WOMEN IN SPAIN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2622, 2 October 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

WOMEN IN SPAIN.

Castles in Spain are very nice things to build, but how many of ns would care to really live in that country where woman is counted of so little importance? The average woman’s life in the land of hidalgos is very little freer now than it was in the days of Desdemona. The wealthy have their seasons of balls, receptions, and dinner parties, and their regular trips to Paris and London; but the women of the middle class lead a life which seems to be second to none for dulness.

In the smaller toivns especially life is most monotonous, and could scarcely be endured if the women had been better educated. There is little social intercourse, for afternoon calls are seldom made; visitors to tea or lunch are very, very rare; while a guest staying in tbe house is unknown. A few women receive their acquaintances on stated days, but even then refreshments are never served. There is to a foreign mind a general air of discomfort in a Spanish house, for there is no fireplace and no domestic hearth. Spaniards do not think their country is ever cold, so they rarely build fireplaces, even in the wealthiest houses, and if icy winds do blow they sit shivering, l or huddle over a brasero. The men do not care for home-life—in fact, no such word exists in the language—and they amuse themselves with their friends playing games of chance at their favorite cafes, or attending cockfights, while their wives attend to their household duties, go to church dail- and spend the rest of their time reading or sewing in their stuffy little rooms. A halo of romance still clings to courtship in Spain. The lover still clings to the guitar beneath the lady’s window while she still lets down notes to him on a silken thread. But the glamor is> somewhat spoiled by the fact that the custom is sanctioned by tbe parents, and no irate father ever rushes out to wreck his wrath on the singer. The fact is that girls are kept so secluded that if these practices were stopped there would be no chance of a father getting his daughters off his hands, and how much this means to a Spaniard may he judged from the proverb, “Three daughters and a mother are four devils for a father.”

Most Spanish girls marry at 17; if unmarried at 20 she begins to think herself >an old maid. At 35, if still a spinster, she retires from the world an embittered woman, and either enters a convent or goes to live with a married member of her family, where she plays the part of maiden aunt for the rest of her dreary life.