This is a sequel to a piece Gladden wrote for boys, about growing up to be trustworthy, hard-working, and charitable. Indeed, one could take this essay and change certain things, and have it applicable to modern girls: "beauty pageants" or "fashion shows" instead of "society," "novel reading" replaced by "texting," etc. Then as now, lack of exercise is called to attention, and emphasis is very firmly on responsibility and not wasting time. A word about "novels"—Gladden is not speaking of what they would term good tales, like Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, or classics of that ilk, but as shorthand for "French novels," which were closer to what we might think of as romance novels, with a good deal of flirting, royal shenanigans, and infidelity."But there are girls, too, in the cities and the towns. Do not they deserve to be talked with in a friendly way, as well as the boys? Have n't you something to say to them ?"
Thus a chorus of girls, and their mothers.
I confess to you, maidens and matrons, that the task to which you thus summoned me was one that I undertook with some diffidence. When I was talking to boys I was sure of my ground. Something about boys 1 do know, for I have been a boy; but the wisdom of experience fails me when I try to discuss the problems of life as they present themselves to girls. That I might have something worth saying I determined, therefore, to seek instruction by sending a circular letter to a large number of those who once were girls, but who now are women of experience and reputation, asking them to tell me—
"1. What are the most common defects in the training of our girls?
"2. What principles of conduct are most important, and what habits most essential, to the development of a useful and noble womanhood?"
This circular brought me more than forty letters, and it is upon the truths contained in these letters that this talk will be founded. I only undertake to reflect, in an orderly way, some of the advice of these wise women. I shall give you their words sometimes, and sometimes my own.
I shall find it necessary, now and then, to turn in this talk from the girls to their mothers. Indeed, a large share of what is written in these letters is intended for mothers rather than for girls, and cannot, therefore, be so freely used in this place as I should like to use it; but the girls are generous enough, I am sure, to be willing that their mothers, and their fathers too, should have some share of the advice.
In the first place, then, girls make a great mistake in being careless about their health. I do not know that they are any more careless than boys, but their habits of life, and especially their habits of dress, are generally more injurious to health than those of boys. The great majority of our gi4ls take much less vigorous exercise in the open air than is good for them: those who can walk three or four miles without exhaustion are exceptions.
"It seems to me a mistake," says one of my correspondents, "that boys and girls should be trained so differently, particularly in regard to out-of-door sports. With a strong love for everything in nature, I remember as a child what torture it was to be kept always in-doors, in some feminine employment, while my strong brothers (strong on this very account, perhaps) could spend all their leisure time in the open air. I was much interested years ago in reading a sketch of Harriet Hosmer's girlhood. Her father, having lost all his children by consumption, and finding her delicate, resolved to bring her up as a boy, teaching her all sorts of athletic sports, and this making her a strong, healthy woman."
The lack of exercise on the part of girls is due, no doubt, in part, to the foolish styles of dress, in which it is impossible for them to be out in rough weather, or to make any considerable muscular exertion. "The lack of warmth in clothing, and the foolish adjustment of what is worn," is said in one of these letters to be one of the chief causes that produce "the peculiar nervous diseases to which women are subject."
I wish I could make you all understand how great a mistake you make when you sacrifice health, or the physical comfort on which health depends, to appearance or to any other earthly good; when you neglect to provide, by regular exercise and wise care, a good stock of physical vigor for the labors and the burdens of the coming years. Without this foundation, all that you can learn in school, and all that wealth can buy for you, will be worthless. "Intellect in an enfeebled body," says some one whom I quote from memory, "is like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket,—it only makes him sink the sooner."
Another great mistake that many of our girls are making, and that their mothers are cither encouraging or allowing them to make, is that of spending their time out of school in idleness, or in frivolous amusements, doing no work to speak of, and learning nothing about the practical duties and the serious cares of life. It is not only in the wealthier families that the girls are growing up indolent and unpracticed in household work; indeed, I think that more attention is paid to the industrial training of girls in the wealthiest families, than in the families of mechanics and of people in moderate circumstances, where the mothers arc compelled to work hard all the while.
"Within the last week," says one of my correspondents, "I have heard two mothers, worthy women in most respects, say, the first, that her daughter never did any sweeping. Why, if she wants to say to her companions. 'I never swept a room in my life,' and takes any comfort in it, let her say it; and yet that mother is sorrowing much over the short-comings of that very daughter. The other said she would not let her daughter do anything in the kitchen. Poor deluded woman! She did it all herself, instead!"
