ARE WE MODERNS SO HARD?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3384, 25 July 1927, Page 2

ARE WE MODERNS SO HARD?

(By L. Allen Harker.) A favorite accusation made against th© 'twentieth century Georgians is that they are , “so hard” compared to the mid-Victorians, especially the women. Yet, if one comes to weigh actual facts carefully, surely the balance is in favor of this century as against last. It is difficult to discover who or what is responsible for the almost universal belief chat, although Victorian women may occasionally have been timid and ineffectual, they were nearly always tender-hearted and the most devoted daughters, sisters, wives and mothers. The characters of Dickens and Thackeray are supposed to be mainly responsible for this article of faith. Now, at the time they were writing, child labor in factories and coal mines was in full swing, and the women of land were fully cognisant of the fact. But it was .not until 1867 that Elizabeth Barrett’s “Cry of the Children” startled the men of England into a realisation of their responsibilities. Moreover, it was as late as 1884 that the Rev. Benjamin YVaugh inaugurated “The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,” which was caused such fundamental and beneficent changes in the standing of English children, and in the viewof the general public as to then* responsibilities towards them. We hear a great deal about the evil effect upon the feminine character of short skirts, short hair, cocktails, and the Charleston; but.it is doubtful if the most frivolous member of the set that is so nebulous, so constantly pilloried, and so difficult to define would quietly consent to ignore such cruel conditions for women and children as were notoriously prevalent in the middle years of the nineteenth century. Fundamental hardness may accompany outward gentleness and sweetness. The woman who, so long as her own family is comfortable, cares nothing about the condition of any other family, is. not really tender-hearted. Ruskin reproached the women of England with their general apathy in ’53, when a new edition of “Sesame and Lilies” was printed. There is no question that such qualities as kindness and consideration are much more general than they were even fifty years ago. Public opinion is in favor of these qualities, and although some of ! our novelists would seem to be at- | tracted by cruelty, physical or mental, I and by a general rulhlessness, a person who tried to “carry on” in these fashions in daily life would get short shrift at the present time. We hear a great deal about class consciousness and class hatred, but was there ever a time before when the classes were so thoroughly fused and intermingled, both in work and play, as in the present day? Li Mr Sadleir’s poignantly vivid life of Anthony Trollope, his description of Anthony’s childhood is heartrending. Vet the older Trollopes are not shown to be cruel people. But they must have been almost incredibly complacent and lacking in imagination, not to see that to send such a very small boy to a school like Harrow as a day boy, lilted, poorly clothed, with no pocketmoney, and having to walk three miles each way whatever the weather, was to subject iliac child to one long nightmare of torment. And yet his parents would' probably have been dumbfounded if had dared to accuse them of being “hard.” This poor “present-day” is always being belabored by somebody, but there is this much for thankfulness — that little children have, on the whole, a fairly happy and cheerful life. School is no longer a bugbear, but a. place full of interest to which one doesn’t crawl, but runs with shiniing morning face; A place whence one dashes out into the playground with joyful shouts. It is pleasant also to realise that, however efficient and courageous the modern girl may be, she has her limitations. As, when a girl interfered intrepidly in a most sanguinary dog fight, plucked the combatants apart and 1 carried off her own much mangled fox terrier, looked ruefully ot her stained! gloves, and said, “Pity I hadn’t time to take them off.” Yet the same girl that same night leapt upon a chair because a large garden spider chose to .scuttle across the drawing-room floor. Not the most typical Victorian damsel could have shown greater “sensibility.” Either in literature or life it would) be difficult in the present day to find three women as “hard” as the “old Campaigner” in Tli a eke ray’s “Ncwcomes,” Miss Mnrdstone in “David Copperfield,” or Mrs Proud'ie in “Bnrchester Towers.” And all three were considered typical in their period. The charity child, who “asked foi more” in these times would not be rclusodi, or someone would arise to demand the reason why he didn’t get it. II is more effectual to redress abuses than to weep over them, and it is possible that what we save in tears, we spend in a a ider diffusion of happiness.