"Unwomanly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at Ernest. 'I can't speak much plainer than that,' she thought to herself, 'and really he must be stupider than the Algies and the Monties themselves if he doesn't see I want him to propose to me. I suppose all women would say it's awfully unwomanly of me to lead up to his cards in this way—throwing myself at his head they'd call it; but what does that matter? I WON'T marry a fool, and I WILL marry a man of some originality. That's the only thing in the world worth troubling one's head about. Why on earth doesn't he take ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... felt very deeply, even to tears, the sharp, narrow and adverse criticism of one of his associates who considered that I unsexed myself by daring to speak in public, and who advised strongly against encouraging me in such unwomanly behaviour. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... flies with eager fury to my face, Offering me most unwomanly disgrace. Look how a tigress, &c. So fell she on me in outrageous wise, As could disdain and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... any thing in the Christian civilization of our present century that condemns the kind of life we are describing, as in any respect unwomanly or unbecoming. Something very like it is in a measure considered as the appointed rule of attractive young girls ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... present; but American women and mothers do claim that they should have the power to protect their children, not only at the hearthstone, but to supervise their education. It is neither presuming nor unwomanly for the mothers and women of the land to claim that they are competent and best fitted, and that it rightfully belongs to them to take part in the management and control of the schools, and the instruction, both intellectual and moral, of their children, and that in penal, eleemosynary, ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... noblest men of history there has often been noted something feminine, a gentleness which is not akin to weakness; and the women whose names are ornaments to nations have displayed a calm greatness, not unwomanly but something more than belongs to woman. Art acknowledges this. In the Vatican Apollo we see masculine strength united with maidenly softness; and in the traditional face and figure of Christ a still more striking example how the devout ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Leslie in a fierce, low tone. "Do you think I'm wicked—unwomanly? Or do you think I'm just ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hoping for a husband, would have dared to ride a bicycle: to-day they spin about the country in their thousands. The old folks shake their heads at them; but the young men, I notice, overtake them and ride beside them. Not long ago it was considered unwomanly in Germany for a lady to be able to do the outside edge. Her proper skating attitude was thought to be that of clinging limpness to some male relative. Now she practises eights in a corner by herself, until some young man comes along to help her. She plays tennis, and, from a point ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... we have never fished for lover's love. We smile at girls who deck themselves with gems, False hair and meretricious ornament, To chain the fleeting fancy of a man, But do not imitate them. What we have Of hair, is all our own. Our colour, too, Unladylike, but not unwomanly, Is Nature's handiwork, and man has learnt ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... unwomanly; for is not marriage woman's highest aim, and home her true sphere? Haven't I tried both? I ought to know. I merely have been miscast in this life's drama. My part should have been that of one who makes her way alone. Peter, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... to write a reply, I shall call upon all the gods; I shall announce to them this unwomanly act, and I shall invoke their malediction ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... you think of me?" she said at last, lifting her head, and drying her eyes. "Now that you have heard how unwomanly I am, how wicked, how criminally wicked! Because, I suppose, morally speaking, to lie awake and scheme out one's sister's disfigurement is as bad as to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... instinct would have needed the stimulus of courtship, at the least of some hint of preference displayed by the suitor. Ruled by the conventions which hold her sex in bondage, she would have deemed it unwomanly to make advances by any means other than innuendo, the subtle suggestions which are the instruments of her sex, but which are often too delicate to pierce the understanding of the ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... of the Angle King Offa and mother of Eomaer, is mentioned in contrast to Hygd, just as Heremod is a foil to Beowulf. She is at first the type of a cruel, unwomanly queen. But by her marriage with Offa, who seems to be her second husband, she is subdued and changed until her fame ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... I should not be," returned Grace composedly. "Miss Wicks and Miss Hampton, for reasons best known to themselves, chose to make Miss Briggs the victim of an unwomanly practical joke on the very day of her arrival at Overton. I think you are in possession of the story. Miss Briggs's method of retaliation was unwise, I will admit, but Miss Wicks and Miss Hampton had no right to ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... own soul better and to understand herself, in the light of the new relationship she had entered into. In the case of most women the revelation she had so unconsciously made to him of the insufficiency of her marriage would have been unwomanly, and perhaps it was even so in her, but it was so only in the sense of being childlike. She was really no more than a child, and more ignorant of the world than many a child of ten. What did she know about marriage or the needs of her ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... melted softly into light and life. Her strange unwomanly voice sank to the gentlest tones that I had ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... strange people in this strange place!