IS CHIVALRY DEAD?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3144, 20 November 1922, Page 7

IS CHIVALRY DEAD?

Those people whose hearts live in the past, and! arc always regretting that their bodies are condemned to live in the degenerate present, are very fond of telling us that chivalry is dead. In agitating lor equal opportunities and equal rights women have, so they say. killed that protective instinct in man which was the best safeguard and most precious privilege of the weaker sex. The supposed death of chivalry is, in fact, the trump card of the Victorian critic of things as they are. It is quite true that every gain entails some loss. Woman, enfranchised politically and professionally, cannot expect to escape altogether the price ol her victory. Formerly the companion of man. she had become to-day his competitor in many fields of activity which used to he his special preserves. She claims—-though she does not always get, the same chance in the open market and the same reward. Efficiency, she maintains, has nothing, and ought to have nothing, to do with sex. and this is lilt' only standard hyq which she consents to he judged. Now all this involves a radical change in the attitude of men in general towards women in general. That change, as all sensible and especially all professional women admit, is the price, of their newly-won freedom to vote and to work on equal terms. They know quite well that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot rival men in the professions and he treated, as their grandmothers—those sheltered and incapable darlings wen' treated. 1 don’t believe the majority of women want that kind of fussy care. Tempreiug the wind to the shorn

lamb was all very well, but to-day in that sense there are not so many shorn lambs left. Isn't it better and healthier after all to have a good warm fleece of your own? Isn't it better to be able to choose your own life, even if you have to hang on to a strap in the tube or the omnibus, while all the seats are occupied by men with their eyes tightly guled to the evening paper? But admitting that women's victoryis well worth the price, chivalry in its truest sense has not really been killed by the struggle for life. In the heart of the finest and strongest men chivalry is an instinct which responds instantly to any sign of fatigue or helplessness in women. Tt can no more be destroyed than the instinct for love or motherhood can be destroyed bv the fact that an increasing number of women are forced by circumstances to work for their living.Adverse eVniditions may frustrate the eternal designs of Nature, but in the end she always has the last word. That sort of false gallantry which makes some men resent what they call the unsexed working-woman has nothing in common with the real spirit of chivalry. It is more concerned to profit by feminine Aveakness than to protect it, and so it was against everything that tends to make women self,'reliant and independent. There wias\ certainly a good deal more of that in the hypocritical Victorian times than there is to-day. Over such counterfeit coin we need not shed a tear. Let it die unlamented. True chivalry, like its twin-brother, Love, will survive all these econmic adjustments.