THE VICTORIAN AGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19843, 18 May 1927, Page 3

THE VICTORIAN AGE

GRANDMA’S EMANCIPATION SOME MYTHS EXPLODED. “In a leading article yesterday you remark with justifiable irony on the opinion, ‘held by those who know little about them,’ that the Victorian ladies were stiff and prim” (says a correspondent to the London Tinies). “Born in 1850, I knew them well, and I have often heard with amused irritation the fantastic judgments passed upon them by the generation born in the present century. Except in outward appearance due to fashion, the Victorian girls and women were very like their Georgian successors. The view that they were timid, fainted at the sight of a mouse, were ill-educated, and unable to talk intelligently, and were the mere slaves or chattels of their husbands, is all moonshine. Aly mother, who was born just a century ago, was quite capable of holding her own in any society and on any subject of general interest. She rode to hounds as pluckily as any modern woman, could drive a pair of horses, write the most amusing letters, and governed her family (not excluding Her husband) and household in a way that is seldom seen now. “The gentlewomen of that day, it is true, did not swear (at all events before men), nor use that proletarian adjective which moans so little and implies so much; neither did they bore people with that blessed word ‘psychology’ and its variants. They smoked not, neither did they drink cocktails, or clothe themselves in such guise as to leave a minimum to the imagination, nor did they require to be taken to dance clubs three or four times a week. Nevertheless ‘fast’ girls (as they were then called) were frequent enough. “The fact is that the nature of women has not altered appreciably, but their education and environment have. The girls of the seventies were accomplished, but not learned; now I think they are more learned than accomplished. In both periods female vanity, always amusing, was, and is, rife; but I think there has of late been added not a little conceit, accompanied by some loss of graciousness. “But manners have changed, not alone among women. No gentleman in the sixties and seventies would have smoked in the presence of a lady, or even, without reproach, in the street. He would never have remained seated in a train if a lady were standing, and, speaking generally (with tbe exception of a few old reprobates), he treated women with deference, restraint, and respect. All that has apparently gone, possibly because women, claiming absolute equality with men in all things, seem rather to resent courtesy. “Lastly, I cannot but think that the current erroneous conception of the Victorian woman is largely due to Thackeray and Dickens, neither of whom could portray the average gentlewoman of the period, but invariably made her either a vicious and dishonest devil or a weeping imbecile. The generality were neither one nor the other. They were just as attractive and just as sweet and interesting as the girls of to-day (whom I find quite charming), and merely differed from theiu in the greater freedom and more intimate association with men which time has made possible.’®