Middle-aged woman

“ If, on the other hand, circumstances are such that the capable middle-aged woman, instead of living entirely for herself, in her clubs, in her increasing interest in public affairs, and her chosen work, finds herself with certain members of her family dependent upon her, she also derives from this fact an enormous satisfaction, for it enables her to prove that she can fill a man's place in the world, be quite as equal to her job. ”

“ As far as a young woman can know a middle-aged man, she knew me outside in. If she came to me for my sympathy, she knew that she had the right. If she twitted me on my foibles, she knew that I granted her the privilege, with affectionate indulgence. ”

“ I must{110} say I have never understood how middle-aged women like myself can have a pretty young maid-servant sent for them, knowing very well that the girl must walk one way alone, and that, if there is any danger at all, a young woman of twenty is more in the way of it, than one who might be her mother. ”

“ Should she do so, hers will be the triumph of real charm; and, providing that she grows older not only gracefully but also cheerfully, not by plastering herself over with chemical imitations of her own daughter's youth, but by shading becomingly, as it were, the inevitable ravages of time, which nothing on earth will ever hide; by dressing not more than five years younger than she really is—then her attractiveness will continue until she is an old, old woman. ”

“ MATURE SIRENS.
Nothing is more incomprehensible to girls than the love and admiration sometimes given to middle-aged women. They cannot understand it; and nothing but experience will ever make them understand it. ”

“ With the ideal woman of middle age—that pleasant She with her calm face and soft manner, who unites the charms of both epochs, retaining the ready responsiveness of youth while adding the wider sympathies of experience—with her there has been no such struggle to make herself an anachronism. ”

“ A MIDDLE-AGED MAN, whose hair had begun to turn gray, courted two women at the same time. One of them was young, and the other well advanced in years. The elder woman, ashamed to be courted by a man younger than herself, made a point, whenever her admirer visited her, to pull out some portion of his black hairs. The younger, on the contrary, not wishing to become the wife of an old man, was equally zealous in removing every gray hair she could find. Thus it came to pass that between them both he very soon found that he had not a hair left on his head.
Those who seek to please everybody please nobody. ”

“ What she has lost in outside material charm—in that mere beauté du diable of youth—she has gained in character and expression; and by not attempting to simulate the attractiveness of a girl, she keeps what nature gave her—the attractiveness of middle age. And as every epoch has its own beauty—if women would but learn that truth—she is as beautiful now as a matron of fifty, because in harmony with her years, as she was when a maiden of sixteen.
This is the ideal woman of middle age, met with even yet at times in society—the woman whom all men respect ”

“ The thousands of wretched wives, who owe their wretchedness to a neglect of proper attention at this turning-point of their lives, warn you how serious is this responsibility.
The foundation of old age, says a distinguished author, is laid in childhood; but the health of middle-life depends upon puberty. ”

“ Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women are mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron [Pg 38] of fifty seems to have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose, as regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed, self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and found it sweet. ”

“ You are a young woman. You are a girl, compared with the old women I know in London, who would fly into a rage if you hinted that they were past middle life--if you did not, in fact, say they were young. Why, mother, what is seventy? Nothing! I know dozens of women over eighty, and they keep up their spirits and are blithe and gay, and ready to dance at a wedding, if any man should only ask them. Up to sixty-five, a woman ages faster than a man, but once over sixty-five, women grow young again. ”

“ And one remembers in a dim sort of way that the married woman of olden days was altogether faded at thirty-five, that she entered on middle life at a time when at least many of our women of to-day still think themselves young. ”

“ There is a place in life for the grandmother and even for the grandaunt, though a French visitor recently declared that he thought there must be no grandmothers in America since all the women seemed to dress in the fashion of the young girl. If this submission to natural conditions is recognized and accepted there are long years of happiness and helpfulness in store for the woman of middle age and the menopause may be welcomed as an important step towards a larger development of life. ”

“ You feel as if you were continually being fêted. All the women in the set in which I live now are treated the same way. I cannot understand why they ever grow old or have to have their wrinkles massaged and their hair hennaed; none of the sort of things that make a woman grow old are allowed to come near them.
All the things, and the sights, and the feelings that are stale to Grace Gilpin and her chic friends are new to me—I sort of rush at them and mop them up. I can't help being thrilled and happy. ”

“ An attack of illness, even a little more trouble, such as this that I have lately undergone, will make me look my full age. Do you know what that means to a woman?" She pressed her eyelids and the hollows beneath her eyes with her fingers. "When I look in the glass, I see already what I shall be when I am forty. I must make the best of my youth and of my good looks. ”

“ And, even when the age is announced, one is reminded that “a woman is only as old as she feels.” There is sound common sense in all this. Can not we afford to snap our fingers at Father Time and his laws, when the law within ourselves tells us that we are young in heart, in feeling, in aims? ”

“ But youth with its hopeful outlook, its plans and its ambitions, gives way to age with its peaceful waiting for the end, with only a brief struggle for its place; and the woman of thirty-five is just at the point when she has bid good-by to her youth, and, having little to hope for in her middle life, is doing her work faithfully, and looking forward to an old age of privilege and authority, the mistress of her son's house, and the ruler of the little domain of home. ”

“ Therefore, if you are to be a delightful middle-aged lady you must practise sedulously to be a delightful young one. It is worth a bit of hard work to begin with, for middle-age lasts longer than youth, and middle-aged ladies who are not delightful are not anything ”

