society.

I say society's assize advisedly, because it is only in society that the
Disagreeable Girl can play a prominent part, assuming the center of the
stage. Society, in the society sense, is built upon vacuity; its favors
being for those who reveal a fine capacity to waste and consume. Those
who would write their names high on society's honor roll, need not be
either useful or intelligent--they need only seem.

And this gives to the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper
box factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon & Co. ask for
results; the stage demands at least a modicum of intellect, in addition
to shape, but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the palm is
awarded to palaver. But do not, if you please, imagine that the
Disagreeable Girl does not wield an influence. That is the very
point--her influence is so far-reaching in its effect that George
Bernard Shaw, giving cross-sections of life in the form of dramas,
cannot write a play and leave her out.

She is always with us, ubiquitous, omniscient and omnipresent--is the
Disagreeable Girl. She is a disappointment to her father, a source of
humiliation to her mother, a pest to her brothers and sisters, and when
she finally marries, she slowly saps the inspiration of her husband and
very often converts a proud and ambitious man into a weak and
cowardly cur.

Only in society does the Disagreeable Girl shine--everywhere else she is
an abject failure. The much-vaunted Gibson Girl is a kind of de luxe
edition of Shaw's Disagreeable Girl. The Gibson Girl lolls, loafs,
pouts, weeps, talks back, lies in wait, dreams, eats, drinks, sleeps and
yawns. She rides in a coach in a red jacket, plays golf in a secondary
sexual sweater, dawdles on a hotel veranda, and can tum-tum on a piano,
but you never hear of her doing a useful thing or saying a wise one.
She plays bridge whist, for "keeps" when she wins, and "owes" when she
loses, and her picture in flattering half-tone often adorns a page of
the Sunday Yellow.

She reveals a beautiful capacity for avoiding all useful effort.

Gibson gilds the Disagreeable Girl.

Shaw paints her as she is.

In the _Doll's House_ Henrik Ibsen has given us _Nora Hebler_, a
Disagreeable Girl of mature age, who, beyond a doubt, first set George
Bernard Shaw a-thinking. Then looking about, Shaw saw her at every turn
in every stage of her moth-and-butterfly existence.

And the Disagreeable Girl being everywhere,