Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1878-07-02
Feminine Fastness.

Feminine Fastness.
London Spectator.l
1t is useless to blink the facts, as
useless as to try to meet them, as
some of our contemporaries do, by
brutal abuse or uncharitable insin-
uation leveled at all women alike.
Women are neither much better
nor any worse than they always
have been, but they are in presence
Of a new excitement and a new
danger, new social and moral diff
culties, in fact, for which as yet So
ciety has made no adequate provis-
ion. Whatevar the cause, whether
it be the new hunger for intelli-
gence which is in the air every.
where all around us-except, in
deed, in the house of commons-or
the spread of education, or, as we
believe, the arrival Of a cycle, such
as has arrived before, in which a
generation of women distinctly ad-
yances in capacity, while a genera
tion Of men slightly recedes, there
can be no denial Of the fact that
while the new generation of men
are rather unusually Aaccid, unen-
terprising, and given to lazy con-
tent, women are displaying new
unrest, new impatience of the old
molds of their lives. The girls want
to be educated, as active, as well
fitted for careers of some sort as
the boys; grow impatient of mill
horse life, even if it be accompa-
MED by the best of forage and softest
of fodder; and seek anxiously, even
hungrily, for another which shall be
fuller Of intellectual or at least oil
human interests. They try to be
artists, to be lecturers, to be doc.
tors, to be anything rather than to
be stay-at-home young women like
their grandmothers, with very
little to read, scarcely anything tC
see, and nothing at all to do worth
doing. They feel, in short, the
ennui Of the age, and try to escape
it, for in the most part what seem
to us a most healthy and encoursg.
ing way-by making their studies
real, their lives more or less profit.
able, as that of the boys. In theil
efforts, however, they are met face
to face by one enormous difficulty,
the difficulty everywhere known
among Western peoples as that o.
"the proprieties. F" All civilized
society is based upon the idea that
young women need special protec
ton, that they are as liable to cap
ture now, unless carefully defended
as ever they were in the savag,
times. This defense is secured IL
France and Italy by conventional
discipline, and in England by {
wall of etiquettes which completely
; surrounds every young girl, anC
/ cuts her off from intimate associa
tious with any but her own sex o
t her own immediate relatives as ef
8 feotually as if it we're of steel. Sh
: finds this wall, at the moment whel
, she first looks into life, as impervi
t ons as a quickest hedge, stopping
t her studies if they are to be pur
a sued out of doors or garden.gateE
s inteFdicting her friendships, an,
}, limiting her search for knowl
= edge, till she begins TO fec
a 90 if she were throttled b.
s proprieties. If her family belong
+ to the old school, or are bound b
r Hposition" to extra Strictness--io
a instance, a girls ability to go to
: classroom alone is, in an Englis
e city, really settled by her ranks i
c life-or at heart disliked the me-
II claim of women to independents,
IS Ghe is, in fact, placed in morti
II straight-wsistcoat, and as much in
fl prisoned as il she were inclosed
s. four walls. 1t is not immature
S. that, under such circumstances, 81
r should begin to question the utilii