THE NEW WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 113, 9 November 1921, Page 12

THE NEW WOMAN

CLEVER TELEGRAPH ARTICLES

VIEWS OF WOMEN

MOEAL PBOBLEMS,

(FROM OCR OWN CORRISPONDIMI.)

LONDN, 7th September. Lady Astbr: "To my mind the woman's question is not- primarily an economic or a , social problem, but a spiritual one. Men have expected of their own women in their, own homes purity, love, and moral courage; and on the whole they have had them. Now, women have disconcerted them by coming into public life and professional life .with this same point of view, which appears to. them new and idealistic. Unconsciously this is being resisted, partly by the • conservatively minded, or may I call them the reactionaries, who 'dislike all change, and partly by men who have not yet ' rounded Cape Turk.' But I am certain that, if women can really take into public life the qualities which they have on the whole tried to live up to in private life, without being selfrighteous .or impatient; men will welcome them as comrades as generously as they did daring the war. Many men realised for the first time during the war that woman could be good comrades and fellow-workers. I cannot "believe that they will allow economic pressure, or war weariness, or any other of our temporary ills, to warp their view, and make them forget that most women played the game during the war, and only want a chance to go on pulling their full weight now. Is there, then, a new woman ? I do not much care. It is a quibble to argue whether new environment produces new types, or vice versa. The important problem before us to-day :is to try to put into practice the ideals of service, of comradeship, and of a better world, which were geneI rated during the war, and which have suffered such a sad eclipse since. This cannot be done by*men alone or by women alone, but only by the joint efforts of both;" CHANGE AND NO CHANGE. Dr. .Mary Scharlieb : "Are the women of the twentieth century in any way really different from those whose characters axe preserved for us in history, whether'medieval or ancient? .< Is it not more likely that the human race is fundamentally one throughout the ages, and is it not likely that the apparent change in the women of to-day is simply a change in their reaction under the influence of altered circumstances. To those of -us who have studied the past as well as the present, it is evident that 'Plus la : change,, plus e'est la meme chose.' The changes aTe really in the environment, the woman's essential characteristics remain as of old. In what way has the tnvirdament changed? In part'the change in the attitude of the modern woman is' due to the change in her education. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil offers its fruits to men and women alike, and with equal education there must gradually come equality of opportunity, equality of pay, and equality of standards. Up: to quite •recent days the boy and the man enjoyed superior advantages in everything. He was the dominant, and everything, the law included, was in conformity to his needs and to his standards. At the present time educational advantages and the imprimatur of our universities are available to women equally with men, and still more recently the greatly-desir-ed equality of citizenship has been conceded to tha woman with the gift of the Parliamentary franchise. There is no doubt that the modern woman has achieved a tactical victory, but it isa victory that will profit her little unless she .has both the wisdom and the intelligence to consolidate it. It is quite possible to win a war and to. lose the peace. All who are anxious for the welfare ,of our race and nation must be anxious that its women shall realise in time that enhanced privileges entail new duties and increased responsibilities, and those who fought most strenuously for the, intellectual and political emancipation of women ought at the present time to strain every nerve in order to convince their sisters that their newly-acquired privileges will prove but Dead Sea fruit Unless they are used aright." VAST CHANGES. Miss Marjorie Bowen: " There is no parallel in history for the present epoch, or we are dealing with forces which have hitherto been undreamt of, forces in nature and in the human souls. How can woman, swept into the current of these devastating changes, remain tlie same? Men are not the same; the very elements are tampered with, swayed to strange Uses; the face of nature Has been wilfufly altered. ... One thinks that very few women, very, very few, would refuse the life of love and home and children, made easy by -devotion and chivalryj sheltered by strength and courtesy from everything unpleasant and difficult j the trouble is that they do not get, cannot, in the present nature of things, get the chance ,4ot these things, that they are forced to fend for themselves, often for someone else, even for their husbands and children, and that this-has altered their, outlook, their manners, their very dress and figure. . : i. The new woman may appear to have cone too far in many things, but one thinks that this is more in appearance than in reality. The women who are silly or nude, conceited or crazy, now are. probably only the types who would | always have been so, but who have had no chance to flaunt themselves under the old system; and if a great many have lost their heads aiid do ' bohave badly," Who is to blame tliem? With every tradition flung overboard, with every convention ecdfied at, with knowledge put into one hand and freedom into the other-^it takes a strong hand, a sound heart, hot to sjtpw any symptoms of giddiness or confusion, it is still a common gibe thrown at women who make themselves conspicuous in some new field of endeavour—' Go home and look after the children'; and the point that one cannot too strongly insist on it, there are not the homes.or the children for every woman, and a large proportion of the homes and children' women do get are rendered, not joys, but intolerable burdens by reason of modern conditions of poverty, ill-health, and over-popula-tion." APPRECIATION AND DEFENCE. Mrs. Henry Dadoney: "The 'new wuraan' is a token of glory; not so» much for what she is to-day as for all that she indicates for to-morrow. Today she is in transition, and, like all pioneers, makes furious mistakes. Her pose is noisyjMier accent too marked; she has become candid, but sometimes lacks charm; yet those things are only ripples on a deep sea. And she follows tho star of an ideal, whether she knows it or not. The 'new woman' is a splendid physical creature; and perfection of body' leads to growth of soul. Religion to-day is vague; it is going—with all the other things—through a phase of chaos and rebellion. But 'it is real, and soon it will crystallise. The old materialism is dead. War, and the sorrow of war, killed that. The 'new woman' steps out grandly from the mists of the -putt, »nd through the mint you faintly , see those (hrinking figure* who serf

