Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868)

E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton

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Project Gutenberg's Modern Women and What is Said of Them, by AnonymousThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: Modern Women and What is Said of ThemA Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868)Author: AnonymousCommentator: Lucia Gilbert CalhounRelease Date: October 18, 2008 [EBook #26948]Language: English*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN WOMEN ***Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel, andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans ofpublic domain works from the University of Michigan DigitalLibraries.)Transcriber's Notes:Click on the page number to see an image of the page.More notes follow the text.MODERN WOMENANDWHAT IS SAID OF THEM A REPRINT OFA SERIES OF ARTICLES IN THESATURDAY REVIEW WITH AN INTRODUCTION BYMrs. LUCIA GILBERT CALHOUN NEW YORKJ. S. REDFIELD, PUBLISHER140 FULTON STREET1868Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, byJ. S. REDFIELD,In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the EasternDistrict of New York. Edward O. Jenkins,PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER,No. 20 North William St.ADVERTISEMENT.The following papers on Woman were originally published in the columns of the London ...

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• Publié par: ustlu
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 35
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's Modern Women and What is Said
of Them, by Anonymous
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Modern Women and What is Said of Them
A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday
Review (1868)
Author: Anonymous
Commentator: Lucia Gilbert Calhoun
Release Date: October 18, 2008 [EBook #26948]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
MODERN WOMEN ***
Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel,Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel,
and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans
of
public domain works from the University of Michigan
Digital
Libraries.)
Transcriber's Notes:
Click on the page number to see an image of the
page.
More notes follow the text.
MODERN WOMEN
AND
WHAT IS SAID OF THEM

A REPRINT OF
A SERIES OF ARTICLES IN THESATURDAY REVIEW

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
Mrs. LUCIA GILBERT CALHOUN

NEW YORK
J. S. REDFIELD, PUBLISHER
140 FULTON STREET
1868
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year
1868, by
J. S. REDFIELD,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Eastern
District of New York.

