The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎638r] (166/239)

THE EXTRAVAGANT ECONOMY OF WOMEN.
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no doubt that the English women—and I include the Americans—
are the most extravagant in the world. A Frenchwoman once ex
pressed her amazement to me at the enormous amount of money
Englishwomen spend on what is as useless as froth. Chiffon is the
bane of the Englishwoman; she drapes herself in cheap chiffons
while a Frenchwoman puts her money in a bit of good lace. She
adorns herself with poor furs where a Frenchwoman would buy
herself a little thing, but a good little thing. Finally, when the
thrifty Frenchwoman has gathered together quite a nice collection
of lace and fur, the Englishwoman has nothing to show for her
money but a mass of torn and dirty chiffon whose destination is
the rag-bag. After all it is an age of wax beads and imitation
lace, and they represent as well as anything our extravagant
economy.
Is not our middle-class cooking a monument to our extravagance ?
A British housewife has it in her power to take away the stoutest
appetite with her respectable joint, her watery vegetable, and the
pudding or tart that should lie as heavy on her conscience as they
do on the stomach. If the Englishwoman would only take to the
chiffons of cooking instead of the chiffons of clothes ! It is an ex
travagance to cook badly; it is an extravagance to buy things be
cause they are cheap; it is an extravagance to waste time in doing
what someone else can do better (if one can afford it). I think it
is only fair to employ others when one has the means. Don’t we
all want to live? Suppose editors wrote the whole contents of
their papers, and publishers only published their own immortal
w T orks ! What then ?
It belongs to the economy of the universe that neither we nor
anything else should last for ever. Nature herself is methodically
economical, wdtness the regular passing of the seasons. And does
she not utilise one in the making of the next? Yes, what we
women need most of all is to be taught unextravagant economy,
which includes the value both of money and of time, for the day
is coming w T hen women’s time will really be worth something.
So let women earn, or at all events let them be given
money as a right and not as a begrudged charity, and I think it
will be cheaper for men in the end, with the result that our
economy wall become less irresponsibly extravagant. Possibly we
will not save much, but we may live better, and, joy of joys, the
doctors’ bills will undoubtedly grow beautifully less, for I am
sure that the immense prosperity of that learned and disinterested
profession is mainly due to our extravagant economy.
Annie E. Lane.