PART III.
Girls and Young Women, Their Education and Training.
Education, considered in its largest sense, has the mission of rendering the youth of both sexes beautiful, healthful, strong, intelligent and honest. Thus it comprehends such physical and moral training as shall most surely conduce to these objects. We have but to glance around us at the dwarfed, miserable, sickly specimens of feminine humanity, which really constitute the rule rather than the exception, to observe at once how far short of the attainment of these ends is our system as actually conducted. The very name of youth should imply beauty, strength, vivacity, and integrity. We have said sufficient elsewhere to show that these attributes in no way pertain to our American youth as a class. We propose briefly, in this connection, to analyze somewhat philosophically, the errors in practice which have conduced to these disasters. It is conceded on all sides that the race is unmistakably deteriorating. With some it is the fashion to charge this upon the advance of centuries, and to say that as the age of the race increases deterioration advances. If this were true of the human family, it ought also to be true of the brute creation; for the same laws which govern the physical condition of the one, are likewise applicable to that of the other. Sheep, cattle, and horses, however, when placed in conditions favorable to their development, increase in fecundity, in size, in strength, and in beauty. It cannot be otherwise with man. But the mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body), is the desideratum. The soul participates strongly in the vices of the body. Rosseau says, very truly, "The more feeble the body the more it commands; the stronger the body the more it obeys." Among savages and beasts, and even the lowest classes in civilized communities, the feeble or imperfect die before reproducing themselves, so the race is perpetuated only by the strong and healthy ; but with civilized nations, science preserves the existence of debilitated creatures, who marry and reproduce their similars. The art of medicine has altogether failed in that noble duty of bringing the feeble to the condition of the strong; in other words, of eradicating hereditary vices of constitution. The child who inherits the consumption of his father, surrounded by dangers which menace the lungs, is placed in conditions of temperature, air and exercise which are most directly calculated to develop his inherent malady. The son of the madman, in the place of enforced indolence, is daily crowded with excessive study. He who inherits intestinal disease, is delivered to a government of chance or caprice. Neither temperament, constitution, weakness, nor diseased proclivities of children are in any way studied or considered, either in families, or in public and private establishments. These facts apply with still greater force to the ignorant and poorer classes, but happily, with them, misery kills off the weaker, those who are not sufficiently strong to resist it. So we hear much of the health and vigor of the children of the poor. They are dying in hordes! but the blame should not rest wholly upon science. Little thought or attention is paid except for those who are actually and palpably ill ; and advice is unsought, and even despised, for those who are apparently well. When people learn to avail themselves of the means of prevention, then they may hope to see the race of pigmies give place to a generation of giants. Based upon an exact knowledge of the constitution of the parents, and foreseeing the dangers which will menace the child, proper physical education will indicate, in due time, the surest means of avoiding them. The varied nutrition, the changes of air, and water, and places, which our wonderful system of rail-roads puts at our disposal; the varied and skillful systems of exercise, the use of all these will enable us to regulate and to change the most deplorable hereditary taints. It is not claimed that vices of constitution can be thus entirely abolished, or that the puny children may be thus brought to the standard of the most robust, but we do claim that natural defects may be so far remedied that a condition of well-being and comparative comfort, as well as a wonderful prolongation of life, may be secured, and that, in a very few generations, these taints may be eradicated, and the race vastly improved.
With few exceptions, we are not born with the diseases with which our parents are afflicted, but only with a tendency to those diseases. These usually declare themselves at about the age at which our parents were first attacked. This affords time and ample warning to pursue such a judicious system of physical and mental training as shall almost certainly prevent them. For example: a child whose father died of consumption at the age of thirty-five, knows that whatever may be his physical conformation, he is at least liable to fall a victim to that disease between thirty and forty. Now, he has twenty or thirty years of preparation to avert a threatened calamity. Who can doubt what the result of a proper effort must be?
The "weakly systems" are not the only ones who suffer from the prevailing notions of education; the most robust and healthy organizations are debilitated and destroyed. At an age when the organism demands air, and space, and sun, and motion, when the senses are dominated by the inherent necessity for exterior action, we behold children, girls especially, condemned to inaction, excluded from light and air in the paternal mansion, carefully secluded from both through tender regard, if not for the fine furniture, at least for the complexion and the clothing of the poor creatures who are thus made to violate the most obvious dictates of nature. Entire days are passed without beholding a ray of sunlight or breathing the external air. In many private and public schools it would really seem as though everything were expressly devised to weaken the body and to enervate the moral senses. Pupils are constrained to breathe the vitiated atmosphere of the study hall during many hours of each day, subjected the while to an amount of mental application to which even adult natures would succumb. In most of these establishments the provisions for physical development are wretchedly defective.