Edward O. Jenkins,
PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER,
No. 20 North William St.ADVERTISEMENT.
The following papers on Woman were originally
published in the columns of the London Saturday
Review. Some of them have already been reprinted in
the literary and daily journals of this country, and they
have excited no little discussion and comment among
readers of both sexes.
Whether agreeing or not with the writer, it is
impossible not to concede the eminent ability with
which the various subjects are handled. No series of
essays has appeared in the English language for
many years which has been so extensively reprinted
and so generally read.
The authorship of these papers has been attributed to
different individuals, male and female; but it is more
than probable that the writers whose names have
been mentioned in this connection are precisely those
who have had nothing whatever to do with them. It is
not unlikely that, in due time, the publisher of this
volume may be in possession of authentic information
on this head, and that the name of the author may
then appear on the title-page.
CONTENTS.
Introduction, 13
I.— The Girl of the Period, 25
II.— Foolish Virgins, 34III.— Little Women, 43
IV.— Pinchbeck, 52
V.— Pushing Women, 61
VI.— Feminine Affectations, 73
VII.— Ideal Women, 83
VIII.— Woman and the World, 93
10
IX.— Unequal Marriages,
1
10
X.— Husband-Hunting,
9
11
XI.— Perils of "Paying Attention,"
8
12
XII.— Women's Heroines,
8
13
XIII.— Interference,
8
14
XIV.— Plain Girls,
8
15
XV.— A Word for Female Vanity,
7
16
XVI.— The Abuse of Match-Making,
7
17
XVII.— Feminine Influence,
7
18
XVIII.— Pigeons,
8
19
XIX.— Ambitious Wives,
820
XX.— Platonic Woman,
6
21
XXI.— Man and his Master,
5
22
XXII.— The Goose and the Gander,
5
23
XXIII.— Engagements,
5
24
XXIV.— Woman in Orders,
3
25
XXV.— Woman and her Critics,
3
Mistress and Maid, on Dress and Undr 26
XXVI.—
ess, 2
27
XXVII.— Æsthetic Woman,
2
XXVIII. 28
What is Woman's Work?
— 1
29
XXIX.— Papal Woman,
1
30
XXX.— Modern Mothers,
0
30
XXXI.— Priesthood of Woman,
9
31
XXXII.— The Future of Woman,
9
XXXIII. 32
Costume and its Morals,
— 9
XXXIV. 33
The Fading Flower,The Fading Flower,
— 9
34
XXXV.— La Femme Passée,
7
XXXVI. 35
Pretty Preachers,
— 5
XXXVII. 36
Spoilt Women,
— 4
INTRODUCTION.
The "Woman Question" will not be put to silence. It
demands an answer of Western legislators. It besets
college faculties. It pursues veteran politicians to the
fastnesses of so-called National Conventions. Under
the sacred sounding-boards of New England pulpits
has its voice been heard, and its unexpected ally, the
London Saturday Review, introduces it to the good
society of English drawing-rooms. That this
introduction comes in the form of diatribe and
denunciation is a matter of the least moment.
Judgment will finally rest, not on the conclusions of the
special pleader, but on the strength of the case of the
accused.
Something, clearly, is wrong with fashionable women.
They accept the thinnest gilt, the poorest pinchbeck,
for gold. They care more for a dreary social pre-
eminence than for home and children. They find in
extravagance of living and a vulgar costliness of dress
their only expression of a vague desire for the beauty
and elegance of life. Is it, therefore, to be inferred that
the race of noble women is dying out? St. Paul washardly less severe than the London Saturday, if less
explicit, in his condemnation of the fashionable women
of his day, yet we look upon that day as heroic.
Certainly neither London nor New York can rival the
luxury of a rich Roman matron, yet it was not the
luxury of her women which destroyed the empire, and
Brutus's Portia was quite as truly a representative
woman as the superb Messalina. John Knox thought
that things were as bad as they could possibly be
when he thundered at vice in high places; and if there
had been a John Knox in the court of Charles the
Second, he would have sighed for a return of the
innocent days of his great-grandfather.
On the whole, that hope which springs eternal
suggests that the fashionable women of the reign of
Victoria, and of our seventeenth President, are not
essentially more discouraging than all the generations
of the thoughtless fair who danced idly down forgotten
pasts. Nay, we may even hope that they are better. If
they will not actually think, yet the fatal contagion of
the newspaper and the modern novel communicates
to them an intellectual irritation which might almost
stand for a mental process. If they have not ideas,
they have notions of things, and however inexact and
absurd these may be, they are better than emptiness.
"Worse, decidedly worse," says our implacable critic;
"when women were content with looking pretty before
marriage, and with good housekeeping after, they
were uninteresting certainly, but they were
respectable. Now they dabble in all things; are weakly
æsthetic, weakly scientific, weakly controversial, and
wholly prosy, and contemptible." Dabbling is pitiful,certainly, and weakness has few allies, but let us do
justice even to the weak dabblers. Æsthetic, or
scientific, or controversial training has but recently
been made possible to women. Their previous range
of study had been very narrow. It is not strange that
the least attainments should seem to them very
profound and satisfactory, and the most manifest
deductions pass for original conclusions. It is natural
that their undisciplined faculties should grapple feebly
with difficulties, and be quite unequal to argument.
This is no reason for flinging the baffling volumes at
their heads; better so educate their heads that the
volumes shall no longer baffle.
Scolded because they have not an idea beyond dress,
laughed at when they try to think of something better,
a word may certainly be said for the good temper and
the patience even of the fashionable women, who
would be wiser if they could.
The fault is, we are assured, that these women take
up books only to enhance their matrimonial value, and
with no thought of the worth of study. Let us be just.
What business or the professions are to most men,
marriage is to most women. Men qualify themselves, if
they can, for that competitive examination which is
always going on, and which insures clients to the best
lawyers, and business to the best merchant, and
parishes to the best preacher. Women, compelled to
wait at home for the wooing which changes their
destiny, qualify themselves with attractions for that
competitive examination which all marriageable young
women feel that they undergo from every
marriageable young man. Each has an eye to