Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise by Mitchell Austin

Author:Mitchell, Austin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007546985
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

The Kiwibird has the job of the small entrepreneur or the pioneer. She also has the characteristics. No wilting violet she, with her capacity for hard work and her dogged toughness. The dull plumage hides a fierce spirit. She knows what she wants—a husband, a lovely home, children, preferably though not necessarily in that order. Woe betide anything or anyone who stands in her way for she’s a fierce and terrifying species. Her looks betray her spirit. Where the Kiwi male has a face younger than his body, her efforts have told to such an extent that her body is younger than her face.

Unfortunately her role doesn’t provide universal satisfaction. Since she marries at 20 and has produced 2.6 children by the time she’s 28, the joys of being a homemaker (notice the distinction from the English ‘housewife’) can pall when the children grow up, if only because it’s useless. Sometimes she takes refuge in neurotic symptoms from backache to the National Council of Women. Or she throws herself into a strident hostility to change because she feels herself let down and without realising why, dimly puts it down to forces beyond her control. More than one in three go back to work around forty as an under-paid labour force, though slightly less exploited than the remainder, who devote themselves to the frenzied organisational work which alone keeps the machinery of welfare and education going. Committees are the opium of the people. The field of endeavour ranges from the Women’s Division to the Mothers’ Union competition for the best pikelet. Rarely does the embattled female fighting the rearguard action of life on one or all of these fronts realise that she is doing all this because the role she is programmed for has let her down.

Compared with the dogged singlemindedness of the single ladybird, and the implacability of the Great New Zealand Mum, the man’s role is that of an ephemeral faineant. While she bottles, he gets pickled, seeking escape from a home he can’t dominate, in the boozy camaraderie of the pub or the solitudes of the garden. The only thing he’s allowed to run is the car. He hasn’t even got the initiative to form the Men’s Liberation Front, the Y Front, to support his case.

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