Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-12-26
VULGARIANISM AND WOMAN
HOOD.


Scandals logically multiply upon what
the world enormously assumes to be
American ~womanhood, because of the dis
repute brought upon American women by
adventurous vulgarians who buy their way
Just far enough into foreign nobility to
make their shame worldwide. What
self respecting American woman can read
without humiliation the disgraceful devel-
opments now aired in the public Journals
of both h%emispheres, relating to several
American women who have been tempted
rom the sacred associations of home and
riends to barter their charms and their
money on the open market-place where
the American vulgarian trades III dishonor-
ed and impecunious nobility? One who
was long an exceptional f%avorite In accom-
plished society, was so forgetful OF true
~womanhood as to barter herself and for
tune for a title that came with the flavor
Of the moral leper, from which any woman
of even ordinary refinement and purity
cIltulu hdNC ~ AiASAEANNS'SNO
loathing. Humiliation and sorrow speed
lily stripped the coveted social distinction
of its glitter. and separation and public
shame followed only to reach the climax
In a fearful and doubtless unjust scandal
falling upon the woman herself. 1t was
simply the hazard of the American vul-
garian. and the yulgarian lost, as was in
evitable. Another American woman of
fortune, intelligence and culture has just
returned to her home almost b~ankrupted
In purse and utterly bankrupted In hope
and comfort. Her life was devoted to-
winning titles for daughters, In which she
won, as money and the sacrifice of woman
hood always wins abroad, and the logical
sequel came in a costly struggle Of years to
rescue a titled child from a iunatic asylum
and the employment of a thieving adven-
furer to protect herself against the charge
of lunacy. Both of these American women
are broken in hope and bewlldered
by scandal by forgetting true woman
uODO 10 0dlH DllSIC1Cu AlAOo III NhS
market where the vulgarian trades.
Another American woman from a neigh
boring city bore her fortune and her
charms as an Offering to a Prince who
could give only his deeply clouded title
with the debts Of the gambler and the dis
honor of public licentiousness in return;
II L. A. oGo~ Nf Aha u11lCrarIa N was
entertained, it was finally rejected because
the legal advisers of the marketable woman
refused to a $4,000 of a 800, 900 annual
income to enable the Prince to enjoy him
self at cards and in the society of more
agreeable women than his vulgarian wife.
In every attribute of true womanhood, the
trade is still on and she is waiting for her
dishonored but coveted title to be dickered
into terms she can afford to pay as the
price of tolerance as a nominal wife. but,
are these things sacred? and why this
brutal candor in discussing them?" asked
the thoughtless quibbler. No; they are
not sacred; they reach far beyond the N
tity of the home; they discard home, atfec-
ton. friends and all that makes woman
loved and reverend; they prostitute woman
to the level of the pork or meat market,
and stamp upon her the indelible mark of
the vulgarian. The prostitution of Amer
lean w~omanhood to the glitter of foreign
titles has become so d~ishonoring to true
womanhood that the home of every Amer
lean girl should have the plainest warning
against the madness of this shameful
traffic. No consideration of delicacy
should conceal the painful truth from
American womanhood and American girls
should be taught from the mothers lap,
from honest society, from the press, from
the pulpit, indeed from every surrounding,
that neither at home nor abroad is there
any true nobility but that of merit, and
that rhe now accepted vocation of the
American vulgarian leads only to sorrow
and shame.