“You say all this to me—to me, a lady? Great Heavens! What has become
of chivalry?”
A Frenchman was once put on trial for murdering his father and mother.
He confessed his guilt, but begged for mercy on the plea that he was an
orphan. Chivalry was founded on the assumption that woman was worthy to
be worshipped. The modern woman’s notion is that when she does wrong she
ought to be excused by chivalrous man because she is a lady.
I like the naughty heroine; we all of us do. The early Victorian
heroine—the angel in a white frock, was a bore. We knew exactly what she
was going to do—the right thing. We did not even have to ask ourselves,
“What will she think is the right thing to do under the circumstances?”
It was always the conventional right thing. You could have put it to a
Sunday school and have got the answer every time. The heroine with
passions, instincts, emotions, is to be welcomed. But I want her to
grasp the fact that after all she is only one of us. I should like her
better if, instead of demanding:
“What is wrong in civilisation? What is the world coming to?” and so
forth, she would occasionally say to herself:
“Guess I’ve made a fool of myself this time. I do feel that ’shamed of
myself.”
She would not lose by it. We should respect her all the more.