(no subject)

In today's installment of "huh, history": I'm still working my way through the collected works of Wharton, and I came across the short story "The Dilettante", originally published in Harper's in 1903. There's pages of mental wankery from the protagonist about how awesome he is for having a non-mistress that he's trained into emotionlessness and introducing his fiancée to her, and then his non-mistress basically tells him, dude, she knows we've never been together and you're an emotionless jerk and says along the way, "Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer forbidden to contemplate the relation of the sexes." Again, 1903.