CLEVER WIVES

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6544, 15 November 1924, Page 2

CLEVER WIVES

Girls are apt to take too seriously the oft-repeated statement of many men—that they will not marry clever women. Jealousy, they say, is behind this criticism. Men don’t like clever women because they are afraid of their competition in commerce, in the arts, in the professions, and in public life. But the fact is that, although many women have proved that they can make a place for themselves in all these pre-occupations, no pre-occupa-tion is attractive enough to draw women at large from the great work of home-making. And most men will tell you, if you pin them down to the point that they welcomed women’s competition in the labour market because the results of it show how little men have to fear on this account. No; the reason why men dislike what we call “clever women” is that they have a very definite picture in their minds of what they mean , by, this type. They mean the woman who is anxious to show how clever she is at the expense of any man or all men, who is always parading her achievements as a sex-advertisement, and who feels it her duty to coin sharp sarcasms at the expense of the other sex, and protect herself from reply behind the stout shield of masculine chivalry. Oh, yes. The world is full of such women. And they have no patience at all with the happy wives and mothers who rejoice in the slavery of domestic ties, not being clever enough to know that their happiness is only an illusion.