—And then you take for granted that I would be rude to one person whom I do know, just because he had vexed me! I did ask him in, and he wouldn't come. I am unpractised—wild, maybe—but am I so unwomanly, Mr. Falkirk? Do you think I am?' It was almost pitiful, the way the young eyes scanned his face. If Mr. Falkirk had not been a guardian! ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... in the least," said Meldon. "That was quite natural, and not at all what I call unwomanly. In fact, most women would have acted just as she did in that respect. What I was thinking of was those famous lines of Sir Walter Scott's. You recollect the ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... to have Edgar's good opinion. Indeed, that was only proper gratitude to a friend, not unwomanly submission to the great young man of the place. He was invariably kind to her, and he had done much to make her cheerless life less dreary. He had lent her books to read, and had shown her pretty places in the district which she would never have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... spun out of her replies then first must have been apparent to her, and though silent for the most part, she quickly contradicted some statements, and pointed out the fallacy of others. Reproached for her unwomanly behaviour, she replied at once, "As for woman's work, there are plenty of other women who can do that"; and asserted that before fighting at all, she had made every effort to obtain her wishes peacefully. She even recited the short prayer it was her custom ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Shropshire. Not a word about Captain Oakley. My eye skimmed its pages in search of that charmed name. With a peevish feeling I tossed the sheet upon the table. Inwardly I thought how ill-natured and unwomanly it was. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... she answered, "but I believe womanliness is killed—when it is killed—not through the brain, but through the heart. It's not knowledge, but hard-heartedness that makes the unwomanly woman." ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... such an injured architecture Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing? No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be. Tears, even if they told only gratitude For your escape, and had no other story, Were surely more becoming than a smile For my unwomanly straightforwardness In seeing for you, through my close gate of years Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile? And while I'm trembling at my faith in you In giving you to read this book of danger That only one man living might have written — These letters, which ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... greatly, especially as I was obliged to disappoint him deeply; yet I seek to retain his friendship, for my memory of his long kindness must ever abide. I am sure you will understand, and not consider me unwomanly in ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... an unmaidenly thing to do, certainly," said Lady Glencora very slowly, and in her lowest voice. "Nay, it is unwomanly; but one may be driven. One may be so driven that all gentleness of womanhood ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... such haste; and to part thus. There must be some mistake. I have watched you narrowly, suspiciously, as men do who have been once deceived; and I have seen no trace of unwomanly ambition in you; I little thought you would, on the slightest hint, so willingly embrace the first opportunity of entering into the sphere I ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... said Christie, as the girls went trooping out of the bath-house, where this pleasing chatter had been carried on regardless of listeners. She called them "mercenary, worldly, unwomanly flirts," and felt herself much their superior. Yet the memory of their gossip haunted her, and had its influence upon her decision, though she thought she came to it through her own ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... were so soft; but she held those horses in as though they were made of iron. When I wanted to help her she said, 'No thank you: I can manage them myself. I've got a pair of bits that would break their jaws if I used them well,' and she laughed and drove away. It's so unwomanly. