afterdeducting feais of freckle and roughness, the residuum of this dislike to friendly natural forces finds its source in these costly impedimenta, which cover, but do not clothe, the victim of civilisation. The fashionable shoe, whose high heel and *harp toe mock the divine contour of the human foot, is fiu- below the innocent shaik\s tooth of the island beauty, and is a relic of the> cruel prideful barbarity that bores the nose of the Indian and 'cripples the Chinese girl. We do not speak of the corset : where the pros and cons are so weighty and numerous it is best to pass by Avith the "Do not mention it" that prudent hostesses in (Jhriscnmiu put on their invitation cards when the controversy of "The Doll's House " was at its fiercest height. But there is a fetish of the civilised woman one would fain deery — the starched cuff and collar. Such an odour of sanctity invests this adornment, such a flavour of' Florence Nightingale and Priscilla, the Puritan maiden, clings round its snowy stiffness, that it takes a brove woman to question whether there is indeed any innate godliness in tha tight scarifying band's. Here and there, however, 0 wearer of soft silk edging is bold enough to recall that the woman who introduced starch in England, far from being soint or Puritan, was deservedly hanged as a poisoner 300 years ago. Is there any need to speak of the useless frills and lucks, measured to a hairsbreadth, over which man}- a mother wastes her precious eyesight? "Each man has his lampful, his lampful of oil," sings George Macdonaid, and if ifc is so, is it not worse than waste to spend that precious drop of life-energy on the needless stitching of a pinafore that should; have gone to the making of a mind-garment for the baby later on? The tucks, too, often take the fibre out of the mother's life;; she has neither the strength nor the knowledge to answer the questions of the quick young -mind. The tyranny of clothes is stifling the child, as long ago it straitened the lot of the mother. " The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Better indeed for the race were the worst penances of early asceticism than the smooth undermining of at false liberty. But we need not throw away our capacity for martyrdom on shred's of linen and calico; need not offer ourselves up a living sacrifice, on the laundry, table, goffering frills in the dog days ; we need nob look for credit in the heavenly ledgers for the eyesight we threw away on drawn, thread work. These things are in our own hands. Tribal law prescribed the knocking out of the Australian bride's, front tooth, national custom compelled ths Japanese wife to paint all her teeth black, but no law will be offended if civilised women lighten their burdens according to the dictates of common sense. This is an age of sifting : let it be a sifting of work as well as of belief.