The Chaperon for Young Ladies

1906
Of course the chaperon question, as it is generally understood, is a middle class one, says the London World; but Father Vaughan perfectly understood what he was saying when he alluded to the lack of surveillance of a properly dignified and perfectly agreeable kind from which so many girls really suffer nowadays.

This is due partly to the fact that mothers do not seem to be want to be bothered to look after their girls, and partly to the fact that hostesses seem to resent much "mothering." But even allowing for the fact that the preacher has not spared his colors in order to make his picture sufficiently striking, one knows perfectly well that far too much latitude is given to girls not only in country houses but in town as well.

It would not be at all a bad thing for English society if we could go back to the days when people keep almost absurdly watchful eyes on the proprieties. Their vigilance may sometimes have been eluded, it is true; it may sometimes have provoked ridicule, but at least it conveyed the idea that mothers set high standard for their girls, and were at some pains to see that they came somewhere near it.

It was good for men to feel this, moreover, for it surely made women seem better worth the winning if they had been jealously guarded under the experienced eye of a duenna who knew man and his ways.