Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1868-09-25
From the London saturday Review
The Fashionable Woman.

IHr unnatural feeling against maternity
ing mon- fashionable woman Is one Of
... N.I- mental signs Of their state. as their
arl.eu, inability 20 be- mothers at all + one
.l tle worst physical results This Is con-
liti.a pi things which no false modest7 or
timd reserve should keep in the BACKGROUND.
for IL j. O question Of national Importance.
and VIII soon become one Of national disaster
unless checked by healthier current and
more natural circumstances.
pre--, dissipation and flirting make up the
questionable lines which incl0se the life Of
the fashionable woman. and which nclose
nothing useful, nothing good, nothing deep
or true 'r holy. Her piety IL a pastimc her
art the poorest lretencc her pleasure CON
sists only in hurry and excitement, alternat-
ing with deha-ings in heartlcss coquetrv.
NJ 10 iawic-, Indulgence. as nature made her
more vain ur more sensual A. a wife she
iulha- ul Wi.ely duty In any grand Or loving
sense. for the most part regarding her hus-
band only ms n banker NJ an adjunct. accord
ing % the term of her marriage settlement:
as % mother she il "a stranger To her children.
Co whom nurse and guyernc-s supply her
place, and give such poor makeshift for ma
teruai love as they are enabled or inclined
In 10 domestic relation Il she Of the smallest
value. and Of none m any social circumstance
beside tile mere ad0ruing of a room-if she
is pretty and the help she gives to trade
through her expenditure. She lives only in
the C'sisht, and her nature at last becomes
a- artiicia. a- her habits
IS YEAR g. uu. and she changes from the
acknowledged belle o. the ten,1. passes, she
goes through period of frantic endeayor 70
retain her youth and even when time has
clutchod her with too firm a hand to be shak
eu off, and she begins 20 feel the infrmitie
which she rtill puts out all her strength to
conceal. even then she grasps at the depart
inc shadow, and fresh daubs the crumbhnc
ruin, 10 the belief that the worlds eyes are
dim. and that stucco may pass for marble for
another year or two longer She becomes a
Belgrayian mother, with daughters to sci to
the highest bidder: her life
Is to secure the purchaser. Her daughters
are never objects of real love with the fash
iouablc woman. They are essentially her ri
yais. and the idea Of carrying on her life in
theirs. of forgetting herself in them, occurs
10 her onlya a forecast Of death. Even from
her sons She shrinks rather than not. as liv-
inE evidences Of the lapse of time which she
cannot deny, and awkward at fixing dates
and there is not home presided over by a
fashionable woman where the family is more
than a mere name, mere social convention
loosely held together by circumstances, moi
by love
Closing such life as tins cones the IN
honoured end, when the miserable made
up old creature totters down into the grave,
where paint and padding, and glossy plaits
cut from some fresh young head, are OF no
more avail and where death, which makes
all things real. reduces her life Of lies to the
uothlngness it has been from the beginning.
W hat does She leave behind her? memory
by which her children may order their own
lives in proud assurance that so they viii
order them best for virtue and for honor?
Or memory which speaks to them of time
misused. Of duties unfulflled, Of love discard
ed for pleasure, and of lifelong sacrifice Of
all things good and pure for selishness?
We all know examples of the worldly old
woman cinging to the last, batlike, to the
old roofs and rafters: and we all know how
heartily we despise her and how we ridicule
her in our hearts, if not by our words. If
.'c rcigning queens of fashion, at present
,.. Z and beautiful, would but remember
,..st thoy are only that worldly old woman in
embryo and that in a very few years they
viii be her exact likeness, unhappily repeat
ed for the scorn OF the world once more to
follow The traditional skeleton at the feast
had a wonderfully wise meaning, crude and
gross as it was in form For though its mem
enf0 H0r5, too constantly before us, would
either sadden or brutalize, as We were thought
ful or licentious, yet it is good to see the end
Of ourselves, and to study the meaning and
lesson of our lives in those Of our prototypes
and elder likenesses. The pleasures of the
world are, as we all know, very potent and
alluring ibut nothing can be more unsatisiyisg
ftaken as the main purpose oflifc While We
are young the mere stirring Of the bloOdstan
instead of anything more real but as we 90
on, and the pulse flags, and pleasurable oc-
casions get rare and more rare, we End that
we have been like the prodigal son, and that
our food and his have been out of much the
same trough, and come in the main to about
the same thing.
This is time of extraordinary wealth and
Of corresponding extraordinary luxury, of un-
paralleled restlessness, which is not the same
thing as activity or energy, but which dis
dains all quiet, all rerose, as uncomfortable
stagnation hence the fashionable woman OF
the day is one of the extremes in her own line
also, and the idleness. the heartlessness, the
self-indulgence, the want CT high morality,
and the insolent luxury at all times charae-
teristic Of her were never seen displayed with
more cynical effrontery than at present, and
never called for more severe condemnation.
The fashionable women of Greece and Rome
and of the age of Louis XIV. have left behind
them names which the world has made typi-
cal of the vices naturally engendered By
idleness and luxury. But 90 we wish that
our women should become subjects for an
English Juvenal? and that fashion should
create a race Of Iaises and Phrynes out ofths