Hartin suggests that most of us enter marriage to a large degree unprepared and unguided. Any society which is guilty of such neglect, he says, cannot complain if its divorce rate is high, nor should it stigmatise the so-called ‘failures’ of the marital system.

The emphasis in marriage today has changed from the traditional institutional aspects to a growing importance being given to-the quality of the relationship. We now have greater expectations of marriage than was the case in the past. Hartin attributes this change in expectations of marriage to the many social changes which have occurred since the last century. Among these are the radically changed structure of the family unit, changes in moral and religious imperatives, massive shifts in population and subsequent dislocation from family and traditional roots after two world wars, the isolation and loneliness of people resulting from increased urbanisation, and the changing status of women (in particular their changing educational and employment opportunities. as well as improved methods of contraception).

In looking at the basic reasons for divorce, Hartin examines several aspects including ‘falling in love’, the culturally endorsed criterion for choosing a marital partner. He fearlessly outlines the inadequacies and the ephemeral nature of this much lauded state of mind. He suggests that it might indeed be just that - a product of the imagination.

Another major factor in marriage breakdown which he discusses is the different rate and direction of personal growth and development of the partners. This occurs inevitably as a result of the difference in mental stimulation and life experiences available to each partner, particularly if one of them is removed from the workforce and confined to the home.

Of great concern to people considering divorce is the possible effect on the children. Hartin cites findings to show that it is not divorce but the emotional situation in the home, with or without divorce, that is the determining factor in a child’s adjustment. There is, he says, no support for the belief that the one-parent home is necessarily any more unhealthy or damaging than many two-parent families.

On the subject of second marriages, he concludes that in many cases, second marriages have the potential to be better than first marriages. Some reasons for this are that the majority of first marriages are entered into when the couple are very young, when their experience of life is limited, and before their own identities have crystallised, hence the likelihood of change in one or both partners. In second marriages, an entirely different set of factors is at work. The partners are older, they have a better idea of who they are and what they want in another person. Moreover, most people do learn from experience. In fact, says Hartin, eighty-seven per cent of remarried people said their second marriage was an improvement on the first.

He concludes his book on an optimistic note. He sees the changes occurring in marriage and the family as indicating a search for better quality relationships between men and women, that there is a greater insistence that the quality of human relationships is more important than their form.

It has been assumed that marital stability, i.e. no divorce, implied marital happiness in the majority of cases. This is now known to be untrue. The real tragedy, says Hartin, is not that so many people divorce but that so many people remain in marriages which are impoverished, destructive, and without hope of improvement.

The white chrysanthemum, symbol in Australia for Mother, goddess-for-a-day on Mother’s Day, also resembles the brand new dish mop ready for a life time of domestic service. This is an apt title for an anthology which ranges from the lyrical to the cynical on the concept of motherhood.

The White Chrysanthemum edited by Nancy Keesing

Angus and Robertson, $12.50, 0207135177 Nancy Keesing, a fourth-generation Australian, has compiled many anthologies. She is, we are told, a writer, poet, critic and mother. She was elected Chairman of the Literature Board of the Australian Council in 1974. Her book The White Chrysanthemum shows by selections of prose, poetry, paintings, cartoons, advertisements and quotes from newspapers, a variety of ways in which woman as ‘Mother’ has been depicted by Aborigines, pioneers, colonists and nineteenth and twentieth century Australians, old and new.

The book includes full-colour reproductions of paintings by Fred McCubbin, Sir John Longstaff, Max Meldrum, William Dobell, Russell Drysdale and many others. There are numerous Norman Lindsay cartoons and sketches, as well as sketches and cartoons from the ‘Bulletin’ and other sources.

One quote from the ‘Sydney Mail’, 1895, states unequivocally: ‘Either a woman is a woman, and proves it by fulfilling the functions which she was sent into the world to fulfil, or she is what? – a nameless thing, a freak of nature.’ From this recognition of the possible opinion of many people, the book moves through experiences emotions and attitudes of the 197U’s, when Judy McLean expresses the cry of many women today when she says:

Until the age of eighteen I was somebody’s daughter. From then until now - at the age of thirty-nine, with one daughter of twenty-one and another of thirteen - I am still not me, but Gina and Tanya’s mother. I have spent twenty years defending my right to an existence as a person, and I am exhausted with the fight.

