That is to say, the chivalric ideal is best preserved in those
existing communities which are substantially least modern.
Survivals of this lackadaisical or romantic ideal occur freely in
the tastes of the well-to-do classes of Continental countries.
In modern communities which have reached the higher levels of
industrial development, the upper leisure class has
accumulated so great a mass of wealth as to place its women above
all imputation of vulgarly productive labor. Here the status of
women as vicarious consumers is beginning to lose its place in
the sections of the body of the people; and as a consequence the
ideal of feminine beauty is beginning to change back again from
the infirmly delicate, translucent, and hazardously slender, to a
woman of the archaic type that does not disown her hands and
feet, nor, indeed, the other gross material facts of her person.
In the course of economic development the ideal of beauty among
the peoples of the Western culture has shifted from the woman of
physical presence to the lady, and it is beginning to shift back
again to the woman; and all in obedience to the changing
conditions of pecuniary emulation. The exigencies of emulation at
one time required lusty slaves; at another time they required a
conspicuous performance of vicarious leisure and consequently an
obvious disability; but the situation is now beginning to outgrow
this last requirement, since, under the higher efficiency of
modern industry, leisure in women is possible so far down the
scale of reputability that it will no longer serve as a
definitive mark of the highest pecuniary grade.
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