The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1886-07-14
In Defense of Mothers-in-Law.

To support the idea that mot herS-in-
law have never been favorablv regard
ed, ethnologists tell us that singu-
lar custom, which enacts that IA man
shall never look upon the face of his
mother-in-law after he is once married,
prevails among numerous savage peo-
Pile apparently widely sundered by geo
graphical distribution and differences
of race. The custom obtains among the
Kaflirs of South America, among sever
al of the Australian tribes. and among
many Polynesians, fact which some
people assume 10 point to a common
origin of these races, but which others
look upon as testimony of the existence
of natural law, as piece of wisdom
indigenous to each of these countries,
and the direct growth of individual cx-
perience. The custom being found in
such widely separated continents rs
Africa and Australia is considered as
proving that it must have been suggest
ed by some common necessity of human
nature, and reasons are not wanting to
show why savages discovered it was bet
ter for a man not to look upon his
mother-in-law. Primarily, say the sup
porters of this theory, because his
mother-in-law was picture in antici-
patton of what his wife was likely to be.
Before marriage, a mans mind may
not be open to the cold process of com
parison, but afterward he begins to
con slider what sort of bargain he has
made, and if his mother-in-law has not
improved in age. the ghastly possibility
of his wife becoming like her rises be-
fore him. Hence these savage tribes
prescribed the rule that never after mar
riage should man see his mother-in-
law. and this in time became a social
law or custom.
1t has been more than once fiippantly
suggested that this lesson of venera-
BILE experience might be accepted and
the custom adopted here, while others,
| equally regardless of social or other
consequences, have advocated the in
stitution of a kind of suttee arrange
ment, which should bind the British
matron by social propriety to close her
mortal career upon her daughters mar
riage. Apart from the suggestion only
being available in eases where one
daughter alone blessed a marriage,
| there is the more important consider
| alton that to eliminate mothers-in-law
altogether from society, even if it were
]
effects. Is her presence really always
so disagreeabie, so baneful to enjoy
ment? Is her advice never needed? The
world has always sided against her; il
does not stop to consider the double
characteristics of legal maternity which
are involved when both sons and
daughters marry; it still persists in view.
ing her only in her character of wife's
mother. and repeats and revivifies from
time TO time all the malicious denun-
Citations or witty epigrams that have
become associated with her name.
Thackeray even, who, with his large
| knowledge of the world and of the hu
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 Macken
zie, plying his sweet, silly little Rosie
| and the mueh-injured wives of her ac
quaintances, without rejecting tha
they might in their turn 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 un.
avoidably drifting into mother-in-Iaw.
hood? And again, is it not rather un-
reasonable in young man to object to
her who had the greatest share in mold
ing the character and training tht
habits of the woman he has chosen
from all others to be his companion fol-
life? How strange it is. when one looki
the question in the face. that a lady
who is considered harmless enough un
til her children marry, should after tha
happiest of family events be elevated tC
such painful pedestal of disagreeable
/ ness,
As matter of fact, in spite of al
that novelists and playwrights hav,
written. the mothers-in-law of son:
generally get on with them far bette
than with their daughte-s-in-law.-Cas
ses. Family Magazine