"Young women of today live in a perpetual round of amusement. They go about, by day and night, in perfect freedom. Their sole occupation is to walk and drive, and amuse themselves with dancing. They read the most improper books, and the foam of a poisonous philosophy falls from their lips."
This is not a diatribe of today, but of 1800. What, however, was the ordinary young woman of 130 years ago really like? History books and memoirs are chiefly concerned with important people and novels are untrustworthy; but the type can be studied to advantage in the magazines written specially for women. They provided their readers with what they wanted, and to know people's wants is to know a good deal about their character.
The first magazine of this sort began in 1770 - The Ladies' Magazine, or "Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, appropriated solely to their Use and Amusement," in monthly parts.
One turns to the "Correspondence Column" to hear the authentic voice of the Modern Young Woman of those days. A couple of such letters are illuminating. They are in reply to someone (evidently a man) rash enough to say that a girl who has reached the age of 25 without being married deserves to be called an "old maid." The first is highly animated :-
"I am so out of patience that I have no time to make any apology; being assured from your attention to the complaints of our sex, that you will readily pardon this freedom.
"You must know, Madam, that I among other ladies as little deserving as myself, am, in the Ladies' Magazine for last month, publicly placed in the list of Old Maids. What does your enigmatical correspondent mean? Odious creature! Shall I, who am but just turned five and twenty, be branded with the detestable appellation? Indeed, Madam, no girl in the whole place has a greater aversion to the name than myself; nor has anyone taken more pains, than I have, to alter my present unenvied situation . . I am not a prude, I do not rail at the insincerity of the other sex; I am neither capricious nor superstitious, censorious, nor detracting; nor am I in my person or my dress affectedly prim or demure. My size, indeed, is rather diminutive, but that is not the criterion by which we determine the character of an Old Maid . ."
On the same important topic we get another ardent correspondent who complains :-
"I have no patience with the men, I must therefore make an application to you. I have been talked to, admired, and complimented for my beauty these five years; but though I am just arrived to the age of nineteen, see not the smallest prospect of being settled - I declare I have almost lost all hopes, and am monstrously afraid I shall increase the catalogue of Old Maids. What a horrid idea! To make the matter a thousand times worse, I have had the galling mortification to see above half a dozen of my most intimate friends, the ugliest girls you can conceive, settled perfectly to their satisfaction. I begin, indeed, to think there is nothing at all in beauty.
What a deal of pains have I taken to improve my shape! But if you cannot put me in the way to make something of myself after all, I will actually unfrizzle my hair, throw away my rouge into the fire; stuff a cushion in my bustle, press down my handkerchief to my bosom, and, in short, appear exactly as Nature made me; I am absolutely weary of taking so much trouble for nothing; I wait for your answer with impatience."
We may conclude that the "pre-war girl" of those days was no Patient Griselda; nor, after Waterloo, was the "post-war" young person less outspoken than now. We have a heated rebuke to the distress for attempting to control the conduct and morals of the rising generation :-
" . . You should recollect this is an enlightened age, in which everybody knows what's best for themselves. As I am an advocate for "The Rights of Woman" I shall take care that no young friend shall read your fusty papers, written under the influence of the hip, while you sit poking over your lamp, taking loads of nasty snuff and fancying yourself Queen Sheba. Are such as you to decry the liberal spirit of the modern age? Do you want to prevent the girls from getting husbands by transforming them into such mumpish things as yourself? I have no doubt of your being some old devotee, who having sinned till you can sin no longer, have given yourself up to mummery and mortification; torment yourself and everybody about you and call it reformation. But shall such things be endured? No. Not while I can prevent it. . "
The social historian cannot neglect sources such as these when trying to discover what sort of a thing is she who, recurring with ever a difference from age to age, enjoys the unchanging title of "modern young woman."