this goddess's grandmother and maiden aunt. You feel such a profound pity for them. They lived before the Married Woman's Property Act was passed, and that was only in 1881. The 'new woman' owes her position almost wholly to the change in economics. . . . The v 'new woman' in her love affairs is enchanting. Both before and after marriage there is comradeship, and this is quite a new factor. The 'lid woman' knew very little of her husband's business affairs. He never told her, and it was more than her place was worth to ask. . . . There was a stiffness not only of clothes but of mind in the past. To-day we are generous, candid. The snigger and the whisper have died, and we approach the magnificent facts of life quite frankly. All sorts of qualities which we have always had, but which got covered in, are coming to light—a sense of logic, a sense of honour, and even a sense of humour! Perhaps the 'new woman' is a paradox after all! Perhaps she is not 'new,' but merely a variation of the eternal theme. A delightful variation, in every aspect! And then, the 'new' grandmother! So smart, so young. It is, vivacity of spirit, not of the rouge-pot. Though I will not say there is never a rouge-pot! But if she rouges, she does it beautifully. And she is so proud of being a grandmother. All that absurdity of concealing your age—what a remote pose! The 'new' grandmother and the 'new' mother, also, are less serious than the old one. But they are^njore profound." HUMAN BEINGS. Miss Margaret L. Woods : "It is useless ■to clamour for the return of the past. It is only in the East that the sun can be made to stand still. In this great ■flood-time, the plank to which most of us cling is a belief in the sense of justice, the collective wisdom, the moderation which has hitherto distinguished our race. Responsibility for the general well-1 being lies to-day as much with women as with men, and one may hear some ■former fierce opponents of feminism now appealing to feminine practical sense and religious principle to steady the pace of the whirling world. Perhaps the first thing that the new woman can' serviceably do at this juncture is to leave off thinking and talking so much about herself qua woman. It is not sex which is the most important fact about her, even in her relation to man. Man and woman share that with the whole animal creation. What they share together, they two solitarily on the tnrone of the earth, eolitarily in the whole tremendous universe, is the simple yet amazing abd mysterious fact ,of their human beingness." -j THE VALUE OF INDEPENDENCE. Miss Beatrice Kean Seymour divides the modern woman into two classes : (1) The woman who has really a "new", outlook upon life; and (2) the woman who has not. "The really new#woman lias her eyes less on some problematical husband than on"* the achieving of her own career, the building up of her independence and self-respect—two qualities not over-appreciated by the critics who call her hard and 'unwomanly.' doubt whether she is either, but in any cave all such terms are relative, for the fact remains that since considerable numbers of women will not to-day have the chance of marriage (however much they may desire it), self-reliance and independence are the best equipment for life. The new woman is right to prefer to shape a path for herself rather than to engage in the old struggle of 'finding some man to keep her,' which, always a humiliating business, is to-day an outrageously unequal one as well. To me nothing is clearer than that the efforts the modern girl has so far made towards this achieving of independence have already strengthened her character and given her a wider view of life than she cotald ever have obtained through the tedious allurement of men. And so it comes about that having no longer to regard marriage as a living, a girl can afford to stand away from it and look at it in better perspective. Men who say that the more cultured women of to-day are selfish and undesirous of marriage and motherhood do not realise, I think, the growing passionate revulsion from, the easy attitude which assumes that a woman is negligible except as a wife and potential mother. The thinking "woman sees other aspects of TSe, and resents the fact that many men give to women as mothers the respect they so often deny to them as human beings. This claim to individuality— an individuality of their own, utterly apart from that of husband and child (though often beautifully consonant in the happiest unions) is one of the most pronounced characteristics of the 'new' woman, and I-cannot but believe it must make for the ultimate betterment of the human race. Neither, so far as my observation goes, do I find any justification for the contention that this type of girl makes any less excellent a wife and mother than the older-fashion-ed woman her critics continually exalt as an example. It is she (of clause 2) who converts freedom into license, and exaggerates the very sensible and hygienic dress of to-day, thus calling down upon her sex the animadversions of bishops and people who belong still to that old conspiracy to .maintain that women have no legs, except, as somebody said the other day, 'when the Government says they may.' ' The business of this type of girl is to attract men; to that end she uses everything at her command. Shrewd and calculating, she Jcnows' men, has drawn her own conclusions about them. Why should she occupy her mind with 'higher' things when men's minds (where women are concerned) are so obviously occupied with the lesser? .. . Yet these girls (and it cannot be too emphatically pronounced) are not 'modern.' They merely use modern conditions, modern freedom, for their own ends. Far from being 'new,' they are, beneath their veneer, as'old as Time. The really 'new' woman is she who has learned the dignity of her own existence, and has ceased to care so tremendously what men think of her. She/is less mysterious than her ,pseudo-modern sister,; but she is incomparably, finer. Alas! that she is not yet in the majority, nor ever can be whilst mothers—disregarding every sign of the times—continue exclusively to instruct their daughters in the game of husband-catching, and whilst so many men show so plainly that ideas and character are as nothing to them beside the fluffy prettiness of a feather-head. Beyond doubt men get women they deserve." \ THE WAR'S INHERITANCE. Miss Geneviev'e Ward, .the famous octogenarian actre?s: "At present woman is in the enviable position of a poor relation who has just come into a fortune. She is a little dazzled with the sense of opportunity, but she will recover her balance soon. In a certain sense the new woman has been with us always; in another sense ' eye hath not seen her,' because there has never, been anything of the sort to see. Yet it must be admitted that the war has made all of ,us, from the King to the crossing-sweeper1, newish, at the least. But the war was the war, say what you will, and it has left us its inheritance of a world turned upside down. I sometimes think that our dot' of a planet has come worst off in a collision with some large sphere, and left us all topsy-turvy for a change, until another kick of the same kind restores the equilibrium, and the new woman comes into the picture as a different being from her grandmother, Everything ti on it« trial, the old amenities, the old conven-