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... myself," she proceeded, with a sudden effort at self-control, which commanded the admiration even of the coroner. "My one adviser is dead," here her eyes flashed for a moment toward the silent form behind her. "If I make mistakes, if I seem unwomanly—but you have asked for the truth and you shall have it, all of it. I have no father. Since early this morning I have had no mother. But when I had, I found it my duty to work for her as well as for myself, that she might have the comforts she had been ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... appear to you that I had been unwomanly. My own conscience is clear, for my purpose exonerates me, but this you might fail to understand unless I made fuller explanation than is now possible. I have a ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... her choice as the natural thing, and envied her way of living; but now that she had elected to work hard and to give herself freely to fighting for principle and establishing good government in her city, her friends of different tastes whispered among themselves, "How strange!" "How unwomanly!" "How unnatural for ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... that discussion really became more like axioms chanted in unison; but when it came to woman suffrage society silently but exactly split. There were those who would stick at nothing, even casting a vote. There were those who said casting a vote was unwomanly, and you couldn't possibly leave the baby long enough to do it. Others among the antis were reconciled to its coming, if it came slowly enough not to agitate us. "Of course," said one of these, a Melvin who managed her ample fortune with the acumen of a financier, "it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... financial standing, together with other attractions, I ran over the eligible ladies of my acquaintance. But one was a little too old, and another was a good deal too flighty. One was too fond of society, and another did not like dogs. A fifth spoiled her chances by an unwomanly ignorance of horticulture, and a sixth perished miserably after returning to me one of my most cherished books with the leaves dog-eared and the binding cracked. For I hold with the greatest philosophers that she who maltreats a book will never make a good wife. And so the years ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... and unwomanly; yet I persist as relentlessly as any Indian on a war trail. See me as I am, not the gay girl you have known, but a revengeful woman with but one tender spot now left in her heart, the place you fill. I have been wronged, and I long to right myself at once. Time is ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... he had borne enough of such contumelious conduct; he should soon bring me into subjection. He represented himself to me, as an injured and long-suffering man; and me, to myself, as an unkind, undutiful, and most unwomanly woman. He told me, what was true, that I need not expect people to believe such a 'cock and bull story;' and used every possible means of intimidation, except actual corporeal punishment. That he threatened long after; and I told ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... believe her motive, her purpose, to be unwomanly. Should the opportunity offer, she did not intend to win Graydon by angling for him, by arts, blandishments, or one unmaidenly advance. She would try to be so admirable that he would admire her, so true that he would trust her, and so fascinating that ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... out to him. Words of power they were—power and fire and longing. Perhaps I alone, of all women, have told a man of my love when I knew it to be hopeless. My hope had died when he first spoke. Had he loved me, he had spoken otherwise. That I was woman enough to see; but if it be unwomanly to feel in every pulse-throb the need of expression, to know that I should die of suppressed passion, tenderness, love, if I did not speak it all, did not tell him once how I loved him, how I could have lived his servant, his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... so full of joy I can't wait for tomorrow to come. Doesn't it seem like a dream to think of our being married? It's all so strange, and yet I'm so happy! You don't think me unwomanly for telling you so, do you, dearest? I'm so frightened, and yet my heart is beating—trip—trip—for you. Can't ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... encouraged him was sleeping, and, under the new motives which were at work within her, she hoped that it would never wake. She looked down the devious track of her past, counted over its unworthy and most unwomanly satisfactions, and wondered. She looked back to a great wrong which she had once inflicted on an innocent man, with a self-condemnation so deep that all the womanhood within her rose into ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... going about with her hair down; after her experiences in the boat it seemed absurd to quibble over a thing like this and she tried to argue with herself without avail. It seemed to her that if she went about in neglige like that she would lower herself. How? There was nothing unwomanly in flowing hair, there was nothing indelicate. No, but women of her class never appeared before men in that fashion, she would lower ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... her letters will add to the number. We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really seems to have been a very charming young woman, modest, generous, affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a Royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the Puritans, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... art; and as Raymond had been summoned to some political meeting, she had no special squire, as her young brother-in-law eluded the being enlisted in her service; and she began to decide that skating was irrational and unwomanly; although Lady Tyrrell had just arrived, and was having her skates put on; and Eleonora was only holding back because she was taking care of the two purple-legged, purple-faced, and purple-haired little Duncombes, whom ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... depressing influence of the after-consequences, he bemoans his sufferings and his errors, and charges them both upon me; he knows such indulgence injures his health, and does him more harm than good; but he says I drive him to it by my