ladyhood

Burney: but for some time before, in the days of Sarah Fielding, it was only possible in the ways of Afra and of Mrs. Haywood, who, without any unjust stigma on them, can hardly be said to fulfil the idea of ladyhood, as no doubt Miss Fielding did.

The English Novel George Saintsbury 1889

Fierce jests about the Scotch who came to make their fortune off their richer neighbors, about their clannishness and their canniness, and their poverty and their pride, and still lower and coarser jibes about other supposed peculiarities were then still as current as the popular crows of triumph over the French and other similar antipathies; and Kirsteen's advent was attended by many comments of the kind from the sharp young Londoners to whom her accent and her slower speech, and her red hair and her ladyhood were all objects of derision.

Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago Margaret 1891

Nan Enstad writes of the same flamboyance that working women were challenging the dominant meaning of "ladyhood," creating their own distinctive style that implicitly denied that labor made them masculine, degraded, or alien. "

"Make It Yourself": Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890-1930 2006

A far cry from the genteel group from whence they came, the WSPU immediately showed its difference in the fact that it attracted women from the working and middle-classes — women who were less inhibited by the traditional trappings of “ladyhood”.

Shoulder to Shoulder | Edwardian Promenade 2010

And for many a day the young lady, scared at least out of a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her arms and shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises – tokens of caresses which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late at night.

When the World Was Young 2010

Her key argument is that young women, like men, sought to preserve rather than challenge the Southern tradition of male chivalry and white ladyhood.

Berkshire Post-mortem « Knitting Clio 2008

After allowing my pocket to be filled with “notions” by the generous “Biddy,” I took leave of Miss Kenjins, who is good, clever, and agreeable enough to redeem the young-ladyhood of the island — nor was there enough of pleasant promise for the future to compensate for the regret I felt at leaving those who had received a stranger with such kindness and hospitality.

The Englishwoman in America 2007

And I think what's really remarkably interesting, Anderson, is that in the early days of her first ladyhood, she sometimes could be tone-deaf.

CNN Transcript Feb 9, 2005 2005

In those days, no bevy of Greshamsbury young ladies had fairly represented the Greshamsbury young ladyhood if Mary

Doctor Thorne 2004

All which was rather strong language on the part of a young lady, but was thought by those other young ladies at Castle Richmond to show the very essence of becoming young-ladyhood.

Castle Richmond 2004