The habits of indolence and of helplessness that are thus formed arc not the greatest evils resulting from this bad practice: the selfishness that it fosters is the worst thing about it. How devoid of conscience, how lacking in all true sense of tenderness, or even of justice, a girl must be, who will thus consent to devote all her time out of school to pleasuring, while her mother is bearing all the heavy burdens of the household! And the foolish way in which mothers themselves sometimes talk about this, even in the presence of their children, is mischievous in the extreme. "O, Hattie is so absorbed with her books, or her crayons, or her embroidery, that she takes no interest in household matters, and I do not like to call upon her." As if the daughter belonged to a superior order of beings, and must not soil her hands or ruffle her temper with necessary house-work! The mother is the drudge; the daughter is the fine lady for whom she toils. No mother who suffers such a state of things as this can preserve the respect of her daughter; and the respect of her daughter no mother can afford to lose.
The result of all this is to form in the minds of many girls not only a distaste for labor, but a contempt for it, and a purpose to avoid it as long as they live by some means or other.
There is scarcely one of these forty letters which does not mention this as one of the chief errors in the training of our girls at the present day. It is not universal, but it is altogether too prevalent. And I want to say to you, girls, that if you are allowing yourselves to grow up with such habits of indolence and such notions about work, you are preparing for yourselves a miserable future.
"Work," says one of my letters,—and it is written by a woman who does not need to labor for her own support, and who does enjoy with a keen relish the refinements of life,—"work, which you so plainly showed to be good for our boys, is quite as necessary for our girls."
Closely connected with what has just been said, is the mistake of many girls in making dress the main business of life. I quote now from one of my letters, whose writer has had unusual opportunities of observing the things she describes:
"From the time when the little one can totter to the mirror to see 'how sweetly she looks in her new hat,' to the hour when the bride at the altar gives more thought to the arrangement of her train and veil than to the vows she is taking upon herself, too large a share of time and thought is devoted by mothers and daughters to dress."
"I have heard," writes one of my correspondents, "a vain mother say of her beautiful baby, 'I 'm so glad it 's a girl; I can dress her so much finer than I could a boy.'" O woman! woman! to what depths of degradation you have sunk when you can look into the face of a baby lying in your lap,—the face of a child that God has given you to train for the service of earth and the glory of heaven,—and have such a thought as that find a moment's lodgment in your mind! The pity of it, the pity of it, that children should ever be given to such women! It is one of the inscrutable things of Providence. What can such a woman do but destroy the souls of her children?
Listen to these strong words of another correspondent:
"From the cradle to the casket, and including them both, the important question is not of the spirit and its destiny, but of the frail house of the soul,—how much money it can be made to represent,—what becomes it, and is it all in the latest fashion. The occasional sight of a young girl simply and girlishly dressed is like a sight of a white rose after a bewildering walk through lines of hollybocks and sunflowers. It is generally conceded that early tastes leave indelible results in character. What may be prophesied for the future of our girls with their banged, befrizzed hair, jingling ornaments and other fashions, which some one has well characterized as 'screaming fashions'?"
It is not that there is any harm in thinking about dress, or in wishing to be tastefully attired; it is only that personal appearance comes to be in the minds of so many of you the one subject, to which everything else is subordinate. This weakness, if indulged, must belittle and degrade you.
I do not think that the girls, or their mothers, are wholly to blame for this absorbing devotion to dress. The vanity of women is stimulated by the foolishness of men. A young woman who is modestly and plainly clad is much less likely to attract the notice of young men than one who is gorgeously arrayed. From bright, intelligent, finely cultured, sensible girls, whose chief adorning is not the adorning of braided hair, or golden ornaments, or of gay clothing, the young men often turn away in quest of some creature glittering in silks and jewelry, with a dull mind and a selfish heart. But I beseech you to remember, girls, that a young man who cares for nothing but "style" in a woman is a young man whose admiration you can well afford to do without. If that is all he cares for in you, you cannot trust his fidelity; when you and your finery have faded, some bird in gayer feathers than you are wearing will easily entice him away from you, and the sacred ties of marriage and parentage will prove no barrier to his wayward fancies. The girl who catches a husband by fine dress too often finds that the prize she has won is a broken heart.
