“Cool, Dauntless Courage ”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 566, 19 January 1929, Page 18

“Cool, Dauntless Courage ”

A Tribute to the Modern Girl Who Can do Almost Anything.

the thing most to be admired. and most outstanding, in Miss 1929, is her cool, dauntless courage. This virtue is one which in the Victorian age was by no means considered a desirable or even a necessary part of feminine equipment. Rath%r was there a cult of feminine ignorance and feminine incompetence. The more a young woman shrank from the facts of life, the more she lived with the blinkers on, the more heartily the men of her day admired her —or said they did. The value and charm of courage as a womanly attribute was first proclaimed by George Meredith, an author who is no longer widely read or greatly admired. He had already addressed many fine books to a listless and uninterested public, when in the year ISSS he published “Diana of the Crossways,” which brought him into sudden prominence, and set all the strongholds of female ineptitude fluttering. It may have been that he was before his time, like most geniuses, and that the world was only just ready lor his message when “Diana” appeared. A Product of Revolt Certain it is that it gripped hold. “Man.” he wrote in words now so familiar, then so startingly novel, “has only just rounded Seraglio Point: he has not yet doubled Cape Turk.” It is hard indeed for the girl of to-day to look back and understand the world as it then was. She is the product of a social 'revolt so great that it may be described as an upheaval. At the time the book appeared, a married woman was incapable by the laws of her country of holding any property. The man-pack which hunted poor Diana down suddenly saw both themselves and others in a new light. It began to dawn on them that, after all, perhaps woman was not having a fair deal. Those Victorian Aunts Yet what a mountain of prejudice there was to be removed! Our mothers and aunts, and their female relatives, were never permitted to walk the

streets of a town unattended by a servant or some older person. Tn one of Charlotte Y'oiige’s novels the heroine —who has gone to London to spend a week or two with a married brother—is obliged to remain three months in his house because no male member of her family can leave Sussex in order to bring her home!

The revolution, we must admit, is astonishingly complete. Remember the tales we have heard of the sensations caused by the first women who rode bicycles round the town! It is less than 40 years since one lady, cycling in knickerbockers, was asked to leave

the hotel w r here she had stopped to have tea!

Well, nowadays w’e see women daily in garb that would once have been considered “quite disgusting,” and think nothing of it. Even some of our own mothers, and those whose younger days were made hideous with restrictions, think of bygone days, and smile, but not with regret. The wise ones are not tempted to sigh out “O death in life, the days that are no more!” but rather to cry out with gladness, “Oh, brave new life! The days that are in store!” It must be conceded that much courage was needed to bring about the change. For two generations woilin has been compelled to nerve herself against hostile criticism, to show a bold front alike to sneers and rebukes. It v is not remarkable if that needful bold'ness has perhaps hardened her a little, and that hostile critics say the girl of to-day is hard, and that the quality is not lovable. . What She Has Gained If it be true —and I don’t admit it —l would answer that it is the inevitable reaction, and that the girl of to-day must have time to mellow. As G.B.Ssays, “Woman has but just discarded the bad manners of her slavery—she has not yet acquired the good manners of her freedom.” But look she has gained! She can do almost anything, and do it well —cook, sew", run a house —and many women have a trade or profession to occupy them, or on which they can fall back should circumstances make it necessary. They can enter into their husband’s pursuits and interests and games, and they do not dissolve in tears at a rough word, nor faint if they receive a telegram or see a mouse. If, as some folk maintain, they rushed into liberty, grasping their privileges and blandly ignoring the dangers that went with them, that is but natural. They are now in process of perceiving and shouldering their lately incurred responsibilities, and one may be tempted to predict that their daughters ought to be a nearer approach to ideal womanhood both mentally and physically than this old world has yet produced. “Game as Ned Kelly,” that’s what they’ll be, as are their mothers of to-day.