THOSE GRANDMOTHERS

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6597, 9 May 1925, Page 7

THOSE GRANDMOTHERS

(By Ella Hep worth Dixon)

There are always a number of old women whose mission in life seems to be to keep a vigilent, not to say censorious, eye on the young, particularly on the girls. Boys seldom come in for much criticism; it is held that they must sow their wild oats, both of manners and morals, and that preaching at them is wasted time.

Now an elderly feminine censor of the present day, verging on eighty years, must have been a girl in the late sixties of the last century. And if we search about we find some surprising things about that eminently Victorian period. It would appear that the more lively young women of the late sixties were contemptuousdy called “girls of the period,” and they were bitterly attacked in a series of articles in a prominent weekly paper by Mrs Lynn Linton, a well-known novelist of that era. The Girl of the Period—the grandmother of our present young generation—was, according to that moralist, a very dreadful young person indeed. She was “fast.” She had the effrontery to talk with 4 “the gentlemen” on equal terms; she used slang; she had dared to be seen in a hansom cab; she showed pretty boots beneath a vast crinoline and a loop-up skirt; there was no end to her unseemly levity. However, the girl of the period survived these attacks on her character and manners. She married, and had a daughter, who wore a bustle and a “fringe,” and was not censored as had been her mother. Possibly there was no pen vitriolic enough to denounce her successfully. This damsel married, and duly possessed a young daughter whom she adored. This daughter was caught up in the war machine and did splendid work. Reasonable people refrained from criticising too sharply if, incidentally, she enjoyed herself, so magnificent was the young woman’s effort during those crucial years. Instead of blame there was a chorus of contemporary praise.

It is one of the minor ironies of life that their only severe critics today are their grandmothers, those Girls of the Period who earned in their heyday such stinging censure.