The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays, Vol. 2 (of 2)Linton, E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn)
General
The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Linton, E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn)
Girls; Women
If a men's favourite begins her career unmarried, she most frequently
remains unmarried to the end; fulfilling her mission of charming all
and fixing none till she comes to the age when her sex has no mission
at all. If she is married she has developed after the event; in her
nonage having been a shy if observant wallflower, quietly watching the
methods which later she has so ably applied, and taking lessons from
the very girls who queened it over her with that insolent supremacy
which, more than all else, she noted, envied and profited by. If she
marries while a favourite and in the full swing of her triumphs, she
probably gets pulled up by her husband (unless she is in India, or
wherever else women are at a premium and mistresses of the situation),
and subsides into the best and most domestic kind of 'brooding hen.'
However that may be, marriage, which is the great transforming agent
of a woman's character, seldom leaves her on the same lines as before;
though sometimes of course the foolish virgin developes into the
frisky matron, and the girl who begins life as a men's favourite ends
it as a mature siren.
There are two kinds of men's favourites--the bright women who amuse
them and the sympathetic ones who love them. But these last are of a
doubtful, what country people call 'chancy,' kind; women who show
their feelings too openly, who fall in love too seriously, or perhaps
unasked altogether, being more likely to irritate and repel than to
charm. But the bright, animated women who know how to talk and do not
preach; who say innocent things in an audacious way and audacious
things in an innocent way; who are clever without pedantry; frank
without impudence; quick to follow a lead when shown them; and who
know the difference between badinage and earnestness, flirting and
serious intentions--these are the women who are liked by men and whose
social success in no wise depends on their beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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