THE LADIES’ WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2720, 27 January 1910, Page 3

THE LADIES’ WORLD.

UNMARRIED DAUGHTERS. The headmaster of Eton, speaking on education and practical life, remarked that English home life was weakening and that girls ought to. bo taugilt in such a way that they would be able to take their places in the homes. Ono can agree with him on both points, says the “Times,” and yet remain in practical uncertainty. Girls must be fitted to take up their places in the homes; but in what homes? Lt is not all the same thing; for the wife’s function in a properly organised home is clear and well-defined.

Tile function of the grown-up daughter especially if there arc several of them, is not. Parents, nowadays, cannot count upon their, daughters marrying. A father with half a dozen daughters, must face the fact that none of them may marry; and, if they arc all to remain spinsters how is he going to train them all to take their places in the home? However well ho may train them, the home will not provide them with enough to do, and if, as Mr. Lyttelton says, English home life is weakening, it is weakening because there are too many women with nothing to do in our homes. How is the ordinary girl to be educated so 1 that! she will- he both happy and useful if she does not marry ? That is the difficulty which no generalities will meet; indeed, it is a difficulty almost insurmountable in present conditions; and because of it many of our middleclass homes are full of subdued unhappiness. There are hundreds of things which the ordinary spinster might do, if only she were capable of doing them. But she is not capable, partly because her parents often. l have not the means to give her a good education, partly because her very position as a spinster in her parent’s home deprives her of the energy and initiative. Of course the main cause of the trouble is the fact that in the middle classes marriages are fewer and later than they used to be. The middle-class home, as we used to have it, is an institution! designed for husband and wife and children. It is not designed for children when they grow up. The idea, underlying all its conventions and relation* is that sons and daughters alike will, in due coursce, leave it and make homes of their own. If they do not. they must not seem to linger “like an unloved guest,” but there is no provision for their remaining. The son who stays at home because 1m cannot make a. living for himself is obviously failing in life. The daughter who stays because she does not find a husband is often conscious or halfconscious of the same failure, not because she is evidently inferior to the women who marry, but because, unlike them, she has not- found her proper business in life, she has not done what was expected of her.

It is easy to state the problem, but difficult even to suggest any kind of solution. Are middle-class parents to make more efforts to marry their daughters? If so ,they must be more ready for their sons to marry; they must be prepared to give as well as to take. There is no doubt that we are far more exacting about marriage than our grandparents were. Fathers do not like either their sons or their daughters to marry on vague prospects. They demand some kind of security, whether of income or settlements. We are against marriages of convenience; but our marriages for love must also be convenient. So our sons and daughters naturally grow cautious about falling in love. They do not care to face the uncertainty and trouble of unauthorised engagements; and they have caught from thbir parents the idea that it is better not to marry at all than to marry upon hopes. Thus, while waiting for the desired combination of love and convenience, the sons often grow inured to celibacy, and ' the daughters pass the marrying age. We may call this reasonable caution,

or selfish cowardice —there is something to he said on both sides; but the practical question is: What do we mean to do? If we want more marriages we must either give our children a freer hand in arranging, their own matches, or ive must arrange them ourselves more after the French system. Our present attempt to combine love with convenience makes marriage too difficult.