THE LADIES’ WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2648, 2 November 1909, Page 3

THE LADIES’ WORLD.

DESIRABLE HUSBANDS. ’-M

WHAT THE AVERAGE WOMAN 1 WANTS, x

No man can ever understand the heartsick dread, the cold, abject terror with, which an unmarried woman realises that she is no, longer young-—that her face, her hair, her hands cry out that youth has passed! This merciless ageing cf the flesh, what a horrible tiling it is to a woman! Each day a little more withered, a'little less round ; angles\oming where curves have been! Each day her chances of wifehood growing less; her stock in‘the marriage market fast decreasing; her .value, her youth, her freshness,' her fairness slipping away! Old ago, lonely, loveless, childless —a hideous, barren old age—looms grey before her. , Frantically she resorts to massage, creams, lotions, “beautifiers,” she becomes a slave to all the devices for preserving and “restoring” youth. Every man she meets she new regards as a possible husband! And yet all the while she smiles bravely and says she never intends to marry; that she is absorbed in her “work;” that she would not give up her “independence” for the ties and responsibilities of marriage. lam a traitor to my .sex in sayiifg so, yet I firmly believe that 99 per cent of the unmarried women past, thirty would marry any decent 'kindly mani that would .ask.them! Of course, they will deny it; they will lie about it-to th'eniselves, to each other, to the -world. They must lie about it, or jeopardise to. the vanishing point “their .chances” of obtaining the one thing- needful: ' What a farce! What a pitiful, empty farce, it alb is, you say. Andyet it is but a part of the tissue of pretence life imposes on woman. Men who have understood her, from Shakespere to Ibsen, have given emphasis to this fact. Whether it he a woman lake “pretty Ophelia,” or more daring spirits like Rosalind and Portia and Helena, or the modern mentally acute types like Nora and Rebecca West, each must attain what she wants by such clever subterfuges as her intelligence can compass, and at the imminent risk of losing all if the man finds out how she (is going about it. To frankly admit this unfortunat® situation to herself would unnerve woman and rob her of her power to practise all the arts that make her most attractive to man. What makes man most attractive to her is Quite another matter. A woman, highly emotional, and yet with a keen sense.- of the irony of things, and with the rare ability to stand aside and view herself impersonally, once told me that the most tragic as well as the niost ludicrous moment of her life was when she greetedher husband one evening after she had I ecu io the theatre. The play had been a love-drama,- interpreted by a famous romantic actor. She had come away steeped in the wonderful scenes, a-thrill with all that love might make of life, with a fervid longing to bring some of the rose-colored romance into her own home. When her husband came in she met him at the door, threw herself into iris arms, murmuring ardent, glowing love-phrases. He kissed her absentmindedly. “Why, yes—yes, dear, of course I love you. Aren’t you well?” Then, with real interest in his voice: “Did the meat conic in time? I forget to order it on the way down this morning, so I telephoned.” And then he could not understand why she sat down weakly in the hall and laughed and cried hysterically ! * 'Women are always striving to keep love at some emotional height, while men, alter a few years of marriage, *ro quite content to let romance die out and settle down to a placid, comfortable humdrum existence.

Philosophers have been at groat pains to point out that a women is driven to desire permanency on purely materialistic grounds, such as the necessary care of her children and her own support. But it is much more than that. With the normal woman, at heart,, it,--'is the longing for the -permanence of the man’s regard for her. in whatever capacity he finds her pleasing. The man she really wants 1o marry is the man who finds her always pleasing—perhaps even in some unsuspected phase of her nature which she had regarded as of .little worth till lie came along and which she straightway strives to amplify so that the eye of her lover may burn with' the pride oi possessing her alone among women. It is then that she will “do anything for love,” go to any length to get and keep the man who satisfies this yearning for the permanence of personal romance which to her is the only thing that explains and excuses everything. There are plenty of men—from Don Juan to Sydney Carton —capable of the moments women, love, but no one man can make of marriage the eternity of moments she wants it. : Men say thatsuch an extravagant demand is. prompted by. women's overwhelming vanity, which is- the .-greatest- pitfall of -her ua-. ture. ■ But--"what -she asks of ; man springs, not from vanity, but. from her woman’s passion-/that her, husband may be deified through her. as she has been to deify in her maiden meditation the man she wants to marry. It- is because, as Jeau Paul aptly puts it, “every woman is above her station.” Her emotion a] nature, fostered yet repressed by the ill-considered training of the ages, makes her quite capable of always imagining better ways of satisfying the spiritual needs of her being than those that circumstances compel. her to put up with. And yet, perforce, she puts up with'them. She comes to take man about as she finds him, and struggles frantically, with more or less cleverness, to make the best of him-, to mould him by artifice into something that will feed her starved sensibilities. For she knows man is incapable of living up to the exacting demands that he himself has taught her to make on him. - -Mabel Urner, in ‘Casscl’s Magazine.’

SHORT DRESSES "COMING IN

The most notable feature in fashion at the moment is the universal shortness of the skirt. The elegantes are having almost all their frocks made with short skirts; indeed one might almbst say that only frocks or suits of charmeuse and other ceremonious ‘lories are long. The quaint part of it is that evening frocks in chiffon and silver embroideries, even if not intended directly for dancing, are short. Oi course’ when intended for dancing they have every excuse for indulging in the jaunty freedom of a skirt that can take care of itself. A pink chiffon that I saw the other day had its silver embroideries repeated round the short skirt, and there is no doubt tlic short skirt "benefits by the weighting influence of such a trimming. Every chance of getting pretty silver trimming at the- sales should be seized with avidity. Fashion is not showing the least distaste for those most alluring trimmings, nor will she be’ sated with them for some time, it seems to' mo. Wo, shall not, of course,, be able to buy them at reckless reductions—we cannot expect that; but still there will bo bargains here and there in shops where trimmings are much consideredi