WOMEN LOSING THEIR MODESTY.
By Max O’Rell
Max O’Rell, in Chicago American. If women are becoming less modest, no doubt it is due to their emancipation and to the spreading of education. Outside of the peasantry of Continental Europe, a modest woman, as our grandfathers understood the epithet, is seldom to be met anywhere. The French girl of my boyhood, who never went further than uttering Oui, Monsieur, or Non, Monsieur, while in conversation with a man, is a thing of the past. She is no longer advised by her mother as to what she will wear or what she will read. She wears and reads what she likes. I cannot help thinking, however, that the modern craving for dress is the principal cause for the loss of modesty in women. The streets of all the cities of the civilized world are paraded by crowds of overdressed women, whose sole preoccupation seems to be to take notice of one another’s frocks, and I will say this for them, that they also seem to be far more concerned with the kind of effect they are having on the members of their own sex than as to the figure they are cutting in the eyes of men. I often wonder how such women look and carry themselves in their own households, before their fathers, husbands, or brothers. Those who have penetrated behind the scenes assure me that the difference is marvelous. In any case, it has come to this, that the streets of London, Paris, New York, and hundreds of other cities are thronged with women concerning whom it would be impossible for the ordinary man to say whether they are or are not “improprieties.” Of course, the evils growing out of this restless vanity of modern times, the craze for publicity and the constant desire to be talked about, have been pandered to and encouraged by the “society” papers and by the caterers to frivolity generally. There is scarcely a paper published in any little town of England, America, and the British colonies that has not social columns in which it is recorded that “Miss Smith has come to town on a visit to Miss Jones,” or “Miss Robinson has left the city to go on a visit to Miss Brown,” or, again, Miss A. gave a tea party, or Mrs. B. an evening party, at which Mrs. C. looked beautiful in black, and Miss D. thrillingly lovely in electric blue. Add to this the scandals that are related in the columns that are devoted in those papers to the so-called smart people, and which are read by women and girls of all ages, and I think you will agree with me in saying that the harm done to women by this modern literature is incalculable. The constant increase of amusements also tends to make women more frivolous and less modest. At the root of the whole matter is the ever-increasing love of pleasure, dress, and publicity. However, it would be unfair to contend that man has not contributed his share to this result. It is a case of action and reaction. Man has shown a growing tendency to find his pleasures outside his home. His facilities for so doing are vastly increased. Man is every year more and more ignoring the fact that a woman who properly orders and governs a house is doing more toward the common good of a household than the breadwinner in managing his business or following his trade. I often ask myself whether men who talk so glibly about the domestic life and duties know the demand actually made by such life and duties on those conscientious women who still, under the altered conditions of these days, faithfully discharge the functions cheerfully performed by their grandmothers. When a man goes wrong, the French say, “Cherchez la femme.” When women go wrong, I am always inclined to exclaim: “Cherchez l’homme.”