The Ellesmere Guardian. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1895.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XVI, Issue 1640, 3 April 1895, Page 2

The Ellesmere Guardian. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1895.

THE NEW "WOMAN. Under this beading rarious articles havt appeared m our contemporaries and we understand that the periodical literature of England has for some time been persistently haunted by a figure m dubious garb> and called variously " New Women." y Bevolted Daughter." etc This figure occupies far more ground than its predecessor, the " blue-stocking," whom it has just displaced. It is not easy to deoide upon the origin and significance of this phenomenon. But as the " New Woman " appears to have " com* to stay," and to be destined to change materially many things m the body | social, the attempt must be made The new woman, then, we take it, is | born of knowledge— knowledge of evil — those classes of evil, the knowledge and commission of which has for so long been supposed, with certain welldefined exceptions, to be confined to the male sex- From "East Lynn* " onwards, the novels m which young women most delight, the plays most attractive to her, have increasingly dealt with problems of both single and married life, once thought unmentionable. The " New Woman," therefore, now that her attention has been directed to them, and now that she }i&g had «P many talented hands e»gagjid m Itftmg £he veil fpr her, knowt many things which her mother was at least content to ignore. Purser, she declines very often to conceal her knowledge; she frill no longer talk, and more particularly write, as though fcbese matters were outside her comprehension The n§w woman knows the weakness of the medern man, and frequently, very frequently, she diigovern her Knowledge to him. The result is various, according, of course, to the pecularfties ef individual temperament, but, for the effects produoed, the New Woman may, with advantage and convenience, be classed with two wide, and widely separated, classes— (1) ■ hose who, learning their brother's weaknesses, resolve to do all m their power to lead to a better state of things ; who rftfuii wij longer tort*

gard as a matte* of course, or of indifferenca, the purity of their suitors; who say, " You must b« even as you expect us to be"; and (2) Those -who, from the same knowledge, draw the conclusion that they may be as their t,ooks have taught them that mankind so largely is; who say, "We will be fr*e to be even a« you are" In both cases the knowledge is vied ag the basis of a demand for equality, only, m the one casa, woman demands an equal purity from man, while, m the other, she demands equal freedom to be impure as he. And it ii a great question, apart from the result to the dema<id«r individually, which demand will »c found m the end to have furnished' the most cogent appeal to the moral consciousness of the man. We imagine that, although the portent is alarming, it will be found m the end to have given a fresh impulse for good to every element of nobility m man or woman coming under its influence— to have only hastened the downfall of those m whom the baser elements predominated, and who therefore might humanly, and sadly, be deemed to have been irretrievable m any case. At any rate, for good or evil, the thing is done -the waters have been stirred— return to previous conditions is impossible. Our loyal service, then, to the New Tfoman, let her regenerate our race, ansl so fulfill her destiny I There are, of course, other aspects m which the New Woman, may appear to bear more directly upon public life, but from one standpoint they are subsidising to the one w« have been discussing. We are old-fashioned enough to believe that woman's influence on man, is the exact measure of her influence on the world.