We make these reflections here because the improvement of the race depends so largely upon the physical improvement of the mothers of the race, and because it is the fashion to deprive girls of physical advantages to even a greater extent than boys. The girls of our country who have the misfortune to be bred in city life, whether in fashionable or semi-fashionable circles, are truly objects of commiseration. In this fast age the very methods most calculated to force a premature womanhood, are those universally adopted, and both at home and at school the poor girl sees and hears so much that is positively poisonous that our only wonder should be, not that our women are proverbially sickly and delicate, but that we have any women at all deserving the sacred name.
Much that has been said in the chapter devoted to boys, is equally true of girls, but with the latter a system of training is pursued, which not only forces a precocious sexual development, but wholly destroys that maidenly freshness and innocence which, at the pace we are going, will soon cease to have real examples, and will be ranked only with the dreamy visions of poets and romancers.
We purpose to deal plainly with a few salient facts within the knowledge and observation of all, and to connect these facts with their legitimate consequences in the prevalence of evils so universally deplored. In behalf of girls, even more strongly than of boys, we would plead for early isolation of the sexes—not that complete separation which would exclude children of the same family from innocent and legitimate participation in childish sports and pleasures, but isolation in sleeping, and dressing, and all those little matters which expose the differences of conformation, and are capable of suggesting ideas of curiosity or comparison. "With the opulent there is no sort of difficulty in effecting this to perfection, and with nearly all classes it can be carried to the fullest extent necessary for the purpose. There is required only a full appreciation of its necessity and binding obligation. This kind of isolation should begin as early as the fourth or fifth year, and rigid supervision, with lessons in propriety, should be maintained thereafter. Erotic propensities are often very early manifested, and, if as early detected, can be easily controlled.
Love of dress is less an innate passion with girls than it is one so early implanted by pernicious example and precept as to seem congenital. It is, moreover, fraught with the greatest dangers, not only to the health of mind and body, but even to chastity itself. The statistics of prostitution abundantly prove the correctness of this assertion, and show the ruinous vanity of mothers who inoculate their daughters with this ridiculous rivalry almost with the first words they are taught to lisp. Whatever pride may actuate a mother to decorate her little daughters with the flummery of fashion, should be carefully explained to them as the requirement of neatness and propriety. Surely, a little harmless equivocation here were necessary for those who will engage in this preposterous contest. It were far more honest, however, as well as simply decent, to limit the outward adornment of girls entirely to the requirements of comfort and scrupulous neatness.
Of late years a new and horrible rivalry has arisen—that of children's parties. It is now a common occurrence to hold these entertainments for little children, at which the extravagances and dissipations of their elders are imitated to the very letter. Each fond matron seeks to excel her acquaintances in the mimic pomp and fashion displayed, and a modern child's party differs from others only in the size of the dramatis personce. The newspapers pander to the unnatural performance, and the superb toilets of the misses and exquisite make-up of the masters are elaborately blazoned in the column of "Fashionable Gossip." Children from eight to thirteen are thus initiated in the mysteries of dissipation, including flirtation and liaisons. We know of many who have attended from three to twenty of these diabolical inventions in the course of a single "season." "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
It is well-nigh impossible for a pure-minded and innocent young girl to avoid listening to or beholding, if she do not finally participate in, the debasing conversations and practices of her companions, and we know there are some things which no young lady can listen to or behold without pollution.