unnatural, unwomanly conduct; it will be the ruin of him in the end, but it is all my fault; and then I am roused to defend myself, sometimes with bitter recrimination. This is a kind of injustice I cannot patiently endure. Have I not laboured long and hard to save him from this very vice? Would ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... far—let her not forget that when human beings give, as it were, a moral sanction to feelings of hatred or contempt, they unchain a demon in their breasts. We are all oftentimes shocked by anecdotes illustrative of the rancorous spite, and vulgar, unwomanly malignity, cherished by many Southern females against the Union and its defenders. Now were it not well for us, on the other side, to take warning, and, for the sake of our own peace of mind, our own dignity of character, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... will; they never reached any idea more manly than a steady resolve to exhibit the points of a woman with greater ferocity than they could in a gown. But consider, ladies, a man is not the meanest of the brute creation, so how can he be an unwomanly female? This sort of actress aims not to give her author's creation to the public, but to trot out the person instead of the creation, and shows sots what a ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... folding-doors. At this moment it is harbouring Mr. Shand's ladies' committee, who sit with pens and foolscap round the large table, awaiting the advent of their leader. There are nobly wise ones and some foolish ones among them, for we are back in the strange days when it was considered 'unwomanly' for women to have minds. The Comtesse peeps at them with curiosity, as they arrange their papers or are ushered into the dining-room through a door which we cannot see. To her frivolous ladyship they ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... breath, while Mrs. Van Buren looked at him with entirely new sensations from what she had before experienced. There was some delicacy of feeling in his nature, after all—something which recoiled from her unwomanly attack upon his weak-minded brother—and she respected him at that moment, if she had never done so before. Something like shame, too, she felt for her cruel taunt, which had both roused and wounded him, and she would ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... of John Saltram's coldness, and wondering when this cruel time of probation would be at an end, and he would show himself her devoted slave once more. It was very weak and foolish to think of him like this, no doubt; undignified and unwomanly, perhaps; but Adela Branston was little more than a child in knowledge of the world, and John Saltram was the only man who had ever touched her heart. She stood quite alone in the world too, lonely with all her wealth, and there ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... diminution of her lover's ardour, she chose to count his silence as still another offence. He was neglecting her, and she would not stand it. Like a flash of inspiration it darted into her head that she would free herself from this entanglement while there was still time. It would seem unwomanly to desert a man in the hour of misfortune, but she would act at once, and not wait until the worst happened. She would tell her mother that she was not happy; and though Mrs Rendell might disapprove her past promise, she would never persuade her ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... unwomanly nature of the science made her instinctively wish to conceal her love of it. But the more profound reason was that in her mind mathematics were directly opposed to literature. She would not have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude, the star-like impersonality, of figures ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... worn, with eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, plying her needle and thread: Stitch! stitch! stitch! in poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, she sang ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... out upon it all with a growing shadow in his eyes. He suddenly saw terrible results of this unwomanly struggle for office. He saw back of it also the need for employment which really forced these ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Into court and denounce him, in search of divorce, And fools would uphold you, as matter of course. Perhaps, like the Nation, a hatchet you'd take And his bottles of beer and cigar-boxes break, And get your name blazoned in all of the papers, By your rowdydow talk and unwomanly capers, No! the lips that touch liquor don't hanker to touch The lips of a ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... began again, "my soul is open to his eyes, and is not ashamed. I know I am going to do what would by the world be counted unwomanly; but you and I stand before our Father, not before the world. I ask you in plain words, knowing that if you cannot do as I ask you willingly, you will not do it. And be sure I shall plainly be dying before I claim the fulfilment of your promise if you give it. I do not want ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... long symposia held by her husband and Byron in Switzerland (June 1816), and how the pondering over 'German horrors', and a common resolve to perpetrate ghost stories of their own, led her to imagine that most unwomanly of all feminine romances, Frankenstein. The paradoxical effort was paradoxically successful, and, as publishers' lists aver to this day, Frankenstein's monster has turned out to be the hardest-lived specimen of the 'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... Gryce's explanation of his motives in perjuring himself before the Coroner was correct, and while the mass of people wondered at that instinct of pride which led him to risk the imputation of murder sooner than have the world accuse his wife of an unwomanly action, there were others who understood his peculiarities, and thought his conduct quite in keeping with what they knew of his warped ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... "making friends." I might have seen, had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for, childish, unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night watches, I have begun to think that I might have been a little kinder to her. But that really is a "delusion." I could not have continued pretending to love her when I didn't; could I? ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... compel me to pursue you! Nothing could have induced me to do anything so unwomanly except that you are ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... meekly. Mrs. Jameson, with Portia in her eye, intimates Shakespeare to have been about the only artist, except Nature, who could make women wise without turning them into men. And it is well worth the noting that, honourable as the issue of her course at the trial would be to a man, Portia shows no unwomanly craving to be in the scene of her triumph: as she goes there prompted by the feelings and duties of a wife, and for the saving of her husband's honour and peace of mind,—being resolved that "never shall he lie by Portia's side with an ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a wife, and it is her duty to like her husband's home," said Miss Heredith a little primly. She disapproved of the speaker, whose khaki uniform, close-cropped hair, crossed legs, and arms a-kimbo struck her as everything that was modern and unwomanly. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... love him—at least—Oh! sometimes I don't know. Her eyes light up when he comes, and she is listless when he goes. She always spends a longer time over her toilet, when we expect him home to dinner," she added, with a touch of nave femininity. "But— if it be love, then that love is strange and unwomanly; it is a love that will not ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a prisoner for no other reason than that he is loved by a woman. I have tried to teach you many things; the language of my people, their ways and thoughts, but I have failed to civilize you. I cannot make you understand that it is unwomanly—do not turn away. I am not indifferent. I have learned to care for you. Your beauty and tenderness have made anything ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... know before that to be Southern made a woman unwomanly,' I said. 'Where I came from I don't believe there's a girl would say a cruel thing like that or refuse a drink of cold water to soldiers doing their duty, friends or enemies. We've slept on the ground nine nights and ridden nine days, and had very little ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... in a paroxysm of distress. She reproached herself for her imprudence, her temerity, her unwomanly conduct, in having given away her heart to a man who she again began to torment herself by believing had never desired it. She remembered that her weakness, not her sincerity, had betrayed this humiliating secret to Sir Robert; and nearly ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... had not occurred to her until this moment that she had done something shameful and cruel and stupid and unwomanly. She shriveled mentally in the contemplation of it. Not until her husband had so unexpectedly revealed to her a hitherto hidden facet of his character—his masculine code of an eye for an eye and a tooth ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... his old tone of mentor, 'you know I don't for a moment chide you, but is there not a great deal of unwomanly weakness in your allowing yourself to be so overwhelmed by the sight of what, after all, is no novelty? Every woman worthy of the name should, I think, be able to look upon death with something like composure. Surely you ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... outcome are the same. The ardent longing after ideal purity in womanhood, which in the one gave birth to a conception whereof the very sorrow is but excess of joy found expression in the other through a vivid presentment of the nameless misery of unwomanly dishonour:— ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres. But deceive yourself not; there is no such community between you and Mainwaring. What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to despise as feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too soon, will shudder at as unwomanly and hateful." ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... maiden, tall and very fair. The fashion of her dress was strange, half masculine, yet not unwomanly. A fine fur tunic, reaching but little below the knee, was all the skirt she wore; below were the cross-bound shoes and leggings that a hunter wears. A white fur cap was set low upon the brows, and from its edge strips of fur fell lappet-wise ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... it would be but an imperfect sketch. She must be young, fair, gentle, pure, tender of heart, noble in soul, with a kind of shy, sweet grace; frank, yet not outspoken; free from all affectation, yet with nothing unwomanly; a mixture of child and woman. If I love an ideal, it is ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... for the feeling beginning with Katie seemed to grow, and widen, and widen, like the circles of water into which a stone is thrown, and she was condemned by her friends, by the people who had known her and her father, condemned as false to her friendship, as unwomanly. Katie she could forgive on account of her misery, but the others! She stood motionless in a world that she had never dreamed of. These whispers that her imagination multiplied seemed to roar in her ears. But innocence and pride kept her erect, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... benefit to her, or to any one else. Instead of this ridiculous system, educate a girl to be useful and self-reliant. "From babyhood they are given to understand that helplessness is feminine and beautiful; helpfulness, except in certain received forms of manifestation, unwomanly and ugly. The boys may do a thousand things which are 'not proper for little girls.'"