WOMEN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Wo look back with amazement ami pity at tho women of 1828, it is said, but we look with' admiration also, for it is out"of their dreaming and striving that our freedom lias come. So writes “A Modern Girl” in the London ‘Daily News,' who says that women are standing untrammelled on the threshold of 1928, a year that will probably bring to Englishwomen, with an increased franchise, even more freedom than they have now. A hundred years ago, it is recalled, the ladies of the land sat in stifling idleness. There were no professions open to them, ue are reminded, and it they were so unfortunately placed that they must earn their own living or starve they could only hope for employment as a “ companion ” or as a governess. AVe are then offered this picture of poor Miss 1828,” which shows a startling contrast between the young ladies of that day and those of to-day: “Look at her standing there in her stuffy thick clothing, her hideous frilled ‘polis.se’ with its puffed sleeves, her face hidden by an ungainly flapping bonnet ‘as largo as an umbrella.’ She has been grounded like Amelia Sedley in the principles of _ religion and morality. Her head is stuffed t'ith MagnaU’s questions, her fingers are sore with working ‘ samplers,’ her body is stiff with that strange cult known ns ‘ deportment.’ She is just sixteen years of age and ready to ‘come_out_ to a life of social and domestic inanition. When she dances, it is to pace soberly through the measures of a minuet or the quadrilles, for she has
not yet been introduced to the ‘ sprightly polka ’ or the glamorous waltz. Little wonder that she breaks the monotony of her days by occasional tits of hysterics or a graceful swoon. “She had her vanities, poor dear—her looks were one of her fow interests. She was as frightened of corpulence as is her modern sister. Rosy, fresh cheeks were considered common, and she deprived herself of adequate food for fear of growing fat and * material.’ A palo and tired gentility was her creed. She moved of necessity in a small and circumscribed circle traveling no further than her feet, or the slow, lumbering coach, would take her, for the revolution of transport had hardly begun, and railways were not yet familiar.” Of all the changes the swiftly moving hundred years past has brought about, none is more dramatic, thinks “A Modern Girl,” than the improvement in the status of women. Not only their own destinies, we are told, but the destinies of nations, “ lie in the hands that a little while ago wore pale and weak with idleness.”
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 19844, 18 April 1928, Page 13
Word Count
448WOMEN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO Evening Star, Issue 19844, 18 April 1928, Page 13
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