JOTTINGS FOR WOMEN.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9385, 8 April 1896, Page 4

JOTTINGS FOR WOMEN.

THE "NICE NEW WOMAN."

"Mothers in Council," a very excellent periodical, edited by Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, the official organ o! the Mothers' Union, recently published an article, in the form of a discussion on the question " Can there be a Nice New Woman?" The following remarks put into the mouth of Dr. Maitland, "a keen-looking meclioal man," are worth quoting—•' Tnis is my view of the case. Tne reform in womeu's education which begau somn thirty years ago has been alluded to. Remember the superficial teaching of most women's schools ab that time, the absence of thought in it, the mincing propriety which forbade a spade to be called a spade, and, still worse, forbade a healthy girl to satisfy her healthy needs of appetite and limbs. Look at the anaemia around us in women of all classes. Whence does it come bat from phyeical contraction, repressing, under-feeding, over-etimulatiug of the' nervous system ? We are feeling the backswing of the pendulum ; flesh ie reasserting itself, not against spirit, as some maintain, but against fetters and bonds that are unjust. Look at the healthy and (may I uee the word?) the stalwart young women whom one now meets in: London, as compared with the pale creatures of a generation back, ' miocing aa they go, , which a great prophet has told ua ahull end iv lamentation and mourning. Were such women fit mothers tor a noble race? If this were to go on our sons and daughters would be pale, decadent creatures, subject to the diseases and the vices of hysteria and other forms of degeneration. It is not virtuous to be weak and uuuatural, and, even if it be not virtuoim, in the higher sense, to be healthy and well balanced, it should lead to virtue by producing the sound mind in a sound body which places men and women on a path that leads them on to every noble thought and deed. I mean that, when the body is well and strong, as God meant it to be, the mind and soul are free from.the hindrances that oppose true mauliness and true womanliness. We all know it is not manly to be weak, but we are learning that it is not womanly either. Reaction brings its evil with it, and the woman who balances her physical health by moral health is sure to have a decadent sister at her side whose moral balance is not sufficient to keep the liberated flesh in check, and who runs riot in selfish, or silly, or even vioioue exoess, from the superabundant Vigour which ia not held in true equilibrium by wholesome moral forces. The sensible New Woman can ride, and awim, and run, and row, and her nobly developed limbs are clad in garments of becoming looseness and ahorfcneea when she takes her exercise, the bounds of womanly modesty nob being overstepped ; but the silly New Woman will exaggerate everything, will' cut off her petticoats up to her knees,'like the old woman in the rhyme, or even dock them altogether, and will ape maauishnees ia dress, and opaech, a,udact." \