Another mistake that many of our girls are making is in devoting too much of their time lo novel-reading. The reading of an occasional novel of pure and healthful tone may be not only an innocent diversion, but a good mental stimulant; but the reading of the lighter sort of novels (which, if they do not teach bad morality, do represent life in a morbid and unreal light, and awaken cravings that never can be satisfied), and the reading of one or two or three of them in a week, as is the common habit of many of our girls, must prove grievously injurious to their minds and hearts. It is mental dissipation of a very dangerous sort; its influence is more insidious than, but I am not sure that it is not quite as fatal to character as, the habitual use of strong drink. Certainly the mental dissipation of novel-reading is vastly more prevalent than the other sort of dissipation, not only in "the best society," but in the second best, as well; and five women's lives are ruined by the one where one life is wrecked by the other. "Ruined," do I say? Yes; no weaker word tells the whole truth. This intemperate craving for sensational fiction weakens the mental grasp, destroys the love of good reading, and the power of sober and rational thinking, takes away all relish from the realities of life, breeds discontent and indolence and selfishness, and makes the one who is addicted to it a weak, frivolous, petulant, miserable being. I see girls all around me in whom these results are working themselves out steadily and fatally.
Another mistake which our girls are making—or which their parents are making—is a too early initiation into the excitements and frivolities of what is called society. It was formerly the rule for girls to wait until their school-days were over before they made their appearance in fashionable society. At what age, let us inquire, does the average young lady of our cities now make her debut? From my observations, I should answer at about the age of three. They are not older than that when they begin to go to children's parties, for which they are dressed as elaborately as they would be for a fancy ball. From this age onward they are never out of society; by the time they are six or eight years old they are members of clubs, and spend frequent evenings out, and the demands of social diversion and display multiply with their years.
"I think," writes one of my correspondents, who loves little girls, "the greatest defect in the training of girls is in letting them think too much of their clothes and of the boys. Little girls that ought to be busy with their books and their dolls are often dressed up like dolls themselves, and encouraged to act in a coquettish manner that many of their elders could not equal."
"It seems to me," writes another, "that one prominent defect in our modern training of girls is undue haste in making them society young ladies, and cultivating a fondness for admiration by lavish display of dress. Before leaving the nursery, many a child does penance by being made a figure on which a vain mamma may gratify her taste in elegant fabrics and exquisite laces to be exhibited at a fashionable children's party. This trait ensily becomes a controlling one, and girls scarcely in their teens, with the blasé manner of a woman of the world, will scan a lady's dress, tell you at once the quality of the material, the rarity of the laces, the value of the jewels—even venture an opinion whether or not it be one of Worth's latest designs, showing what apt scholars they have become."
"It is in the claims of society upon our girls," writes another, who knows them well, " that their strength is most severely taxed, and their characters endangered. To meet creditably the demands of this master, our girls must attend day-school, dancing-school, take music lessons, go to parties, concerts, the theater, sociables; be active members of cooking-clubs, archery-clubs, reading-clubs; ride, skate, walk, and go to the health-lift. To do this and to dress with appropriate anxiety for each one of the occasions, a young girl runs an appalling gauntlet of foes to the healthy development of her soul and body."
I am sure that the early contact of our girls with the vanities and the insincerities and the excitements of social life is doing a great injury to many of them. Girls of from twelve to sixteen years of age, who ought to be in bed every night at nine o'clock, are out at parties till midnight, and sometimes later, thus destroying their health and keeping their young heads filled with thoughts which are not conducive to healthy mental or moral growth.
And as for the children's parties to which my correspondents apply words of such severity, I cannot conceive anything more hurtful than they are in the way that they are generally managed. If a little company of children could be brought together in the afternoon or in the early evening, all plainly dressed, so that they might romp and play to their hearts' content, and take no thought for their rainment—if they could be healthily fed. and wisely amused, with no resort to kissing-gamcs, and no suggestions of beaux—that would be innocent enough; but to dress these children in silks and laces, in kid gloves and kid slippers, with frizzed hair and jewelry—to parade them up and down the drawing-rooms for the foolish mothers who are in attendance to comment on their dresses in their hearing, saying, "O, you dear little thing! How sweet you look! What a beautiful dress! How that color becomes her!" then to chaff them about their lovers and sweethearts, and laugh at their precocious flirtations,—oh, it is pitiful! pitiful! I say to you, mothers, that if there are any children for whom my heart aches it is these innocent, beautiful children who are being sacrificed on the altars of foolish fashion. The children of the poor, thinly clad, poorly fed, rudely taught, are not anymore to be pitied than are many of the children of the rich; their bodies may suffer more, but their souls are not any more likely to be pampered and corrupted and destroyed.
