INARTICULATE WOMEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18897, 20 December 1924, Page 26 (Supplement)

INARTICULATE WOMEN.

The women of the last generation were "incapable of discussion. They were as inarticulate as the uneducated, though often almost erudite." Certainly those ladies were better lead than most girls arc nowadays: they knew several modern language.'-, painted tolerably in watercolours, played Beethoven, and read their Robert Browning. Hut the mass of upper middle-class women did not talk well (says a contemporary in the Westminster Gazette. They bored their partners at dinner. The late Si;' Victor Horsley used to declare to young women that only as the i twentieth century dawned did he begin ■ to enjoy dining out. Before that time j it was considered "not quite nice" for women to air their opinions at the dinner I table. bike children, they were there to ! be seen, not heard. j How many o'f us can remember a j mother in pink siT< flounces who accused j some feminine t;.:e: t at a dinner party ol i having '"talked for effect To talk for j effect was as itch a crime in later Vic- , torian society as w> " dress for effect." ; Neither wan' in the best taste. "My | dear, eat your dinner and do not talk . so much" was the parting advice banded j out. later on. when the daughters took j their mother's place at London dinner j parties. How odd it would sound now, [ when most of the talk issues fioin femin j inclips. .... ! the men sit round, amused ' and liste::::.g!

The chief drawback of conversing with the voting nowadays is that they all talk at once and seldom listen for a ieply. It is something of an achievement to get a word in edgeways, and even then you may be proud if it' is taken up and argued about before it is dismissed for good.