Those unsexed Creatures.

Can the working woman of to-day, who may earn her own living, if she will, without loss of the elementary rights of womanhood, think of the bachelor girl of a short generation ago without admiration of her pluck?  There were ladies in those day too “unwomanly” to remain helpless burdens on overworked fathers and mothers, too “unsexed” to marry the first man that came along for the sake of their bread and butter.  They fought their way into journalism, into the office, into the shop.  The reformer is not always the pleasantest man to invite to a tea-party.  Maybe these women who went forward with the flag were not the most charming of their sex.  The “Dora Copperfield” type will for some time remain the young man’s ideal, the model the young girl puts before herself.  Myself, I think Dora Copperfield charming, but a world of Dora Copperfields!

The working woman is a new development in sociology.  She has many lessons to learn, but one has hopes of her.  It is said that she is unfitting herself to be a wife and mother.  If the ideal helpmeet for a man be an animated Dresden china shepherdess—something that looks pretty on the table, something to be shown round to one’s friends, something that can be locked up safely in a cupboard, that asks no questions, and, therefore, need be told no lies—then a woman who has learnt something of the world, who has formed ideas of her own, will not be the ideal wife.