CHAPTER X
Filipino Youths and Maidens
Manners and Social Condition of Filipino Girls--Sentimental
Boy Lovers--Love-making by Proxy--How Courtship is Usually
Performed--Premature Adolescence of Filipino Youth--The _Boda
Americana_--Filipino Girls Are Coquettes, But Not Flirts--Exposure
of Filipino Girls to Unchaste Conversation--Unceasing Watchfulness
over Girls--Progressive Changes in All the Above Matters.
With regard to their women the Filipinos are an Occidental people
rather than an Oriental one. Marriage is frequently entered upon at
the will of the parent, but few parents will insist upon a marriage
where the girl objects. While the social liberty accorded a young girl
is much less than what is permitted in our own country, there is no
Oriental seclusion of women. Children accompany their parents to balls
and fiestas, and maidens are permitted to mingle freely in society
from their baby-hood. At fourteen or fifteen they enter formally
into society and begin to receive attentions from men. In the upper
classes seventeen or eighteen is the usual time for marriage. By the
time a girl is twenty-two or twenty-three she is counted _passee_,
and, if unmarried, must retire into the background in favor of her
younger sisters.
The young girls are exceedingly attractive. They are slender,
and their heads sit beautifully above long swan-like necks.
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