tions, and the new ideals. Woman finds .that she is equal to every call upon her, and here and there she is quite dazzled by the prospect. Magda, in one of Suderman's plays, who had shaped her life to her liking after a highly successful career on the stage, drops in to see her people, and make up with them. She is received as a penitent, and she goes out as she came in, to escape from a set of fogies who are mere relics of the; past. If she were extant to-day she would, as a matter of course, have most of the novelists and playwrights at her feet, to enable them to stage her for Parliament, law, local government, and the, v deuce knows what besides, except perhaps prize-fighting—but, alas! who knows? The only thing certain, however, is that woman will do what is before her in her own way. ' Woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse,' wrote Tennyson, and that seems to settle the matter. Poor old Milton's ' For contemplation he, and valour formed ; For softness she, and sweet, attractive grace' no longer fills the bill. But lam getting bored, so I beg the one sex to put these rambling remarks into their pipes and smoke them, and the women to do the same over their cigarettes., "P.S.—By the way, what about the new man? Are we the only oddities ofthe age?" THE DANGER AHEAD. Father Bernard Vau'ghan: " ' The new woman ' has come to stay, bat at present her status is difficult to define. The aggressive type has ceased to be a lady, and has not yet become a gentleman. Where shall we place Her? I wish ' the new woman' well, but, as a Christian man I cannot but feel most anxious about her; virtue, that ' pearl beyond all price,' if she repudiate the' Christian code of morality and comes openly to declare that, as there are not enough men to go round as husbands, women must have men as lovers. In magazine and novel, on the stage, and in the' cinema, the shocking solution of the sex problem is being actually put forward as up-to-date morality. Women there are who argue that as our Lord was as merciful to sins of the flesh as He was merciless to sins of the spirit, therefore there can be no great harm in yielding to one's sensecravings, which arise without any provocation. I have yet to learn that sins of weakness cease to be bad because those of malice happen to be worse. ' The new woman ' to whom I object is the sort of girl found in some of our picture papers—the sea-front, go-with-the-times woman—the girl with even less in her than on her. This type does not, I hope, really represent the future mothers of our race; But they are too much in evidence at prize fights, in divorce courts, and massage resorts. I am no kill-joy admonitor, but I cannot for the life of me see the fun of urging forward one's animal passions instead of bringing them to heel. Read what Byron and Shelley tell us of .the lees and dregs of their wine-cups of pleasure. Poor fellows, how they suffered! If we want life's yoke sweetened and its burden lightened, we must cultivate not the senses, but conscience. To borrow the language of our boys, a good conscience is ' topping.' "