THE COQUETTE

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 349, 15 August 1885, Page 4

THE COQUETTE

AND THE HARM SHE DOES. Unworthy as [the coquette must be considered, even in the estimation of the man

who wins her favour before lie suffers at her hands, she has the power of inflicting the deepest wrong upon humanity by undermining the faith of men in all women. The judgment of the average man cannot fail to be biased by his experience of the woman who has most deeply interested him. Thus it is that the coquette, by lowering the whole standard of womanhood in the eyes of •man, injures her own sex as well as the other. The forms of coquetry are infinitely varied, and some of them are much more reprehensible than others. The woman who undertakes conquests simply for the glory of displaying at the wheels of her chariot the captive she holds by the rosy bonds of love is the commonest type. As her coquetry is of the mos^patent kind, its wounds are rarely so severe or lasting, and yet there is a certain vulgarity about this, spirit of conquest which makes this type of woman daugerous to both men and women. A more subtle and disastrous influence Is wielded by the woman who is bent on scientific analysis of the various effects produced by the tender passion on men of different character and nature. She has little pigeon holes marked with, different characteristic names, and into these she classifies every new specimen. She is apt soon to discover I that the pigeon-holes may be very few, and thatlnearly all the men she meets will fit exactly into one or another of them. When she has arrived at this conclusion she is satisfied, and suspends operations, temporarily, at least; but if a specimen hitherto unclassified crosses her pr ;h, she is ready with her little dissecting-lujife to peer into the labyrinths of a new phase of human, nature. Another class, perhaps the most dangerous one into which we are dividing coquettes, includesthose women who fancy themselves in love with each fresh lover. These are emotional and sympathetic women, who, being incapable of strong feeling themselves, are borne along by the force of passion which fascinates them, and which they would gladly reciprocate. In their often renewed disappointment at finding that the new lover cannot make them forget themselves, they feel a sense of injustice to themselves, and never dream that they are not the injared ones.