The old masters usually gave eve just one barely modesty-preserving fig leaf. In March 1910, Melbourne's Punch magazine in a cartoon put Vida Goldstein in an utterly modesty-preserving dress of dozens of them. The cartoon was captioned 'The modern Eve and the new apple-will she pluck it?' It showed Senate candidate Vida Goldstein, like the biblical Eve, yielding to the temptation to reach out to a forbidden fruit on a tree. The cartoon's forbidden apple is spectacularly plump and tempting and is labelled 'Seat in Parliament'. Goldstein was that great 1910 novelty, a female candidate in the federal election. Election day was 13 April, Goldstein's 41st birthday. She was standing for a Victorian seat in the Senate, just as she had in 1903 when, as the first woman in the Empire to stand for election to a national parliament, she had won 51 497 votes but had come 15th out of 18 candidates.
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