THE NEW WOMAN IS OLD.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 5

THE NEW WOMAN IS OLD.

THE coming woman is always coming, without any immediate danger of arriving. Her principal

vehicle of transportation appears to be the pen of the hnmorist, which is particularly busy with her at this, the close of the century. So it was in the middle of the century, when, as now, she was pictured as having acquired man's habits, and particularly his dress. Half a century has brought little new in this direction. The same imitation of male attire, an incongruous combination of the dress of both sexes, the swagger, cane, and cigar, are all given to woman, as shown by the picture here presented, which appeared originally in

Punch, and was reproduced in Harper's Monthly Maja zine of August, 1851.

The illustration was accompanied by a pretended communication from a strong-minded woman of Boston, which in part read :—

* We are emancipating ourselves, among other badges of the slavery of feudalism, from the inconvenient dress of the European female. With man's functions, we have asserted our right to his garb, and especially to that part of it which invests the lower extremities.