"BACHELOR GIRL."

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1843, 1 September 1913, Page 2

"BACHELOR GIRL."

NOT WHAT SHE WAS PAINTED. That clever Englishwoman, Sicely Hamilton, -hits been writing things about the bachelor woman, a few of which are worth repeating. She declares that, •whilst it has been recognised for a good many generations that man is a creature of varying habits and 'tastes, it is only of comparative recent years that tko same discovery has been made with regard to the other half of humanity. Woman, it was eaid, had but one ta9te, lyu't one habit, domesticity, wifehood, and motherhood, the merest suspicion of other wishes and habits was a thing in woman to bo sternly repressed, educated, and ridiculed out of her. Hence the impossibility of believing that a feminine existence which did not involve domesticity could, in. the least degree, be satisfactory. Hence, too, the pity which was the traditional portion of the spinster. It was not until it began to dawn on a hitherto incredulous world that woman, like man, was capable of. exacting satisfaction from a-variety of causes, and that the same woman was sufficiently human to have a variety of interests in life (hat 'the unmarried woman ceased to be despised, nnd the contemptuous term, "old maid," gave place to the more respectful description of. "bachelor woman." It is this new phase of womanhood 'that is working so well in tho interests of tho sex.