Conventions That Change With Locality

In New York, for instance, no young girl of social standing may, without being criticized, go alone with a man to the theater. Absolutely no lady (unless middle-aged-and even then she would be defying convention) can go to dinner or supper in a restaurant alone with a gentleman. A lady, not young, who is staying in a very dignified hotel, can have a gentleman dine with her. But any married woman, if her husband does not object, may dine alone in her own home with any man she pleases or have a different one come in to tea every day in the week without being criticized.

A very young girl may motor around the country alone with a man, with her father's consent, or sit with him on the rocks by the sea or on a log in the woods; but she must not sit with him in a restaurant. All of which is about as upside down as it can very well be. In a restaurant they are not only under the surveillance of many eyes, but they can scarcely speak without being overheard, whereas short-distance motoring, driving, riding, walking or sitting on the seashore has no element of protection certainly. Again, though she may not lunch with him in a restaurant, she is sometimes (not always) allowed to go to a moving picture matiné e with him! Why sitting in the dark in a moving picture theater is allowed, and the restaurant is tabu is very mysterious.

Older girls and young married women are beginning to lunch with men they know well in some of the New York restaurants, but not in others. In many cities it would be scandalous for a young married woman to lunch with a man not her husband, but quite all right for a young girl and man to lunch at a country club. This last is reasonable because the room is undoubtedly filled with people they know—who act as potential chaperons. Nearly everywhere it is thought proper for them to go to a dancing club for tea, if the " club" is managed by a chaperon.

As said above, interpretation of what is proper shifts according to locality. Even in Victorian days it was proper in Baltimore for a young girl to go to the theater alone with a man, and to have him see her home from a ball was not only permitted but absolutely correct.

" Mrs. Grundy"

Of course every one has his own portrait of Mrs. Grundy, and some idea of the personality she shows to him; but has any one ever tried to ferret out that disagreeable old woman's own position; to find out where she lives and why she has nothing to do but meddle in affairs which do not concern her. Is she a lady? One would imagine she is not. One would also imagine that she lives in a solid well-repaired square brown stone house with a cupola used as a conning tower and equipped with periscope and telescope and wireless. Furthermore, her house is situated on a bleak hill so that nothing impedes her view and that of her two pets, a magpie and a jackal. And the business in life of all three of them is to track down and destroy the good name of every woman who comes within range, especially if she is young and pretty—and unchaperoned!

The pretty young woman living alone, must literally follow Cinderella's habits. To be out of the house late at night or sitting up, except to study, are imprudences she can not allow herself. If she is a widow her conduct must be above criticism, but if she is young and pretty and divorced, she must literally live the life of a Puritan spinster of Salem. The magpie never leaves her window sill and the jackal sits on the doormat, and the news of her every going out and coming in, of every one whom she receives, when they come, how long they stay and at what hour they go, is spread broadcast.

No unprotected woman can do the least thing that is unconventional without having Mrs. Grundy shouting to everyone the worst possible things about her.