- <smaller>"Vice is a creature of such hideous mien,
- That, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
- But, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
- We first endure, then pity, then embrace."</smaller>
Thus a bad education impresses upon the whole moral nature a false and vicious direction, and that exquisitely frail and delicate organization, all made of nerves and sensibility, the most impressionable and sensitive being of living nature, is thus early placed in the very conditions most calculated to enervate and destroy her. All medical authorities agree that nothing is more calculated to exalt sensibility, to sensualize the heart, and expose the nervous system to the most fatal perturbations than a luxurious and voluptuous education. This, remember well, O parents! is the concentrated wisdom of the experience of every age and country; not the unsupported opinion of any one man however brilliant his genius, and that, in science, there is no difference whatever on this topic. The remedy is less obvious. He would be rash indeed, who would enter a crusade against the dominion of fashion so far as to prohibit the cultivation of those arts which are really innocent, and even ennobling, in themselves, and which lead only indirectly to pernicious results. It is in the abuse of good things that evil generally consists, and we would, therefore, compromise with the demands of the age by requiring that lessons in both dancing and music should begin early in life, and be made tasks rather than pleasures, and that all occasions in which these accomplishments can conduce to dissipation or excitement, be scrupulously prevented until the great physiological change from girl to woman has been accomplished. We are satisfied that it is less the polite arts themselves than the occasions to which they lead, which impart to them their dangerous character. Surely, that sublime language, "the concord of sweet sounds," which, we are taught, is the very highest form of adoration and love, to which even the hosts of Heaven are attuned, cannot be intended by our Creator to foster unchaste thoughts or desires, save, as in other things, by the unnatural perversion of His gifts. As for the perusal of romances, attendance on balls and theatres, the luxurious indolence of the drawing-room, the perusal of newspapers, they should be forbidden fruit to every young person. There are those who will read these pages who, with an inconsistent prudery—or hypocrisy (?)—impossible to believe, will deem our work imprudently plain, and yet who do not scruple to place in the hands of their daughters the journals of the day, albeit teeming with advertisements and "news items" of the most revolting and indecent character.
Young America in petticoats, as in trousers, manifests no intermediate stage of existence between childhood and adult age. If she do not marry from the school-room, she is at least "engaged." The exceptions are those who do not secure eligible "lovers," or those who are too unattractive to find any. An "engagement," in these modern times, is, however, rather a genteel method of legalizing improper relations with some favored one of the opposite sex, than a veritable betrothal. These singular liaisons often exist for a long time, and become patent to "all the world" before they are even suspected by the parents whose consent is regarded as a mere matter of form, and is sought, if matrimony be finally determined on (!) more for the purpose of securing the necessary supplies than of seriously submitting the question of approval. Too often a girl is "engaged to be married" many times before the "right one" is secured, and the young heart is "used up" before it should dream of love. We waive the question of propriety in permitting young ladies and gentlemen to hold possession of the drawing-room night after night, to the banishment of their natural guardians, who are too indolent or too careless to discharge their duties of supervision, and inveigh at once against the privileges which, with happily increasing exceptions, are so improperly accorded to those who hold the acknowledged relation of lovers. It is the pernicious custom to accord to these favored beings all the rights of solitude and retiracy that they could reasonably expect if the marriage ceremony had actually transpired. Except a private bed-room, they are as secluded whenever they may choose to be so, as any married couple could wish. "With closely drawn curtains, and with doors either locked or sacred from intrusion, they pass the "wee sma' hours ayont the twal'" in learning the details of passion, and too often its entire mysteries, to the detriment of their physical, and the utter ruin of their moral health.
Only a short time since there appeared in one of our principal pictorial weeklies, a beautifully executed design representing two lovers unwilling to say good-night. The youthful gallant has sunk exhausted into a large arm-chair. On the mantel stands a clock, the indices of which designate the hour, half-past eleven, to which the charming betrothed regretfully points, while riveting a gaze of languid passion on her admirer, who returns it with meaning attention. The whole scene is painfully suggestive, and is chiefly notable in its truthful revelation of our national style of courtship. A very young lady, herself just "engaged," pointed out as a defect in this representation, that the lady's hair and dress were too smooth and unruffled for the hour and the occasion. "0, times! 0, manners!" Really, our American courtships are but little better than "bundlings." Under all these circumstances it is not surprising that a broken engagement should seriously compromise a young lady's matrimonial prospects, and that young men should be shy of one whose charms, they are well assured, have been already freely lavished on another. "We know of young ladies, very pretty and attractive girls, who shine as belles in society year after year, who are unable to obtain husbands wholly from the circumstance that they are too well known to the young men as girls by whom the most daring freedoms have been not only unrebuked but encouraged. Long drives and walks in solitary pairs, unchaperoned at balls and parties, even the sacred edifice polluted by flirtations scandalous to behold—of what are the fathers and mothers of America thinking, to afford these allurements and temptations? Should not their own experience lead them to protect those dependent on them from such dangers? If those whose authority is unasserted or unheeded, do not restrain them, let them listen to instruction from one who knows thoroughly the weakness of women and the perfidy of men.
