But, though Foolscap and Ink form the whole of her diet,
This nagging New Woman can never be quiet!
The New Womanhood
The ironical protest registered by Punch against ladies who insisted on travelling in smoking carriages and then objected to smoking, only serves to show how far we have travelled in the last thirty years. Another passing phase in the history of sex-antagonism is to be found in the record of the first of many dinners at which only literary ladies were allowed to be present. Punch printed a letter signed "A Daughter of Eve who remembers Adam," who observed that "the Literary Ladies' Dinner of the 1st of June only needed one feature to be absolutely perfect—the presence of Gentlemen." Whether the letter was bonâ fide or not, it probably expressed the view of the majority of those present. The more violent the manifestations of the New Womanhood, the more reactionary became Punch's attitude. His reaction reached a culminating point in 1894, when he painted the following sketch of "A Modern Madame":—
She has aspirations after the impossible, and is herself far from probable; she regards her husband as an unnecessary evil, and her children as disturbances without compensating advantages.
She writes more than she reads and seldom scribbles anything.
She has no feelings, and yet has a yearning after the intense.
She is the antithesis of her grandmother, and has made further development in generations to come quite impossible.
She thinks without the thoughts of a male, and yet has lost the comprehension of a female.
To sum up, she is hardly up to the standard of a man, and yet has sunk several fathoms below the level of a woman.
So again he reverts to his older views on Education à propos of the "Pioneers":—
Ah, learn whate'er you will, yet spare our hearts
A home-grown, feminine Baboo of Arts.
Believe it, envious maids, the men you spurn
Think little of the honours that they earn.