New Woman

“ The Anglo-Saxon New Woman is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century. She is par excellence the woman with a grievance, and self-labelled the greatest nuisance of modern society. The New Woman wants to retain all the privileges of her sex, and secure besides all those of man; she wants to be a man and to remain a woman. She will fail to become a man, but she may succeed in ceasing to be a woman. ”

“ Because the New Woman is like the "Old Gentleman,"
Heard of more often—thank heaven—than seen.
Shouldn't worry if I were "Misoneogynist." New woman fad nearly played out, only a black cloud floating across the blue sky of common sense. ”

“ If the New Woman’s conception of love between the sexes is one more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely physical, and wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man’s conception as expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced by typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed to the same new ideal. ”

“ It is as if the new woman were striving, by making the best of her present environments, and simply developing her woman nature instead of struggling to usurp man's, to enunciate a philosophy of life which I shall so dignify homely duties and beautify the commonplace that her creed might well be:
"We shall pass through this world but once. If there be any kindness we can show, or any good thing we can do to any fellow-being, let us do it now. ”

“ The real new woman, is not the creation of newspaper paragraphs and caricaturists, the embodiment of fads and foibles, but is so much like the sensible wives, mothers and daughters of the homes we have known and honored all our lives ”

“ Pray did you never see her before she wore bloomers? Bloomers are no worse than the sort of clothes she used to wear. Her swagger is no more pronounced now than it used to be in skirts. She has always had bloomer instincts. You don't pretend to declare, do you, that there never were unconventional women, ill-dressed and rowdy women, before the new woman was heard of? That is the great mistake you make. These women are not new women. We've always had them. We never, unfortunately, have been without them.
The real new woman is a creature quite different. ”

“ Imperfect as he may be in his present condition, the new woman has no thought of undertaking his complete elimination from the scheme of creation. If he cannot keep up with her pace, he deserves to be left behind. But he will keep up—-and try to deserve her—-thus the best result of the new woman will be the new man. He will see as never before that home encircling a noble and excellent womanhood—-is the safeguard of a nation. However no one expects him to be as interesting a novelty as the "new woman."
Much has been said and written concerning the ideal woman. ”

“ That day this girl put off childhood and took on womanhood. She returned to her family a new woman, a thoughtful, considerate woman, an almost silent woman—save when speech is golden; a woman who makes friends and who remembers them in a hundred beautiful ways, a working woman, a home-maker for a happier father, for an almost dependent stepmother; a woman who was scientifically compelled to exchange self- condoling weakness for strength, who, when strengthened against her will, chose and lives the worthy life of self-giving. ”

“ Maeterlinck gives a wonderful picture of the new woman—not the new woman as portrayed in the newspapers, but the new woman as a reborn, regenerated spirit; the woman who has emancipated herself from her narrow outlook upon life, and detached herself from the confines of the home; the woman, in short, who has become race-conscious andtherefore understands that she is a unit in the great ocean of life, and that she must take her place as an independent factor in order to rebuild and remold life. ”

“ What a pleasure for the new woman of to-day, who finds herself vilified beyond her modest deserts, to reflect that she is destined to shine as the revered and faultless great-grandmother of the future. ”

“ The Ever-Womanly has always been our aim, and, while less substantial ambitions have fluttered by on airy wing, and the thunder of the new woman has rolled even upon our peaceful horizon, we have never faltered in our footsteps. ”

“ In short she is the Alpha and Omega in the alphabet of human life. But though jeers and taunts and ridicule be done away with, the new woman is not thereby eliminated. Though distorted, misrepresented and antagonized in public, she is so absolute, so real, that whether desired or dreaded, she appears in as varied forms as a kaleidoscopic vision, an inciter to reform, a participant in municipal affairs, a factor in economics, as philanthropist, as daughter, sister, wife.
She is neither old nor young, she may be married or single, handsome or plain, wealthy or poor. ”

“ After that curse pronounced upon Eve, there was a promise: "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head!" "We can do it, dear." That's what the new woman will say triumphantly to the man who comes back to her from the Great War. Together they will take up the task of making, not only a new earth, but a new race! ”

“ But every word, whether written or spoken, which urges the woman to antagonism against the man, every word which is written or spoken to try and make of her a hybridhybrid, self-contained opponent of men, makes a rift in the lute to which the world looks for its sweetest music.
The New Woman reminds me of an agriculturist who, discarding a fine farm of his own, and leaving it to nettles, stones, thistles and wire-worms, should spend his whole time in demanding neighbouring fields which are not his. ”

“ There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance. Such a phrase—employed with tireless irrelevance in journalism, and creeping into the pages of what is, by courtesy, called literature—is the "new woman." ”

“ When the "new woman" craze passed away, it left, as its effect, young women more self-reliant, more independent, a little more pert and self-assured, with less reverence and greater capability, than before. ”

“ Like that, the boards of trustees in all countries are capitulating to the Great Push of the new woman movement. All over the world to-day the hammers and chisels are ringing in reconstruction. It is the new place in the sun that is being made for woman. ”

“ Already some women to whom a profession or mental eminence has given exceptional freedom [Pg 89] show us in society that women can be free and yet be sweet. Indeed they almost demonstrate the Feminist contention that women must be free before they are sweet, for are not these women—of whom all of us can name a few—the noblest and most desirable of their kind? The New Woman is like a freshly painted railing: whoever touches it will stain his hands, but the railing will dry in time. ”

“ Indeed, those who look upon the prominent rôle of the American woman merely as one phase of the "new woman" question—merely as the inevitable conspicuousness of woman intruding on what has hitherto been exclusively the sphere of man—are many degrees beside the point. ”