Young women of America, if you knew how lightly you are estimated by those who so earnestly and passionately seek your favors, you would certainly deny them, if the effort cost your lives. There are degrees in libertinism: the affectionate caress, the wanton impropriety, the deliberate seduction; and, however humiliating, the assertion may be, it is nevertheless a fact, that these several stages are at the command of him to whom you surrender the outposts of your purity. The world is full of maxims which demonstrate the truth of this. "If a woman hesitates, she is lost;" "C'est le premier pas qui coute;" and this sentiment is multiplied into all languages, held by all nations. Such is the universal sentiment of mankind, and all history shows that the more innocent a girl may be, at heart, the more sure is she to fall if she surrender the advance guards of her honor. The philosophy of the affair is plain. No pure-minded girl would permit the slightest familiarity unless strongly impelled to do so by sentiments of love. This could not exist without its component element of passion. Latent, undeveloped it may be, but the spark is there, and if once developed, it is uncontrollable in direct proportion to the strength of love and confidence. The thought that you are deliberately surrendering yourself to the power of any man, is so startling that, if you believed it, you would be well-nigh exempt from danger; for you would certainly guard the fortress with a vigilance that no strategy could surprise.
The danger, then, consists in the indulgence of pleasures which seem pure and innocent in themselves, but which alas! are the poisoned arrows which destroy the very power of resistance. In point of fact, however, it makes but little difference whether the mere physical virginity be lost or not, if the maidenly purity of heart be gone; if all degrees of sensuality, save the mere physical consummation, have been tasted. The Biblical instructions on this subject are literal truth, be sure of it, and no sophistry can change the obvious meaning of Divine revelation. Remember that you have actually committed the sins which you have willfully entertained, desired, and cherished in your hearts. Repent of them in secret humiliation, and sin no more. Obsta principiis (resist all beginnings). Even while writing this chapter we learn the particulars of a most sad, yet too common occurrence, so common, in fact, that we are tempted to narrate it as typical, especially as the heroine is from one of our leading and most fashionable families. Mr. Croesus, a gentleman of high notions and exclusive tastes, has a family of lovely and beautiful daughters, who receive their gentlemen friends a la mode. One is an exquisitely moulded being, whose highly-wrought and sensuous nature imparts a charm to her manners which has rendered her an object of great attention, and early brought around her hosts of fashionable striplings, indeed all whose social rank could procure them an entrance to the spacious drawing-rooms of old Croesus. One suitor after another was accepted by the daughter, and as promptly rejected by the father. No measures were adopted to prevent the opportunities for forming these attachments, but when formed they were rigorously, almost ferociously opposed. To be kept a prisoner in her chamber until the required pledge of renunciation had been obtained, was a thing of frequent occurrence for the poor susceptible being, who could not learn the lesson that she might hold her fingers in the flame, but must not burn them. It was to break up one of these affairs of the heart, more serious than the rest, that a European tour was resolved upon, and for some months the family have been abroad. A European "count" found no trouble in bestowing his fondest attentions, but every obstacle to his honorable proposals; and how surprising it must have been to the gentleman to be received as an acknowledged and favored suitor, yet denied the rights which, by the usage of his country, he might justly claim. The result was altogether natural; an elopement, detectives, thirty-six hours' concealment, discovery, and a meeting of the respective papas to arrange for the wedding ceremony. Dissatisfied with the terms proposed (probably of the marriage portion, for these European gentlemen are great fellows for such details, especially when they condescend to marry untitled American girls), the father continued his travels, taking along his daughter, what was left of her, perhaps with the hope of disposing of her to better advantage, and so all Europe is scandalized, less at the very natural maneuver of M, Le Comte, than at the inconceivable stupidity of Crcesus, pere.
The girls of our country are trained and educated in the idea that matrimony is the end and aim of their existence; to marry well, that is, to marry wealth if possible, but at all events to marry. The air-castles of our young misses are the objects of their thoughts and dreams, the topics of their daily conversation. Not one word do they hear of the good old-time veneration for voluntary virginity. Their Bibles have for them no literal meaning as regards the passages inculcating the rewards awaiting her who piously resolves upon perpetual chastity. Our modern Christianity, alas! has no honorable niche for "old maids." They are the Pariahs of society, at least in the estimation of young girls and married women. "O, poor thing! she might have married Mr. , and be now the wife of a cabinet minister; he always loved her, but I suppose she looked higher then." O, miserable worldlings that ye are! Wait till you behold her wearing the crown of the virgin, and singing the celestial canticles that none others may dare to sing; fortunate if you behold her not as Dives beheld Lazarus.
