WOMEN IN GREECE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10103, 31 July 1893, Page 6

WOMEN IN GREECE.

A stranger visiting Greece ia struck, sooner or later, by a certain dulnesa in the street life of its towns, which it may take him some little time to define and trace to its real cause. At length, and suddenly, tbo fact cornea heme to him that there are fow, if any, women visible among the footpassengers. No wonder, he reflects, that the streets should appear dull to him, shorn as they are of ail tho variety that woman’s presence and dress ever lends to tho thoroughfares of countries further west. Ia Greece it ia only towards evening, and thou for but a brief period, that the fair pex take an. outing, unless the nresauro of some urgent business should compel them to flit rapidly through the throng of men who at other times monopolise the streets. Nor will a foreigner meet with them serving iu the chops, the restaurants, or the cafes; they wih’still be conspicuous by their absence. In fact, unless he visit them in tho privacy of their homos he will scarcely do more than catch an occasions,! glimpse of them at tho upper windows of some private dwelling-house or shop, whore, when the weather is seasonable, they will sit reading and sewing, and craning their necks out to watch the passers-by below. The effects of this sedentary life, so antagonistic to our English faith in open aic and exercise, »ro very marked on the fair forms of the Grecian women. An embon'points not to designate ic by the more vulgar term corpulence, is the most apparent result of this indoor existence; but this tendency to gross flesh is an attraction to tho modern Greek, who, like tho Turk, finds in superfluous fat au additional beauty.