It is among the
women of the well-to-do classes, in the communities which are
farthest advanced in industrial development, that this sense of a
grievance to be redressed is most alive and finds most frequent
expression. That is to say, in other words, there is a demand,
more or less serious, for emancipation from all relation of
status, tutelage, or vicarious life; and the revulsion asserts
itself especially among the class of women upon whom the scheme
of life handed down from the regime of status imposes with least
litigation a vicarious life, and in those communities whose
economic development has departed farthest from the circumstances
to which this traditional scheme is adapted. The demand comes
from that portion of womankind which is excluded by the canons of
good repute from all effectual work, and which is closely
reserved for a life of leisure and conspicuous consumption.
More than one critic of this new-woman movement has
misapprehended its motive. The case of the American "new woman"
has lately been summed up with some warmth by a popular observer
of social phenomena: "She is petted by her husband, the most
devoted and hard-working of husbands in the world. ... She is the
superior of her husband in education, and in almost every
respect.
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