National Times, 10-15 May 1976.

But this book is no feminist manifesto. It simply depicts what is and what has been, evenly and without judgment.

The first section, ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’, consists mainly of quotations of incidents concerning mothers and the birth, illness or death of their children. The initial sombreness is relieved by a delightful Norman Lindsay cartoon showing a railway porter confronting a harassed woman surrounded by screaming children. He asks, ‘Are all these your own children or is it a picnic.’ The ‘suffering wife’ responds ‘They’re all my own, please God, and it’s no picnic.’

A selection of writing, photographs and drawings makes up the selection ‘Aboriginal Motherhood’, including a drawing of a woman and her child from Van Diemen’s Land, drawn in 1777 by Captain Cook’s official artist.

Fred McCubbin’s beautiful three-panelled painting of a pioneer couple introduces the section ‘Pioneers, 0 Pioneers’. Sketches, cartoon, paintings, photographs, prose and poetry give a rich and varied impression of life in the Australian outback in the last century.

Two sections entitled ‘Mothers of Sons’ and ‘Mothers of Daughters’ include selections from Mary Gilmore, Hal Porter, Lazurus Lamilami, Judah Waten, Louis Stone, David Campbell, Mary Dadswell, and Nancy Phelan, to mention a few.

‘Where there’s Life there’s Death’ contains Henry Handel! Richardson’s moving description of a woman watching her child die. It will doubtless strike a chord in the heart of every mother reading it. This section also contains a short story which leaves one with a cold shiver. Alexandra Hasluck writes of the doomed cocker spaniel bitch who, after six litters, ‘has done all she was alive to do’ and now is old, no good any more, finished. In this section too, Patrick White subtly pierces the sacred image and reveals the love of mother which sometimes masks the pinpricks of hate.

The final section, ‘The Lifestyles of Now’, returns us to the present almost with a jolt. The permitted images of motherhood are less confined, far less idyllic, than in former years. Here is a possibility of questioning the role. Here is more than a hint of dissatisfaction, the realisation of personal development sacrificed, possible life experiences foregone. There is a sense of apathy, even alienation, as women, while recognising the possible joys of motherhood realise that it also has its disadvantages’. Although this is probably true of any life style one may choose, it is only in recent times that it has been socially acceptable for women to make any other choice.

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

McPhee Gribble, $7.95, 0869140078 The harder you pull away, the tighter the monkey grip. And so it is for Nora and Javo she as she strives to break free of her love for him, and he as he struggles with his addiction to heroin. This is a story of tremendous loyalty and love among Nora and her friends who live and share their lives in the familiar streets of inner Melbourne. Here is the scene of love, sex, marijuana and hard drugs. Through it all is the sense of kindness and shared understanding. Here are women, including Nora herself, alone but not alone, bringing up their children in an extended family of friends. Here are the delights and the horrors of drug use. A world completely unknown to many who yet are, in physical terms, so close to it. Many readers will recognise the familiar scenes Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Melbourne. There are the shops, restaurants, dances and pubs, warm days at the Carlton Baths and St Kilda Beach, cool nights talking with friends.

Nora is a feminist in a world of feminists male and female. This aspect of her life is unpretentious, simply assumed. The posturing and pretence of the wider sex role culture are absent. Nevertheless there are the occasional twinges of doubt as Nora feels ‘used’ by Javo. But here too is the other side of the coin – the friendship love and support the women give to one another, free of rivalry; they and their male friends are able to share one another’s friendship. When there is hurt they are, for the most part, able to speak honestly to one another about that hurt.

Nora’s love for Javo is straight and unoppressive. The book takes us through her ecstasy and her pain as, virtually before her eyes, he physically disintegrates with his heroin habit. She is unable to help him and, in fact, the way of their loving would not allow such an effort on her part. It would be presumptuous. It is Javo who, finally free of his addiction, takes his love to another woman. Nora is no longer needed. Her reaction: ‘A funny kind of pain, dull not sharp, spread through my body as if by way of the bloodstreams. Doesn’t matter doesn’t matter ... Time to go home.’

Helen Garner writes with a sense of the real guts of life. The language and the scene are overpoweringly real. It is not a book for the prudish, but it is overwhelmingly filled with love and understanding. No doubt, to many people, it represents the lifestyle of a subculture. Nevertheless, it is devastatingly real and very close to home no matter who you are.