WHAT FRENCH LADIES MAY AND MAY NOT DO.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1611, 14 January 1903, Page 26

WHAT FRENCH LADIES MAY AND MAY NOT DO.

Unmarried women in France are not so numerous as in England, and 1 must say writes Miss Betfiam Edwards m “East of Baris," they may well envy their' English and American sisters in spinsterhood. An unmarried I reach lady belonging to genteel society cannot cross the street unaccompanied till she. has passed her fortieth year, nor till then may she open the pages of N ictor Uugo or read a newspaper. Even in this Maison de Retraite" special provision was made for the privacy of single ladies; whether they liked it or not they veie expected to eat in a •separate dining-room and meet for social purposes.in a sepaiate salon. As there is no limit to the emotional period and the age of sentiment, perhaps these safeguards of propriety are not wholly superfluous. Ut course, the economy of such an arrangement is very great. Think of a respectable. fairly educated young woman getting what good John Bunyan calls harbor and good company," m other words, all the necessaries of life, with society into the bargain, for <£l6 a year! The attendance is. of course, somewhat rough and ready. We saw a stalwart, roughhaired, rather masculine looking female setting one of the dinner tables with a. clatter that ■would drive the fastidious to distraction. But the good soul had evidently her heart in her work, and I dare aver that single-handed she got through as much as three English housemaids with ourselves. Would such a scheme answer iu England? I doubt it. The Anglo-Saxon character is the reverse of sociable, and class distinctions are so inrooted in the English nature that it would be very difficult to get ten English women together who considered themselves belonging to precisely the same class.