CONTRASTS

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 177, 14 April 1923, Page 15

CONTRASTS

WOMAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO AND NOW x

People perpetually discuss Miss 1923. Let us take a long look back at /Miss 1923 and see the difference. What immense changes have taken place in 100 years, and no one is more affected by them than women, writes J.D. in the “Westminster Gazette.”

Let us note the changes, just the lighter side of life. The young girl in 1823 had her hair done in strange and fantastic manner. Un tho slightest provocation her head was decked with feathers—with flowers—with heavy plaits—with curls — with ribbons. Her dress was high to the throat. Her sleeves high to her ears. Her waist was pinched and tortured. She was weighed down with tnick and starched petticoats. The young girl of 1923 wears her hair flat—or curled and bobbed. Her throat and arms are free of cumbersome covering. She wears clinging frocks, and has a supple, loose, waistline. MISS 1823. Miss 1823 lived continuously under her mother’s eyes. She did embroidery and needlework. She made preserves, and knitted. Her only “sport” was a walk taken with the members of her fam’ly. Miss 1923 is not, generally speaking, fond of needlework; in fact, does not care for sitting still—it bores her. She wants to be “on the go” all the time. You don’t find her, like tho heroine of a former age. warbling aromance at the piano. She says—and very ririhtly—“the gramophone does it much better than L” or she argues—very rightly again—“ There are excellent concerts to-day within tho purse and the reach of everyone.” You will—more often than not —find her in the fresh air, with a racket or a golf stick. It has taken 100 years of evolution to accomplish such decided changes, and they are all for the better. Today young girls are given a chance in life like their brothers—no longer are they required to stay at home and mope—doing nothing, or doing for others without a recognised position or pay. INDEPENDENCE. I Enow to-day of a family of girls. They happen to stay at home, but one "is the housekeeper and receives an excellent salary from her father. . Another is the gardener, also receiving a good wage, and a. third is her father’s secretary, and demands, and gets, the hsualYemuneration. It is all for the fetter. Women day by day are gaining in self-respect and ability—their outlook is widened. They are not women in suspense waiting for the first offer and taking it whether they like It or not, because they fear it may be their last. They do not look upon marriage as a trade—the only trade—and often undertaken to live and not to love. No, they pick and choose today, and somet'mes even they do the courting and selecting; But the girl of 1823—very prim, very demure, very shy—was she not rather sweet after all? Of course she was—for was she not your and my great-grandmother or grandmother i