In Praise of the Coquette.

Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 89

In Praise of the Coquette.

Madame Paola Lombroso, in the Grand Magazine, extols feminine coquetry as a distinct virtue, and endeavours to prove that a woman's perfect repose and sweetness of temper are due in the main to coquetry. Woman, she writes?* having no other means at her disposal for vanquishing and attaching men to her chariot wheelSj has for many long centuries had to rely entirely on this weapon. It is not astonishing, therefore, that coquetry is deeply engrained in the feminine soul — has become, in fact, an instinct at once conscious and involuntary, and that it now constitutes one of woman's most fundamental characteristics. Savage or civilised, rich or poor, in the first blush of youth or on the confines of the grave, women are all equally slaves of coquetry. Unless she has experienced the greatest moral tortures no woman ever really considers that she is growing old; she finds herself always" young enough. Your true coquette will never admit that old age has come upon her. Even at 60 she is still ready to be amused at almost anything, and finds consummate pleasure in recalling how successfully she danced and smiled her dainty way into all male hearts •at her first ball. Even little baby girls begn their apprenticeship to coquetry before they can stand upright. You will see them crawling on all-fours before the mirror. They at once appropriate all rhe little odds and ends they and laying about the room to deck themselves with, i They will beam, with happiness when they find themselves beside a brilliantly-uni-formed officer whose homage they imagine they are receiving! The fashionable woman of to-day, like her predecessor in the past, has to pay, by cruel suffering for her wasp-like waist. Like her ancestors, the modern coquette accepts her martyrdom with Stoic serenity. She smiles, simpers, converses with ease and sprightlinesß without anybody imagining how much she is suffering, encircled and laced so tightly that sfie is stifled, almost unable either to move or breathe, and this perhaps, during some interminable night's entertainment! She knows that whatever betrays her suffering, her boredom, or her fatigue will drive men away from her side, and, rather than annoy or enervate them, she courageously stifles every hint of the pain by enduring which she *i 6 able~"to display^ all her pretty grace. Coquetry, even in the everyday life of the ordinary woman, must, therefore, play a considerable role in determining her 'moral personality. That firm patience, that air of sweet candour, that physiognomy expressive of such perfect repose, that equality of temper—how pos-' sibly could woman have acquired all those chaiacteristics if not by practising the airs and graces of coquetry?