“ It is the question which women face the world over to-day. Success beckons now along the broad highway of commerce. But the difficult details of living detain us on the way to fame or fortune. And we've got to cut the apron-strings that tie us to yesterday if we would go ahead. Which shall it be, new woman or old? Most of us either in business or the professions cannot be both. ”

“ With each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture—all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love—all these things are like so many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk beyond the horizon, to explore. ”

“ Ah, Frances, I never knew any woman like you—I've always known the other kind—and a new life has begun for me. Why, life, my life, that I thought about lived, is new and fresh through my love for you. I can't understand it. It's the most wonderful transforming and renewing of energy that ever happened. ”

“ They are all God's children." This sentiment is typical of her. Large of heart, sympathetic in nature, frank, fearless, and outspoken, she is emphatically a type of the "new woman" that will be blessed by the coming generation. ”

“ No one, as we have seen, is going to compel this new woman to be anything that she does not want to be. Let us not forget this now as she goes on talking. For she is coming presently to that which is at the heart of the whole woman question, nay, more, the human question. ”

“ LADY WARGRAVE.
Remember, you are my niece.
MARGERY.
That’s what I do remember! [Murmurs continue.] I am Gerald’s wife! That’s what she doesn’t forgive me! [Addressing Mrs. Sylvester.] You call yourself a New [Pg 90] Woman—you’re not New at all. You’re just as old as Eve. You only want one thing—the one thing every woman wants—the one thing that no woman’s life’s worth living without! A true man’s love! Ah, if we all had that, there’d be no problem of the sexes then. ”

“ But the old-fashioned woman was a very soft-hearted creature, and, maybe, it was just as well that she was.”
“But Woman’s Dark Ages are nearly over, Madam; and is not the New Woman a great improvement on the Old Woman?” ”

“ The new woman with the old love revived in her heart, I'm sure, won't be so often cross and she won't have to slap the children so much as she did. Just think of the new home that the man at the front's coming back to! ”

“ Alas, it is anything but a hint to take courage; for this heavenly phase of the new woman means that when she has learned that she can support herself, so that in case her riches take wings she need not be forced to drudge at uncongenial employment, or to marry for a home, she will be more particular than ever in the kind of a man she marries. ”

“ IT is impossible to resist the New Woman, mainly, perhaps, on account of her moral fascination; but somewhat is due in this behalf to a certain perspective which, reaching into the enchantment of remote times, connects her with a picturesque succession of New Women. ”

“ Of course there is the woman who shrieks on political platforms and neglects her husband, and lets her children grow up like little ruffians; the woman who wears bloomers and bends over her handle-bar like a monkey on a stick; the woman who wants to hold office with men and smoke and talk like men—alas, that there is that variety of woman—but she is not new. ”

“ The creators of this ingenious imitation named it “The New Woman,” and proclaimed that in sufficient numbers it would do away with many of the emotional ills and disorders incident to the old régime; as much of the work of the world, and particularly the advancement of women, could be performed by such contrivances much better than by ordinary women subject to low human affections. And, in fact, this automaton demonstrated satisfactorily that a great reform in human institutions can be carried on without either a heart or a brain ”

“ The influence wielded by those good women was so powerful for good because they were true 11 to themselves and their sex; because they were, in a word, so womanly. The influence of the New Woman upon the man is, and shall be, nil, because the spirit of antagonism between the sexes is being aroused by her pretensions, and comradeship becomes impossible when woman and man fight for supremacy. ”

“ It saw in her only sex—not Humanity.
The New Woman is Human first, last and always. Incidentally she is female; as man is male. As a male he has done his small share in the old physical process of reproduction; but as a Human Creature he has done practically all in the new Social processes which make civilization. ”

“ As with The Home, so with the woman called New. She never was, she never will be, but to present her to man’s future seems the only way of making man satisfied with the woman of the past. We have had to stir men to appreciate us as women, by showing them how easily we could be men if we would. ”

“ A GREAT deal has been written of late years in regard to the "new woman"; a somewhat vague term expressing the contrast between the clinging, fainting, willowy heroine, dear to the hearts of our grandmothers, and the alert, athletic, breezy woman who rules the world to-day. ”

“ Is she wearing bloomers? Is she masculine or unwomanly? Rather she possesses attributes almost divine in that she strikes at the very root of the matter, and begins a course of action which, if carried out, will do what all the men in creation can never cure. She will prevent.
The new woman is young. The new woman is oftener a pretty girl than otherwise. They are not poor girls either, who are doing these things. They are not obliged to earn their daily bread. They are the daughters of the rich. They are the travelled, cultured, delicately reared girls. ”

“ Here have we literary and cultured persons been for years setting up a cry of the New Woman whenever some unusually old fashioned female came along; and never noticing the advent of the New Man. Straker's the New Man. ”

“ But the fact remains that it was largely through the inspired vision, which looked past the entanglements of sense into the pure heart and transparent soul of an idealized womanhood, that the long-enduring sex came into its intellectual kingdom. To the old ties of interest, passion, and habit, were added those of the intellect and spirit. In this new contact of intelligences society had its birth, women took their rightful places, and the world found a new regenerating force. ”

“ She's a fine girl, and knows her value, I suppose, but she's bitten by this 'New Woman' craze—wants to regenerate society, and the rest of it. In our time girls did what they were told—learned house-keeping, and thought it a fair thing to be the mistress of some good fellow's household; to rear wholesome boys and girls to keep up the honour of old England. ”