The Feminine Fashion of Fainting

Bruce Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 3103, 29 September 1899, Page 3

The Feminine Fashion of Fainting

■■ ♦ — — ■ 11 The Decay of Sensibility " is the topic of an interesting discussion by Stephen G-wynn in 'Cornhill' for July. He contrasts life as it now is with life as faithfully reflected in the pages of Miss Austen. He says: — My object is merely to point out that the total disappearance of one quality, bo well marked in Miss Austen's day that it gave a title to one of her novels, yet now, in so far aB concerns its outward manifestations, Dearly as extinct as the dodo. I mean, of course, what was called sensibility, the attribute which üßed to display itself by rapturous joy, by copious tears, by hysterics, and principally by fainting fits, upon the most inadequate occasions. The change is so marked that one inclines to ask oneself whether the physical constitution of woman be not altered within the past half-century. The modern young woman does not swoon promiscuously. ... A virago can scold and a minx can endure to be scolded nowadays without either hysterics or a tainting fit resulting. Tears still flow freely, but women as as rule are not proud of them. On tbe contrary, a young lady, I believe, will generally apologise for " making such a fool of herself." It is no longer considered to be an attraction, or even an amiable weakness, to be so feminine as all that. The same fashion is borne witness to in Miss Eerrier's works. The writer says : — These instances appear to be sufficient to prove that temporary losb of consciousness was an ordinary incident in the lite of a well-bred female. The malady was confined to the upper classes, though it was imitated, as was natural, by ladies' maids. The severity of the attacks would appear, from Miss Ferrier, to have been proportioned to the moral worth of the character. Leas estimable parsons fainted oftener, but not s>> thoroughly. WHY IT HAS GONE OUT. The writer's explanations of the change will doubtless give rise to very decided differences of opinion. Speaking of the old days, he saye : — On the contrary, man, as man always will do, taking woman at her own valuation, had held upon the whole that thesß soft emotions proved irrefragably a kind of kinship with the angels. And so the interesting creatures swooned, and screamed, and wept, and sobbed from generation to generation, harrowing tbe hearts of their lovers and reducing their husbands to despair. It was only when woman herself took up the pen and began basely to open men's eyes to a sense of the ludicrous in this particular situation that; all these tender susceptibilities shrivelled like a maiden-hair fern exposed to an east wind, and man began to revise his position. There were women who sympathised with man's sufferings undar the tyranny of tears aud the depobism of hysteria ; there were women who, when a lady asvooned in public, were ready todach cold water over her best bib and tucker ; and man profited by their example. Woman, that acute strategist, realised that her flank was turned, and shifted her ground ; only a few belated stragglers still fight wuh tbe old wespons and upon the od Sines.