[THE ADVANCE OF WOMEN]
In the early 'nineties there was a penny weekly paper called Woman, of a mildly "feministic" type, which took for its motto "Forward, but not too fast." There was no reason to suspect its founders of deliberately choosing two adjectives, each of which bore an ambiguous meaning; taken in their literal sense they aptly epitomize the spirit of Feminism in the early years of a phase which began with "emancipation novels" and ended in a resort to physical force. Yet even at the outset the more sober representatives of the movement were being forced into the background to make way for the more strident spokeswomen of the doctrine of equal rights. The prim spinster and the apostles of culture were replaced by the women who were frankly "out" to shock public opinion and flout decorum, who rode bicycles in knickerbockers and wrote "problem" novels. The "New Woman," so constantly referred to in these years, had many variations—athletic, literary, worldly, but was always bent on "self-expression." The fashionable type was caricatured in Dodo; the rebellious daughter was glorified in Grant Allen's story, now only remembered in its title—The Woman who Did. Ibsen was very much in the air, and his remark that the modern daughter felt the need for "a mild kind of Wanderjahr" impelled Punch to discourse on "Rosamund and the Wanderjahr" (a good deal "after" Miss Edgeworth's story of Rosamund and the Purple Jar). His views are non-committal but apparently unsympathetic. On the other hand, he welcomed somewhat prematurely the admission of women to the Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society, recognized their skill and endurance as Alpine climbers, applauded their adoption of the calling of gardeners, hailed the appearance of a Women's Eight on the Thames—coached, it should be added, by a distinguished member of his staff—and duly chronicled the first inter-'Varsity Women's hockey match in 1894. The first illustration of a woman bicycling in knickerbockers occurs in the same year. Under the heading "The 'Arden-ing Process," Orlando addresses his companion: "Tired, Rosalind?" and she replies with quite unfeminine brevity: "Pneumatically." No attempt is made to represent the new garb as unbecoming, as in the days of "Bloomerism," but rather the reverse.
THE 'ARDEN-ING PROCESS
Orlando: "Tired, Rosalind?"
Rosalind: "Pneumatically."
Towards the "New Woman" on her intellectual side, Punch was decidedly hostile. One could not find a better expression of his views than in the large illustration, "Donna Quixote," in April, 1894. The central figure, wearing pince-nez and waving a latchkey, is formidable rather than repellent. Around her on the floor lie books by Ibsen, Tolstoi and Mona Caird, and in the decorative border (which embodies her visions) she is seen tilting at the dragon of Decorum, and smiting down the triple Cerberus of Mrs. Grundy, "Mamma" and Chaperon. Du Maurier's "Passionate Female Literary Types" in the same year are unlovely to the verge of hideousness, and the legends are frankly satirical. When "Sarah Grand" declared that Man, morally, was "in his infancy" and that "now Woman holds out a strong hand to the Child-man," and insisted on helping him up by "spanking proper principles into him in the nursery," Punch quoted back at her "Ouida's" statement that "the New Woman was an unmitigated bore," and went on:—
There is a New Woman, and what do you think?
She lives upon nothing but Foolscap and Ink!