Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/33

 ladies who talk of ‘awful swells’ and ‘deuced bores,’ who smoke and venture upon free discourse, and try to be like men.” The writer of this anonymous article, who was really (I judge from internal evidence) so distinguished and so serious a woman as Harriet Martineau, duly snubs these critics, pointing out that such accusations are at least as old as Addison and Horace Walpole; she remarks that there have no doubt been so-called “fast young ladies’ in every age, “varying their doings and sayings according to the fopperies of the time.” The question, as she pertinently concludes is, as indeed it still remains to-day: “Have we more than the average proportion? I do not know.” Nor to-day do we know.

But while to-day, as ever before, we have a certain proportion of these emancipated girls, and while to-day, as perhaps never before, we are able to understand that they have an element of reason on their side, it would be a mistake to suppose that they are more than exceptions. The majority are unable, and not even anxious, to attain this light-hearted social emancipation. For the majority, even though they are workers, the anciently subtle ties of the home are still, as they should be, an element of natural piety, and, also, as they should not be, clinging fetters which impede individuality and destroy personal initiative.