THE MARRIED FLIRT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 12, 25 March 1893, Page 278

THE MARRIED FLIRT.

The relegation of the married flirt to her proper sphere and duties is beyond the power of any single individual. Society could make the necessary protest but it does not; for if society is any thing, it is non-interfering. It looks well to it, that the outside, the general public appearance of its members, is respectable ; with faults not found out it does not trouble itself. A charge must be definitely made, before it feels any necessity to take cognizance of it. And society knows well, that these married sirens draw like magnets. Besides, each entertainer declares : ‘I am not my sister’s keeper, nor am I her inquisitor to confess for. If her husband tolerates the pretty woman’s vagaries, what right have I, what right has any one, to say a word about her ’ ’ But it is a fact, that if society frowned on wives who arrogate to themselves the privilege both of young girls and wives, the custom would become stale and offensive. If it would cease to recognize young married women who are on the terms with their husbands described by Millamant in ‘The Way of World,’ —• as strange as if they had been married a long time, and as well bred as if they had never been married at all,’ young married women would behave themselves better. It is generally thought that Mr Congreve wrote his plays for a very dissolute age ; in reality, they seem to have been written for a decorous, rather straight-laced, generation, if we compare it with our own.