Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-06-18
The Mo1HER-lN-LAW.
Tho Position She Should Occupy In the
Esteem of Young People.

Esteem of Young People.
To support the idea that mothers-in-
law have never been favorably re-
yarded, ethonologists tell US that a
singular custom, which enacts that a
man shall never look upon the face of
his mother-in-law after he is once mar
ried, prevails among numerous savage
peoples apparently widely sundercd by
geographical distribution and differ
ences of race. The custom obtains
among the Kafirs of South America,
among several of the Australian tribes
and among many Polynesians, a fact
which some people assume to point to
a common origin of these races, but
which others look upon as testimony of
the existence of a natural law, as a
piece of wisdom indigenous to each OF
these countries an d the direct growth
of individual experience. The custom
being found in such widely separated
continents as Africa and Australia is
considered as proving that it must have
been suggested by some common neces-
sity of human nature, and reasons are
not wanting to show why savlges dis
covered it was better for u man not to
look upon his mother-in-law. Primarily,
say the supporters of this theory, be-
cause his mother-in-law was a picture
in anticipation of what his wife was
likely to be. Before marriage, Il mans
mind may not be open to the cold pro-
cesses of comparison, but afterward he
begins to consider what sort of a bar
gain he has made, and if his mother
in-law has not improved with age. the
CHASTITY possibility of his wife becoming
like her rises before him. Hence these
savage tribes prescribed the rule that
n%everafter marriage should a man see
his mother-in-law, and this in time be-
came a social law or custom.
1t has been more than once hippant-
ly suggested that this lesson of Il VEN
cradle experience might be accepted
and the custom adopted here, while
others, equally regardless of social and
other consequences, have advocated
the institution of q kind of suffice ar
rangcmcnt, which should bind the
British matron by social propriety to
close her mortal career upon her
daughters marriage. Apart from the
suggestion only being available in cases
where n daughter alone blessed a
marriage, there is the more important
consideration that to eliminate moth
e~rs-in-law altogether from society.
even if it were possible, would be most
disastrous in its effects. Is her pres
encc really always so disagreeable, so
baneful TO enjoyment? Is her advice
never ncededP The world has always
sided against her; it does not stop to
consider the double characteristics of
legal maternity which are involved
when both sons and daughters marry;
it still persists in viewing her only in
her character of wife's mother, and re-
! peats and rcvivifies from time to time
all the malicious denunciations or
witty cpigrams that have become asso-
GATED with her name.
Thackeray even, who, with his large
knowledge of the world and of the hui
man heart, might have been expected
to be more lenient to the unfortunate
race of mothers-in-law, goes out of his
way to draw the horrible Mrs. Mac
kenzie, plying his sweet, silly little
Rosie and the much-injured wives Of
their acquaintance. without rejecting
that they might in their turns become
mothers-in-law. Does not this fact
furnish food for reflection to the young
husbands of to-day, who a quarter of a
century hence may find their loving
wives unavoidably drifting into moth
er-in-lawhood? And again, is it not
rather unreasonable in Il young man to
object to her who has had the greatest
share in molding the character and
training the habits of the n woman
he has chosen from all others to be his
companion for life? How strange it is,
when one looks the question in the
face, that a lady who is considered
harmless enough until her children
marry, should after that happiest of
family events be elevated to such a
painful pedestal of disagreeableness!
AS a matter of fact, in spite of all
that ~novelists and playwrights have
written, the mothers-in-law of sons
generally get on with them far better
than with their daughters-in-law.-
Casselps Family Magazine.