THE GOLDEN AGE OF WOMAN.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 47, 17 February 1894, Page 11

THE GOLDEN AGE OF WOMAN.

It is generally supposed that the -age when steel-clad gentlemen tilted with long spears in honour of their Uulcineas was the golden age of womanhood, but on looking closely into the household annals of the days of chivalry, we discover that the “ queen of love and beauty,” for whom so many midriffs were transpierced and • caputs cloven, worked rather harder than modern domestics. Now and then they sat in state in galleries hung with ’broidered tapestry, and saw cavaliei’s, wearing their scarfs and mittens, let daylight into other cavaliers who disputed the potency of their charms; but those gratifying spectacles -were luxuries too expensive -and dangerous tp be common, and the ordinary routine of a ladye’s ’’ life in the chivalric era was at once monotonous and laborious. The stately countess of the olden time spun and carded and wove as industriously as any of her handmaid--«ns ; served out bread to the poor on loaf days,” at the castle gate;

shaped and helped to make her husband’s and children’s clothing and hex* own (for in those days tailoi-s and dressmakers were few and far between) ; supervised the larder and dairy; carried the ponderous keys of the establishment, and, in short,played to perfection the careful housewife in the stronghold of her lox*d, while he rode about the country with cnrtal axe at his saddle-bow and a long ashen skewer at his stiiTup-leather, in a chronic state of wolfishness, and ready to do battle for any cause or no cause at all with whomsoever it might or might not concern. In this delightful modern era of fine ladyship, a fashionable lady does not perfoiun half the amount of useful labour in a year that a high-born dame of mediaeval times accomplished every' month of hex - life. Instead of skeins of flax she spins society yarns ; her carding is done with bits of painted paste-board, and if she weaves at all, it is meshes for eligible young men —on her own account if single, for the benefit of her daughters if a matron. She has no objection to the poor being fed from her kitchen, perliaps, but as to serving out bread to them from her own delicate hands, after the manner of the “ fair bread dividers ” of the olden time, she couldn’t think of it. If her husband should wait for even the lightest of his garments until she found leisure to make them, the chances are that he would go shirtless to his dying day. She seldom sews. Sewing spoils the tips of the fingers. In point of fact, the aristocratic dames and damoiselles of old were mere drudges and dowdies as compared with the female patricians of this our day and generation. Nay, even our housemaids and cooks have more leisure and take the world'more easy than did the duchesses and countesses of the iron age.—Wit and Wisdom.