others should be immediately driven into bad deeds by the burning desire to
be unlike us.




GIRLSTEROUSNESS


They tell the story of a little boy, a young scion of the house of Beecher,
that, on being rebuked for some noisy proceeding, in which his little
sister had also shared, he claimed that she also should be included in the
indictment. "If a boy makes too much noise," he said, "you tell him he
mustn't be boisterous. Well, then, when a girl makes just as much noise,
you ought to tell her not to be so _girlsterous_."

I think that we should accept, with a sense of gratitude, this addition to
the language. It supplies a name for a special phase of feminine demeanor,
inevitably brought out of modern womanhood. Any transitional state of
society develops some evil with the good. Good results are unquestionably
proceeding from the greater freedom now allowed to women. The drawback is
that we are developing, here and now, more of "girlsterousness" than is apt
to be seen in less enlightened countries.

The more complete the subjection of woman, the more "subdued" in every
sense she is. The typical woman of savage life is, at least in youth,
gentle, shy, retiring, timid. A Bedouin woman is modest and humble; an
Indian girl has a voice "gentle and low." The utmost stretch of the
imagination cannot picture either of them as "girlsterous." That perilous
quality can only come as woman is educated, self-respecting, emancipated.