—A Woman's Thoughts ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... earthly excuse for such absurd sensations. She knew that it was highly unconventional to experience any such difficulty of expression where acquaintance had been so brief; but was there, after all, anything unwomanly in letting him see that she was proud of him,—of his friendship, his daring? Had not every other woman gushed over him and called him splendid and some of them "lovely," while she had never yet dared ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... for her heart was beating madly from the pressure of his cheek, and the momentary touch of his arm; and gazing at the ring on her finger, she fiercely upbraided herself for this sinful folly. Wearing that opal, was it not unwomanly and wicked to thrill at the contact with one, who never could be more than her coolly kind, prudent, sagacious guardian? She felt numb, sick, giddy, and her heart—ah! how it ached as she tried to realize fully that some day he would ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... same, she is a little too—I hardly like to say unwomanly, but she behaved most strangely when the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... house of intrigue. Deep, dark intrigue and plotting. Thy wife has lent herself to a most unwomanly thing, and doubtless thou wilt tell her so, but Mah-li begged so prettily, I could refuse her nothing. I told thee in my last letter that thine Honourable Mother had been regarding the family of Sheng Ta-jen with a view to his son as husband of Mah-li. It is ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... a decorous attitood. That's feeminine, and as such is approved by the ladies, but"—and here Leander put his head on one side and gave a grotesque impression of outraged decorum—"pants is considered unwomanly." ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... let me read a paragraph again from this paper, the temperance organ of your State. The writer is still Gen. Carey. (The extract intimated that Miss Brown, supported and urged on by several others, made an unwomanly entrance into the Convention, and upon the platform itself, which was reserved for officers, and as it would imply, already filled). There were only the two other persons I mentioned who went with me to that Convention, but they took their seats ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... listened to too many sad stories from heart-broken wives and mothers not to know that the demand which the women of the land make in this matter comes not from love of power, is not prompted by false ambition, springs not from unwomanly aspirations, but does come from a direful need of self-protection and an earnest desire to protect those ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... is unwomanly in public. If you waltz with Lord Francis Eltham, you permit him to take a liberty with you in public you would not allow under any other circumstances. And then just look at dancers! How heated, flushed, damp, and untidy they look after the exercise! ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... chin in her hands and decided that there could be no doubt whatever of the villainy of Dick. To justify herself, she began, unwomanly, to weigh the evidence. There was a boy, and he had said he loved her. And he kissed her,—kissed her on the cheek,—by a yellow sea-poppy that nodded its head exactly like the maddening dry rose in the garden. Then there was an interval, and men had told her ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... kissed (ah, that stings!) Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them—cribbed— honour bright! Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right. Yet I swear it was shameful—unwomanly, Bill, sir—to say that I fibbed. Why, the poems were mine, for I bought them in print. Cribbed? of course they were cribbed. Yet I wouldn't say, cribbed from the French—Lady Bathsheba thought it was vulgar— But picked up on the banks of the Don, from the lips of a highly ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... remembered insults that had been proffered to her. It deepened further as she thought of that paper picked up on a bench of a little city square. The fear of having made a terrible mistake returned to her, more strongly than ever. Her efforts towards peace now seemed immodest, bold, unwomanly. But that first vision had been so keen of a quiet-voiced man extending a strong hand to welcome and protect as he smiled at her in pleasant greeting! Her vague notions of a far country in which was no wilderness of brick and mortar but only the beauty of smiling fields or of scented forests ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... not talking of such cases. Mrs Reardon had never anything of the kind to fear. It was impossible for a man such as her husband to behave harshly. Her conduct was cowardly, faithless, unwomanly!' ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... English dign* *worthy Unto thy malice, and thy tyranny: And therefore to the fiend I thee resign, Let him indite of all thy treachery 'Fy, mannish,* fy! O nay, by God I lie; *unwomanly woman Fy, fiendlike spirit! for I dare well tell, Though thou here walk, thy spirit ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his fortune. They sneered at the idea that we should study Hebrew with Mr. Hammond, and declared it a mere trap to catch Mr. Leigh. Now, Mrs. Murray, you know that I never had such a thought, and the bare mention of a motive so sordid, contemptible, and unwomanly surprised and disgusted me; but I resolved to study Hebrew by myself, and to avoid meeting Mr. Leigh at the parsonage; for if his sister's friends entertain such an opinion of me, I know not what other people, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... shattered life nearer to her heart's desire—with Jim Dyckman. Her husband, indeed, had taunted her with that intention, and now she had no sooner launched her good name down the slippery ways of divorce than she found Jim Dyckman married and learned that her premature and unwomanly hopes ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... indignation were just and natural; but that her somewhat over-conscious purity—her virginite savante, as Balzac phrases it in "Modeste Mignon," and her inability to give due weight to ameliorating circumstances were unwomanly. I confess I am not without sympathy with this criticism. Svava, though she is right in her vehement protest against masculine immorality, is not charming—that is, according to our present notion of what constitutes womanly ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... stallion; gibcat^, tomcat; he goat, Billy goat; ram, tup; bull, bullock; capon, ox, gelding, steer, stot^. androgen. homosexual, gay, queen [Slang]. V. masculinize Adj. male, he-, masculine; manly, virile; unwomanly, unfeminine. Pron. he, him, his. Phr. hominem pagina nostra sapit [Lat.] [Martial]; homo homini aut deus aut lupus [Lat.] [Erasmus]; homo vitae commodatus non donatus est ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... daughter of her father as of her mother; she alleged herself as proof of the fact that a girl was often a great deal more her father's daughter, and she argued that if Maxwell made Salome quite in his own spiritual image, no one would dream of criticising her as unwomanly. Then he asked if he need only make Atland in her spiritual image to have him the manliest sort of fellow. She said that was not what she meant, and, in any case, a man could have feminine traits, and be all the nicer for them, but, if a woman had masculine ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... short, for, quick as lightning, the ungovernable Infanta raised her hand, and let it fall upon his face with such vigour and good will, that the minister, unprepared for so unwomanly an assault, staggered backwards, and narrowly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... made such by your unmanliness. Unwomanly! Were you more manly, I had never shocked ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! Stitch! Stitch! In poverty, hunger and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... of Madame Roland on men of all modes of thought became most marked. Her parlors were the rendezvous of eminent men, and men destined to become eminent. It is impossible to discover, from the carping records of that time, that she asserted her powers by an unwomanly effort. Men felt in her presence that they were before a great intellectual being—a creative and inspiring mind—and it shone upon them without effort, like the sun. Among these visitors was Maximilien Robespierre, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same time. Mrs. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... guilty of two serious misdemeanors. You purposely misrepresented matters to Professor Cole and deliberately put aside my authority; not to mention the unwomanly way in which you behaved toward the sophomore team. Every girl who aided and abetted you in this is equally guilty. Therefore you will all learn and recite to me an extra page in history every day for two weeks. The use of the gymnasium will be prohibited you for the same length of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... friends." I might have seen had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might have been a little kinder to her. But that really is a "delusion." I could not have continued pretending to love ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 75.) Mr. Winwood Reade made inquiries for me with respect to the negroes of Western Africa, and he informs me that "the women, at least among the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to marry them. They are quite capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful attachments." Additional cases could ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the practical girl a startling lesson. With all her faults, she did not belong to the class that is hopeless, because so weak and shallow. Though her handsome face might often express much that was unlovely and unwomanly, it ever ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... express any sympathy for her father, then languishing under arrest, whereby she proved herself very wicked and unwomanly, no doubt. But neither womanly virtues nor Christian graces are wont to flourish in the school in which Diana Paget had been reared. She obeyed Valentine Hawkehurst to the letter, without any sentimental lamentations whatever. Her scanty possessions were collected, and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... no keepsakes, hideous perhaps, but dear for what they represent, no worn