WHEN SHE IS AN OLD MAID.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 239, 7 October 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHEN SHE IS AN OLD MAID.

That imaginary line, which is supposed to mark the division between girlhood and the "old maid" is being set farther and farther back, until there have arisen grave doubts if it will not disappear entirely. Once 25 was the limit to girl, hood. After that she was either a matron or an old maid. Now it is 30. And it means little or nothing.

Once it was supposed to mean that, being pa.ssed, it became a bar to matrimony. No novelist chose a heroine over 25. Of course he intended to marry his heroine to his hero, and marriage after 25 on the woman's part was something to be avoided as something which did not find a counterpart in real life.

It will be observed that among the fiction heroines of the present day -will > be found a number who have gone to the thirty-year limit. It was recognised long ago that a woman did not lose her attractions because she had gone over this imaginary line, but the setting back of the line waited long after the recognition.

Balzac has laid down the theory that a woman at thirty is at her most fascinating age. She probably will not have so long a train of admirers. She may have fewer partners at a ball. Once in a while a young man may make her feel like a grandmother by coming to her for advice in his own love affairs.

The setting back of the imaginary Una has followed the practice of late marriage. If a young man married at the age of 21 and a young woman at the age of 18, then the young woman of 23 would have been waiting seven years, and probably it would be justifiable to consider that she would not accept a husband.

But when marriage is the last thing of which a girl of IS and a young man of 21 are thinking, and when 30 on the part of the man and 25 for the women is closer to the average age at which matrimony is undertaken, then necessarily the age limit goes back. It should be set back still further, to 35, if it should be considered as existing at all.

' The young and inexperienced girl, is not the attraction of the hour it is claimed by experts in these matters. She waits until she reaches a more mature and more experienced age, and meanwhile the centre of the stage is held by her older sister. In fact, the older sister is sometimes credited with a feeling of pity for the young girl who comes into the world in muslin and blue ribbons with so much to learn.

One of these older sisters expresses this pity as follows: "One thing I am thankful for, and that is that I am no longer a bread and butter miss.

"There is no period of her existence, I think, wherein .womain appears to less advantage. It is almost impossible for a girl of 18 not to be conscious, and she has so little knowledge of the world that she is unable to hide her awkwardness.

"It is amusing, even pathetic, to see the efforts of the poor thing to appear natural and at her ease and to say her little say without betraying that she has prepared it beforehand."