From this early entrance into fashionable society the girls go right on, as I have said, plunging a little deeper every year into the currents of social life, until many of them, as my friend has said, are utterly blasé before they are twenty. Society is a squeezed orange; they have got all the flavor out of it, they have nothing serious nor sacred to live for, and you sometimes hear them wishing they were dead.
I suppose that many of us who are parents yield, with many misgivings and protests, to this bad custom, which drags our children into social life and its excitements at such an early age. We give in to it because all the rest do, and because it is hard to deny to our children what all their companions are allowed. And sometimes I suspect you might go into a company of girls and boys who are keeping late hours, and carrying their social diversions to an injurious excess, and find there not a single child whose parents did not heartily disapprove of this excess. Yet the thing is allowed, not so much because the parents lack authority over their children, as because they lack the firmness to resist a bad social custom.
I will mention only one more sad mistake which some, I hope not many, of our girls are making, and it shall be described for you in the language of one who has had the amplest opportunities of knowing whereof she speaks.
"The most common defect in the training of girls is, in my judgment, the ignoring of the command to honor and obey parents. From the age of thirteen, girls and parents alike seem to regard this commandment as a dead letter. The girl of thirteen regards herself as her own mistress; she is already a woman in her own estimation, and has a right to do as she likes. If she prefers to go to parties, sociables, and so forth, three or four evenings in a week, rather than spend her evenings in study, she does so. Both she and her parents, however, expect and demand that she is to be ranked at graduation as high as the laborious, self-denying, faithful worker in her class.
"Again, in one congregation in this city I know of four cases well worthy of thoughtful consideration. The four families ail are respectable, such people as form the majority of your own congregation. In each of three of these families is only one child. Kach one of these three girls left school when she chose to do so, went into society when she pleased, spent as much time on the street as she liked, and all three, still under twenty, have now become a by-word and reproach among all who know them. In the fourth family there were three girls, two of whom cast off all restraint, while father and mother were regularly taking part in prayer-meetings. This father and mother excused themselves by saying they did not know what their girls were doing, yet the girls lived at home all the time and their neighbors knew all about their conduct."
This habit of running loose, of constantly seeking the street for amusement, and even of making chance acquaintances there, is practiced by some of the girls of our good families, and it is not at all pleasant to see them on the public thoroughfares, and to witness their hoydenish ways. I know that they mean no harm by it, but it often results in harm; the delicate bloom of maiden modesty is soiled by too much familiarity with the public streets of a city, and a kind of boldness is acquired which is not becoming in a woman.
Such are some of the errors which are frequently committed in the training of our girls, and some of the dangers to which they are exposed; I am sure that you will see that none of them are imaginary, and that all of them are serious. I know that many of you girls, and mothers, too, are fully aware of them, and on your guard against them. If I have succeeded in drawing the more careful attention of any of you to any of them, I shall not have written in vain.
I have left myself small space to speak of the principles and habits requisite to the development of a noble womanhood. These, however, have been suggested in what I have said already. In avoiding the mistakes to which I have referred, you will be guided to the right principles of conduct. Let me speak very briefly of some of the elements which go to make up a beautiful womanly character:
The first is industry. Willingness and ability to work lie, as I have said already, at the basis of all good character. The moral discipline, the patience, the steadiness of purpose, the power to overcome, that are gained in work, and only in work, are just as necessary to women as to men; and the girl who is given no chance of learning these traits is sadly defrauded.
Besides, there are certain strong reasons why girls ought to be well trained in that particular kind of work which they are most likely to be called to perform. "All women, however situated," writes one of my correspondents, " should have a practical knowledge of manual labor; should know how to cook, to purchase household stores, how to avoid waste, how to buy, cut and sew garments, how to nurse the sick. All these things should be a part of a thorough education, and few women can pass through life, no matter what their means or station, who will not find the time when such knowledge will help others, even if they personally may get on very well without it." So say a great many of them, and it is all true.
"I would train my daughter," writes one, "to regard all work, in the broadest meaning, as honorable. Whatever is necessary to be done is honorable work, for highest and lowest alike."
