THE MODERN GIRL.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 February 1922, Page 10

THE MODERN GIRL.

A MYTH EXPLODED. A writer in the Manchester Guardian discusses an attack that has been made upon the modern girl, and asks whether the mid-Victorian woman, with whom she is compared, was really the adept in household affairs that she has been made out to be. The writer goes on to say that no doubt there were excellent housewives among the Victorians, hut [there are excellent housewives still and I one is tempted to protest against the assumption that all Victorian women were wonderful cooks, perfect housekeepers, and marvellous needlewomen. It is probably the truth that, if we delved in mid-Victorian records, we should find that there were similar comI plaints of decadence from an earlier period. It is quite a myth that all midi Victorian women of the middle class 'could or did cook; they had e.yellent and probably knew less about

I cooking than their daughters and granddaughters. They dusted the best of ,china in a genteel way; they snipped ■a few roses where their granddaughters dig; they drove out, paid calls, talked scandal; their dreadful granddaughters ride bicycles and play golf or tennis. I The mid-Victorian woman would have been quite helpless without her servants ; her granddaughter runs the house herself.