THE ORDINARY GIRL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2734, 12 February 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE ORDINARY GIRL.

The ordinary girl can be educated in the duties of a wife. The girl of,unusual or special abilities can have a special education. But how is the ordinary girl to be both happy and useful if sh« does not marry?

In everything she- is an amateuran amateur in housekeeping, because it is not her own house that she keeps: an amateur in mothering, because, however much she may love her nephews and nieces, it is not her own children that she mothers; an amateur in work that she may find, to do, since she is supposed to do it/ only that she may keen herself busy, not because it is her proper work. The- middle-class home, as we have it, is an institution designed for husband and wife and children. It is not. designed for children when they grow up. Many homes, of course, manage to adapt themselves more or less successfully to the new conditions. But in many there is boredom and friction, and uneasy hope gradually gives way to dull resignation. It is easy to state tho 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 he 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 of settlements. We have neither tho French system of frank bargaining, nor the old English recklessness.

It we want more, marriages We must either give our children a freer hand in arranging their own matches, or we must arrange them ourselves after the French system (says a modern writer). Our present attempt to combine love with convenience makes marriage too difficult.