AustLit

An essay on the changing character and behaviour of young women. The writer deplores these developments: 'If any credence is to be attached to what we read in the works of contemporary satirists, essayists, and novelists, the young women of England, France, and the United States are rapidly assimilating to one type; and that, if not a repulsive, at any rate an unlovely one. The typical young lady is fast, bold, and extravagant. She affects masculine habits, and studiously divests herself of feminine delicacy. She sprinkles her conversation with slang, and does not disdain to copy both the dress and the manners of the demi-monde. She is sordid and calculating in all that concerns her prospective settlement in in life...'