“ In a word, all the harshness of her judgments and reflections do not save her from the dreadful distress of growing old....
In vain she withdraws from the society of her fellow-creatures, in the hope that old age will no longer have terrors for her when there is no one at hand to watch her physical decay; the redoubtable phantom still haunts her in her retreat; watches her, brushes past her, and mocks her sincere effort to abandon all coquetry and cease "to count as a woman." At the same time a cruel melancholia possesses her; she feels she has become old without having profited by her youth. ”

“ An elderly girl must ever think how she looks. A woman who at a watering-place dresses conspicuously, wears a peignoir to breakfast, dyes her hair, or looks as if she did, ties a white blond veil over her locks and sits on a hotel piazza, showing her feet, may be the best, the most cultivated woman in the house, but a superficial observer will not think so. ”

“ The lady will kindly think over these details and let the professor know. While one is about it, one may as well make a sound job.
It is all so simple, and, when you come to think of it, really not expensive. Age, apparently, makes no difference. A woman is as old as she looks. In future, I take it, there will be no ladies over five-and-twenty. Wrinkles! Why any lady should still persist in wearing them is a mystery to me. With a moderate amount of care any middle-class woman could save enough out of the housekeeping money in a month to get rid of every one of them. ”

“ If we continue to live, we must continue to grow old. We must either advance in age, or we must die. Where then is the shame of surviving our youth? And when youth departs, beauty goes along with it. At least as much beauty as depends on complexion, hair, and teeth. In arriving at middle age, (or a little beyond it,) a lady must compound for the loss of either face or figure. ”

“ We had expected to see a woman of middle age and somewhat stern aspect. Instead, we beheld a pretty, young person, apparently not more than twenty-five years old, with bright, black eyes, waving brown hair, good features and plump figure. ”

“ How soon women grew old a generation ago! Why, she felt as young to-day as she did the morning on which she was married. She felt as young, and yet her hair was greying, her face was wrinkled, and, like poor Matilda, she had outlived her usefulness. While she stood there that peculiar sensation which comes to women when their youth is over—the sensation of a changed world—took possession of her. She felt that life was slipping, slipping past her, and that she was left behind like a bit of the sentiment or the law of the last century. ”

“ They cry out for the past, for even while they fight against time they cannot detain it in its course.” This description, however, does not apply only to the majority of middle-aged women, but more especially to professional beauties. ”

“ You do not need to be told that there is one being who will care for you till she is an old, old woman. Think of me as I shall be then. An old woman, with white hair, walking with a crutch-stick, as they do on the stage. ”

“ I don't think myself that she has gone off at all to speak of. In some lights she might pass for being no older than I am—if she was very well dressed, you know; and it really does not matter what age a woman is if she keeps her looks. ”

“ The younger women—I met them occasionally gaily clad and mounted on a donkey—looked waxen and had an air of suffering, and the older were lined and had a look of querulousness and irritability that was not on the men's faces. Many an old man have I seen whose face might stand for a model of prosperous, contented, peaceful old age looking back on a well-lived life, but never, never have I seen such a look on a woman's face. ”

“ But I feel really awfully old; and you know a woman is as old as she feels. Besides, Nurse Sarah says I am old for my age, and that it's no wonder, the kind of a life I've lived.
And maybe that is so. For of course it has been different, living with a father and mother that are getting ready to be divorced from what it would have been living with the loving, happy-ever-after kind. Nurse Sarah says it's a shame and a pity, and that it's the children that always suffer. But I'm not suffering—not a mite. ”

“ Middle-age strips her of everything—the admiration, the flattery, the shallow merriment—all the little things that her little mind longs for—and other women take her place, in spite of her futile, pitiful efforts to remain young. ”

“ But the woman who is growing old and insists upon keeping herself young by wearing inappropriate and inharmonious clothes, is merely making a farce of herself. There can be nothing more ridiculous than a woman past fifty in gown and wrap obviously created for the young person of seventeen. Instead of improving her appearance, the elderly woman deprives herself of the charm that should rightfully be hers. ”

“ IN speaking of the middle age of woman there are a few things which must be taken into consideration in reference to her anatomical construction, which influence the whole that we have to say in relation to the peculiar support which she will require in that particular period called "middle life;" ”

“ In those days my middle age would be beginning now, and in a few years I should be pinched, thin, and haggard, beset with troubles and miseries, so that no one could have guessed that I was once a beautiful girl. ”

“ It is hard to be dependent upon the caprice of brothers, in one’s old age. Thirty years ago and life wore for me a very different aspect.”
“Nurse,” said Flora, who was very fond of the good old body, who had attended her with the greatest care and tenderness, through a long and dangerous illness; “how comes it that such a pretty woman as you must have been did not marry in your youth? I can scarcely imagine that nature ever meant you for an old maid.”
“Nature never made any woman to be an old [123] maid,” said Nurse; “God does nothing in vain. ”

“ Well, if we women lie down and regard friendly old Time as an inimical Juggernaut there is nothing to prevent us from sinking into dreary dowdiness, from wearing prunella shoes, and filling our husbands with the consternation that is inseparable from this elderly kind of footgear and false fronts. Middle age and dress.We need not too literally accept the warnings of disinterested friends, who think we should be told that we “dress too young,” or that the fashion of our coiffure is inappropriate to advancing years. Far better is it to dress too young than too old ”

“ At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be; at thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and, if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully. Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragical romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. ”