The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-11-11
ADVANCE OF WOMEN.
Mrs. Florence Howe Hall Lectures Be-
fore the Home Club.

Mrs. Florence Howe Hall Lectures Be-
fore the Home Club.
Once each year it is the pleasant GUS
tom of the Home club to engage a lee
turer as a variation upon it's weekly
diet of members papers. Yesterday af-
ternoon the annual lecture was given
by Mrs. Florence Howe Hall at the
house Of Mrs. F. H. Hamblin, before
an audience of more than 100 members
and friends, who listened with great in
terest while the daughter of Julia Ward
Howe discussed 1.-The advance of wo-
men in the nineteenth century" Mrs
Hall partly read a paper and partly
spoke extemporaneously, and both read
ing and speaking moved the listening
women to frequent laughter. After the
lecture there was an informal recep-
ton.
Mrs. Hall, who was introduced by the
president of the Home club, Mrs Ed
ward Hall, began her address by COM
pairing the modern woman with the
woman of 70 years ago. 1.-The advance
of women" she said, "has kept pace
with the industrial development of the
race. Men feared and still fear the re-
suits of change in the occupations
of women, forgetting that the charm of
a woman lies in the woman and not in
what she does. The growth of the dem
ocratic spirit, too, has made it self felt
by women, continued the speaker and
to illustrate how very different the po-
sition of the sex is today from what it
was at the beginning of the century,
she traced the feminine ideal through
the writings of Sidney Smith, Miss
Edgeworth, who said her mother left
her dolls to be led to the altar, and who
believed that girls should learn early
the self-restraint they were bound in
after life to display; Charlotte Bronte,
who made her heiress, Shirley, indie
pendent enough until she got engaged;
Dickens, and his limp women; Scott
and Byron, with his contempt of learned
women.
THE wonder is" said the lecturer.
that the metamorphosis has resulted
by so few faults. 1t has been said that
there is no such thing as the new wo-
man., but the truth seems to be that
whereas the new woman has always
been sporadic, now she is epidemic.
Woman is undergoing the same change
that a grub undergoes in becoming a
butterfly. From being a female" she
has become woman, member of the
human race, and a companion of man.
She is no longer a clinging vine, but a
complete human being.
How strange it seems to read about
those women who burst into tears at
the slightest proVocation and promptly
tainted in the face of danger! What a
contrast to the modern girl who plays
golf and basket ball and pommels a
burglar cheerfully! There has certain
ly been an improvement in the restraint
of nerves since then. Has there not also
been an improvement in the keeping
of tempers? There was kind of scold-
ing characteristic of the women of the
early century which is much less COM
mon now, for we have not the time or
the strength for losing our tempers
now. AS mere matter of economy, the
modern woman cannot afford to in
dulge in emotions without results. The
change in the size of the women is
an enormous gain"
Mrs. Hall went on to speak of the
change in the intellectual status of
women wrought by the 18th century;
the opening of colleges, the learned
professions and the trades to them; of
the women's clubs and patriotic so
cieties. In social conditions, she said,
there had been a corresponding growth
with the result that the oldzmaid is no
longer a source of laughter among the
better classes and woman does not
count as nothing until she becomes the
better half of a man. Then Mrs. Hall
made her audience laugh by speaking
of the change that has come about in
women's clothing; the bicycle and
rainy day skirt show the high water
mark in the evolution of woman's dress,
she said, and the very fact that society
permits women to ride a wheel at all,
indicates the progress made. The two
wheels-the spinning wheel and the BIZ
cycle-were they not typical she asked,
of the status of women at the begin
ming and the end of the 18th century?
In conclusion, and after discussing the
change in the political status of women,
Mrs. Hall said: There is danger that
under the new conditions, women may
fall into the temptations of unfemi-
ninity and of yielding to their ambi-
tions The old idea of woman as a
temptress has given way, and the in
stinct of self-sacrifice, the feminine ele-
ment, is recognized as the complement
of the instinct of combat that charac-
terizes the male nature This moth
erliness goes back as far and is as i'm
portant as the combative element.
Whatever new duties and opportunities
time shall afford women, we must
never forget the high trust of protec-
ton for the weak, self-sacrifice and
love that is reposed in u.s.
HEEL PING HAND -CJRCT r.