Title:  Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890

Author:  Various

Release Date:  June 25, 2004 [EBook #12739]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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PUNCH,

Or the London charivari.

Vol. 99.

December 6, 1890.

MODERN TYPES.

(BY MR. PUNCH’S OWN TYPE WRITER.)

No.  XXII.—­The manly maiden.

The Manly Maiden may be defined as the feminine exaggeration of those rougher qualities which men display in their intercourse with one another, or in the pursuit of those sports in which courage, strength, and endurance play a part.  In a fatal moment she conceives the idea that she can earn the proud title of “a good fellow” by emulating the fashions and the habits of the robuster sex.  She perceives that men have a liking for men who are strong, bluff, outspoken, and contemptuous of peril, and she infers mistakenly, that the same tribute of admiration is certain to be paid to a woman who, setting the traditions of her sex at defiance, consciously apes the manly model without a thought of all that the imitation involves.  She forgets that as soon as a woman steps down of her own free will from the pedestal on which the chivalrous admiration of men has placed her, she abandons at once her claim to that flattering reticence of speech, and that specially attentive courtesy of bearing, which are in men the outward and visible signs of the spiritual grace which they assume as an attribute of all women.  In spite of what the crazy theorists of the perfect equality school may say, men still continue to expect and to admire in women precisely those qualities in which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient.  Their reverence and affection are bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of life.  Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of language or of body, they get enough and to spare amongst themselves, and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should prefer refinement to roughness, and gentleness to gentlemen.  However, these obvious considerations have no weight with the Manly Maiden.  In fact they never occur to her, and hence arise failures, and humiliations, and disappointments not a few.

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