Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/208

 awkward girl who sits on the edge of a chair with her feet scraping the carpet and her hands twiddling uneasily in her lap, is awkward simply because she has, by some means or other, been made self-*conscious,—and because, in the excess of this self-*consciousness she stupidly imagines every one in the room must be staring at her. The average London woman, dressed like a fashion-plate, who rustles in at afternoon tea, with her card-case well in evidence, and her face carefully set in proper "visiting lines," offers herself up in this way as a subject for the satirist, out of the same disfiguring self-consciousness, which robs her entirely of the indifferent ease and careless grace which should,—to quote the greatest of American philosophers, Emerson,—cause her to "repel interference by a decided and proud choice of influences," and to "inspire every beholder with something of her own nobleness." She is probably not naturally formal,—she is no doubt exceedingly constrained and uncomfortable in her fashionable attire,—and one may take it for granted that she would rather be herself than try to be a Something which is a Nothing. But Custom and Convention are her bogie men, always guarding her on either side, and investing her too often with such deplorable self-consciousness that her eye becomes furtive, her mouth hard and secretive, her conversation inane, and her whole personality an uncomfortable exhalation of stupidity and dullness.

Nevertheless, setting Custom and Convention apart for the nonce, and bidding them descend into the shadows of hypocrisy which are their native atmosphere, the British woman remains the prettiest