After industry comes thoroughness. It is not enough to be busy; we ought to do well whatever our hands find to do, else we may be forced to say what Hugo Grotius said when he came to the end:
"Alas! I have spent my life in laboriously doing nothing." To be thorough in study, to be thorough in all work, ought to be the aim of every girl, not less than of every boy. Our methods of female education have encouraged superficiality rather than thoroughness; we have given our girls smatterings of many things, and mastery of few things. We teach them a little Latin, and a little French, and a little Italian, and a little German, and a little Spanish, and a little English—precious little, too, generally; we give them a few lessons on the piano (not often too few, however, of these), and a few lessons on the organ, and a few on the harp, and a few on the guitar, and a few, perhaps, on the violin or the banjo; we let them take oil-painting for a quarter, and water-colors for a quarter, and crayons for a quarter, and china decoration for a quarter, and so on, and so on; and the poor things, when they are done with it all, know a little of everything, and not much of anything. Don't do it, girls; life is short and art is long; you cannot be mistresses of all the arts. It is better to confine yourselves to a single branch and make yourselves proficient in that. It is much better to say, "This one thing I do," than to say, "These forty things I dabble in."
After thoroughness, independence. A habit of relying on your own judgment, a habit of thinking for yourself, and caring for yourself, not selfishly, but in a true womanly fashion—a habit of taking responsibility and bearing it bravely is one of the habits that women as well as men need to cultivate. Your parents ought to give you some chance to form this habit; it is a great mistake to shield a girl from all care, and then, by and by, when the helpers on whom she has leaned fall by her side, to leave her with judgment untrained and powers undisciplined, to carry the burdens of life.
Respect for character, for manhood and womanhood, more than for money or rank, or even genius, is another of the first lessons that every girl ought to learn. Virtue, truth, fidelity, these are the shining things that every true woman honors, and she who values above these a coat-of-arms or a bank account, degrades herself. There is a silly snobbery among some of our girls that is the reverse of lovely. I see them now and then spurning association with worthy young men and women who are poor, and hear them talking in a large way about blue blood, when all the blue blood that is in their veins flowed into them from the veins of tanners or wood-choppers. Shame upon the girl who cannot recognize and honor in others the same qualities that lifted her father or her grandfather to wealth and station!
I might speak of many other elements of character indispensable to the truest womanhood, such as truthfulness, and conscientiousness, and purity, and modesty, and fidelity, but I will only name one more which sums up much of what my friends have written, and that is:
Consecration. It is a great word. It means many things. It means, to begin with, that God has some purpose concerning you, some good work for each of you to do. It means that He has given you the power to serve in some way, and that He wishes you to devote that power which He has given you to that service for which He created you. What kind of work He has for you to do I cannot tell; but I know that He has called every one of you with a high calling, to some ennobling work. Not to be butterflies, not to be drones, not to be sponges, has He called any of you; but to be helpers, and ministers, and friends of all good; to wait with ready hands and loving hearts for the service that you can do for Him. Most of you will be called, by and by, to the dignity of wifehood and motherhood; there is no greater dignity than that and no nobler work.
One of the ladies asked me to describe the successful woman. There is more than one type, I answer, but among them all is none more illustrious than that of the wife and mother; the woman who builds and rules a beautiful and happy home; who holds the honor of her husband and the reverence of her children; who leads those whom God has given her up to vigorous and virtuous manhood and womanhood, imparting to them by daily communion with them her own wisdom and nobleness, and sending them forth to do good and brave service in the world. The woman who does such work as this, I say, is a successful woman ; and there is no grander work than this within the measure of a man or even of an angel.
But marriage is not for all of you, and should not be for any of you the chief end. "I try to teach my daughter," writes one, "that while happy wifehood is the glory and blessing of every true-hearted woman's life, and maternity the crown of this—more to be desired than queendom, she should hold herself too pure and dear a thing to marry for home, or position, or because it is expected of her." Many women are living happily and nobly out of wedlock, and no one is fit for it who is not fit to live without it.
To what kind of service our Lord has called you, then, I cannot tell; but I know that for you as for Him, the joy of life must be, not in being ministered unto, but in ministering. God help you to understand it, girls, before it is too late. There is so much good in living, if one knows how to live; there is such delight in serving when one has learned to serve, that I do not like to see any of you going on aimlessly and selfishly, and laying up in store for yourselves a future of disquietude and gloom. There is a better and brighter way than this, a way that has never been pointed out more clearly than in the simple words of our good friend, Mr. Hale: "To look up and not down; to look forward and not back; to look out and not in; and to lend a hand." Set your feet in that path, and follow it patiently, and you will find it the path "that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
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