girlhood's books, no shamefaced toys, lingering from the nursery, no litter of any other member of her family? Perhaps. Mme. Modjeska, then, and even now one of the greatest actresses on our stage, called it an unwomanly room, but I am not quite sure that this is precisely what ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... gazed after him with undisguised admiration. How well everything he did became him; his firing up—his brusquerie—the very movements of his body, all so piquant, charming, and unwomanly! As he vanished from her admiring eyes, she turned, with flaming cheeks, on Miss Maitland, and said, "Well, aunt, you have driven them both out at the window; now, say something pretty to Fanny and me, and drive ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... excellent nerves, and was not at all timid; if anything, she thought herself a little too self-possessed, and was slightly ashamed of it, fancying it unwomanly. She had a great fear of ever being that, and with Mr. Lushington, who seemed to take it for granted that she ought to think as men do, and was to be blamed for thinking otherwise, she took especial pains to claim a ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... Dawn began to tell her story. She told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... hesitant, it often seems to make them bold. Boys, as we have seen, early assimilate the tradition that self-abuse is "unmanly" and injurious, but girls have seldom any corresponding tradition that it is "unwomanly," and thus, whether or not they are reticent on the matter, before the forum of their own conscience they are often less ashamed of it than men are and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... she applies the unnatural cosmetique, and covers herself with sweet perfumes, which vainly try to hide her disease and shame. To this end she decks herself with dashing finery and tawdry trappings, and with bold, unwomanly mien essays the streets of the great city. To this end she is loud and coarse and impudent. To this end she is the prostituted "lady," with simpering words, and smiles, and glamour of refined deceit. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... had first learned to love in happy unconsciousness, while they arranged the store together, became a glorified, artistic ideal. The Christine whom he had learned to know as false and heartless was now to him a strange, fascinating, unwomanly creature, beautiful only as the Sirens were beautiful, that he might wreck himself body and soul before her unpitying eyes. He sought to banish ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... freak of nature. As for the woman who hesitates to subscribe all the thirty-nine articles of romantic love, if such a one dares to put her reluctance into words, she is certain to be accused either of unwomanly ambition ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... accorded to art, that it may have ample scope and range in the delineation of human feeling and romantic situation; but when we see a representation of 'Don Juan,' we instinctively strive to ignore the plot, with its odious characters (the sensual Don, the coarse-minded servant, the unwomanly, man-seeking Elvira, the vengeful Anna, the insignificant Ottavio, the light-headed and shallow-hearted Zerlina), and live only in the beautiful music which the prodigality of genius has wasted upon so poor a theme. Not even that libretto could degrade the pure, serious, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... must have loved her earliest girlish hours with excessive delight, and perhaps it is the garish contrast of the youth of the young women of this time, energetic and, from the mid-Victorian standpoint certainly, so unwomanly, that prompts this gentle and refined woman to people her gracious solitudes of spirit with those still more gracious lady-like beings which she employs. For her pictures, that is her most typical ones, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Instead of just waiting in sweet, sighing idleness I took courses in domestic science, studied dietetics, mastered double-entry and learned to sew. I also began reading up on economics. The latter amused the family, for they thought the higher education of women quite unwomanly and had refused to let me ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... only answer she received was: "You are a girl; what do you want of Latin and Greek and philosophy? You can never use them." And when it was discovered that she was secretly studying law, and was ambitious to stand side by side with her brother at the bar, smiles and sneers rebuked her "unwomanly" aspirations. And though she argued the point with much spirit, unable to see why the mere fact of being a girl should confine her to the necessity of being a "doll, a coquette, a fashionable fool," she failed to secure a single ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... lunch and gallanted her to the table we had just left. Just like a man! Poor Mary! she had to fly round and get up what she could; Mrs. Winthrop devoted herself to Ernest with a persistent ignoring of me that I thought rude and unwomanly. She asked if he had read a certain book; he had not; she then said, "I need not ask, then, if Mrs. Elliott has done so? These charming dishes, which she gets up so nicely, must absorb all her time." "Of course," replied Ernest. "But she contrives to read the reports of ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... her now? Nothing, nothing! She had yielded him up to the beautiful woman he had loved before he saw her, Nell; and it was shameful and unwomanly that she should feel a joy ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice |
