Woman and Her Critics.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 9, 2 March 1910, Page 52

Woman and Her Critics.

DRAMATIST AND OTHERS DISCUSS HER FUTURE. Before me are no less than five articles on that never failing topic of interest —Woman. First I have several reports of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones’ speech made at the annual dinner of the Society of Women Journalists. He says that woman is ehanging, and, of him, more anon. John Barrett, in the “Call" says practically the same Ching, “the l ' position of woman all over the world to-day is very different from what it was twenty-five years ago”—he then gives an instance as to “the way to talk to women.” Of that also more later. R. de C. in writing of “Chivalry and the Modern Wife” says, “things are changing—how should a woman be treated?” A writer in the “Daily Telegraph” fills threequarters of a column, with an

exposition under the heading of “Why are women discontented?” and saya, "Several people have lately been exercising themselves severely to prove that women are not now so happy as in the brave days of old.” Change, again, evidently!

At Dr. Arabella Kenealy’s assertion that “Women are losing their power to love” . . . and her allusion to “Our preseirt-day appalling degeneracy.” I must caH a bait.

On gloomy prognostigations of any kind —most especially when alluding to my own sex—l wage unending war, for it does not seem that a continual reflection on the dark side of things ever has done anything to help forward the brighter side, and dismal forebodings come, oftenest, at the very time when whole hearted sensible encouragement to something nobler would have much better met the case. This is not easting any reflection on Dr. Kenealy, whose position places her in the ranks of a teacher, and who says the hard things she does because she believes them herself. POWER TO LOVE. Are women, though, losing the power to love? Is it the case that our modern tussle for existence, with our strenuous over-training of young, growing people keep their nerve forces at such low ebb that personal beauty and fine emotions are luxuries which their bodies cannot afford? And that ‘"Love, with all the other more delicate and beautiful human attributes, is being strangled in the senseles-s, strenuous muddle we are making of life?” The charge is a serious one, and in likening the modern athletic girl to Diana it is worth noting, that she is compared with a man-hater. That overmuch time and attention given to sport is extremely injurious to women, physically, and that sport is being abused by girls, we know. That it is affecting their finer instincts is a more serious outlook than any prophesied so far. Not all the privileges of a vote nor the granting of every ‘ right” that tho most fanatic can demand will make up to women—or solace the world in general—for the loss of the tiniest detail in the power of inspiring and giving love. But is it as serious as Dr. Kenealy would have us believe? I think not. Though there are numbers of women

-who are, we hear, sacrificing every fine feeling at the foot of their precious “Cause” they’re only a small percentage after all, and it won’t be in our generation that any radical change will be wrought in women as a sex, even if it ever is.

The effect of workaday life, of business and competition is, undoubtedly, to harden. The effect of woman’s friendship is t-o soften into tenderness the finest feelings in men and in other women. If she withholds all that is ranbraced in what is called “womanly sympathy” we are threatened with a Stone Age indeed! But she won’t. Now to Henry Arthur Jones and “Changing Women.” SILENT VIRTUE. A beautiful hit is made by him in thinking that “the relations between man and woman cannot be changed immediately or very rapidly. Ruskin said ‘the world naturally goes on by reason of the silent virtue that is in it.’ May that stock of silent virtue increase!” “One of the noblest results of our civilization is that it is producing a type of woman whose attitude to man is changing, a woman who is becoming more and more mp-n’s intellectual comrade.” And to that fine sentiment, with the audience I cry, Hear! Hear! You see —it is a change for the better!

But at the next —alas, my own head must be bowed. “This is less so I hear in journalism.”

I pray you, no, Mr. Jones. That is a quite unfair statement, and at least one woman journalist refuses to agree with it. Take any company of women journalists that you like and you will find that for their masculine fellow workers women seldom if ever have anything but the warmest praise. Journalism is a profession in which the two sexes can be, and are, excellent friends. Bad specimens there are in all trades.

And now, women writers draw near and hear, that you are spiders, and how and whv!

WOMAN THE SPIDER, Mr. Jones likened woman with her astonishing inroads into what were once men’s realms, to a certain kind of spider, that after rejecting her suitors eats them up! He would not go as far as to say that woman is becoming like unto that cannibal insect, but things point to it rather, he thinks.

It is interesting to find how we are to be talked to as a sex, and on that subject Mr. Barrett says: “If men would stop to think that a woman’s mind naturally works more quickly than a man’s, that her intuition is more spontaneous than his, that she resents being treated as a child and young girl instead of as a grown-up person with capacity for mature thought, they would stop putting so much twaddle and so many useless compliments into speeches in the presence of women.” And later.

“The woman of the present wants to be up to date, and she does not care to waste her time listening to a speaker who talks as if she has not a mind of her own and had not progressed as the •world has progressed.” Was ever a sex that was capable of being conjured with as this vexing woman person?

We are chameleons, we are spiders, now apparently we have been always treated as children till these wise writers came forward. It is all very silly and not worth worrying about. Every man born will still think that he, and he only, knows how to manage and talk to a woman and no one ever takes anyone elses advice on the subject, To the question, “Are Women Discontented?” it is somewhat difficult to find an answer. Apparently many of them are, but then there always has been and always will be, revolt, and the woman question is being effectively fought out now bv women.

It remains to be seen whether greater content is to be the result.