#Mina is all “Oh ho ho! Those silly New Women and their ideas” madam look in the mirror that is you

[immediatebreakfast]

Hmmmm... Mina's skepticism, and slight mockery of the New Woman is weirdly both in character yet fascinating since every quality she tries to criticize is reflected on her... Because Mina, by the standards of the time, is a New Woman who doesn't realize she is one.

All of her comments are expressing a blend between concern, and taunt at how the New Women's movement will affect the future, or at least Mina's uniformed perspective of what the New Women believe.

I believe we should have shocked the "New Woman" with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless them!

In here Mina refutes the imaginary idea of the New Woman dissaproving hers, and Lucy's appetites despite the actual social, gendered, and social standard of the Victorian era not only telling that women must control what and how they eat in public, but also being responsible for creating a fashionable gendered appetite in which the stereotype of "women only like sweets" was born.

Some of the "New Women" writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won't condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There's some consolation in that.

For me, this part borderlines on comedy because the character saying this is Mina Murray, who has probably been living that way already since for working class women like her the social divide between genders that is imposed (particulary on Lucy) is not available because those specific dynamics are mostly based on the economics of the upper class. Neither Mina, nor Jonathan can do the song and dance of noble courting because it's simply not cost effective, and they have already been interacting with eachother since childhood.

Everything that Mina mocks the New Woman for "doing" from her perspective, she has already done it. Well... Except proposing since that is a social rule well established in the patriachal victorian lead. It almost reads as if Mina is angry at not having the possibility of her proposing to Jonathan, and instead redirects her anger at the movement because they remind her of that obstacle.

It's a very good character flaw that still holds up today since there are many women who simply don't (or refuse to) understand what feminism actually entails, and regard it as this weird off crazy sided movement that is truly silly while fundamentally also believing that it will change society at some point.

With all of Mina's positives, her struggles to understand how she and the New Woman have so much in common is a very effective way to construct a fundamental flaw, it's amazing.