The latest modern invention, which we fear will plague the inventors, is the proposition that women are entitled to the same "privileges" as men in conducting political affairs, and in all offices of honor and emolument now monopolized by the "sterner sex." This heresy has been christened by the seductive cognomen of "Woman's Rights." Set in motion by a singular class of advocates, it would almost seem to have become epidemic. As though dissatisfied with the irksome lullaby and the wearisome routine of household duties, hosts have joined the invading forces, and now their conventions, their speeches, their special organs, and their sophistical catch-words have assumed so great proportions that they really seem on the verge of securing political prominence.
The fierce and indomitable energy of the American people, which has survived the most mighty social and political revolution of this world, must and will have some fiery excitement with which to occupy itself; and, having amused itself with the labor and the Colonial questions, it has seized upon the bauble of Woman's Rights, and bids fair to dignify it into a terrible engine of destruction. Let us examine what it will do for our daughters in its present aspect, and what if carried to successful operation. The mere discussion of such a revolution as a possibility, the bare toleration of the idea, is sufficient in itself to injure the mind and to operate powerfully upon the imagination of these impressionable creatures—to excite in them feelings of indignation and dissatisfaction with their present condition. Every argument that ingenuity can suggest, is brought to bear in assuring them that they are deprived of certain inherent "rights" by an unjust and tyrannical age. It is of but little moment to them what these so-called rights may be; the feeling that they exist, and that they are unjustly withheld, is sufficient to occasion a sort of sentimental rebellion dangerous to tranquil repose and to feminine modesty. If carried out in actual practice, this matter of "Woman's Rights" will speedily eventuate in the most prolific source of her wrongs. She will become rapidly unsexed, and degraded from her present exalted position to the level of man, without his advantages; she will cease to be the gentle mother, and become the Amazonian brawler.
While it is difficult to see how any single abuse could be reformed, it is easy to imagine how very many would be created by the "political enfranchisement and eligibility of woman." It would most assuredly introduce a new and alarming element of discord into the family circle, already weakened, well-nigh ruined, by the singular customs of the time.
The tendency to isolation has been ably commented on by a recent writer as the greatest danger to American society; the living in hotels and boarding-houses, and the "loss of the restraining and purif3dng associations that gathered around the old homestead." What remains of the family is only held together by the graces and virtues of woman; and the facility of obtaining divorces is fast breaking down even this last hope. The same writer truly says, that "when the family goes, the nation goes too, or ceases to be worth preserving."
We cannot imagine how men can be reformed by investing woman with the ballot, but we can readily believe that many women would thereby become debased. The chivalric veneration with which man now regards woman, arises from the distance, as well as the difference, between them; in fact, from the advantages she possesses as woman. This would vanish with her political equality, for he would then be in perpetual and open strife and rivalry against her; whether as a political enemy or political ally, the distinctions of sex will be forgotten, and she will lose that respect and deference with which she has hitherto been so generously endowed; she will be treated rather as man than as woman; "she cannot have the advantages of both sexes at once." Nature, not legislators, has assigned to the two sexes their respective spheres, as we shall prove in another chapter, in which the "woman question" will be argued more at length.
We have shown that the very evils we deplore, and which it is sought to reform, have arisen from laxity and negligence of home duties. How, then, can we hope to reform them by still further increasing this laxity and neglect? If what we have said of domestic training be true, it will be seen how necessary it is to render mothers more faithful and vigilant, instead of weakening their interest and obligation to become so. Observe the families of those women who devote almost their entire time and attention to even meritorious and essentially feminine, but outside works—how neglected and proverbially wild and ungovernable are the children. Everyone says of such a woman, "She does good in a general way, but neglects her poor family, who have the prior claim, to her attention." But how is it with those women who neglect these sacred duties to follow schemes of ambition or of pleasure? They are justly regarded as monstrosities. Extend the suffrage to woman, throw her into the political arena, set her squabbling and scheming for office, and you multiply indefinitely the number of monstrosities. The evils of child-murder, of unnatural repugnance to offspring, will, for obvious reasons, be prodigiously increased; so the attainment of women's rights will prove the establishment of babies' wrongs.
Suppose a case: Mrs. Le Baron is elected to a lucrative and honorable office. She finds, to her infinite disgust, that she is "as ladies (used to) love to be, who love their lords." She must gire up the office or the nursery. Who can doubt what her choice will be if she has already broken down her morality by employing the usual political intrigue? Indeed, with female suffrage "political intrigue" will gain a new and even a worse significance than it now enjoys. It will certainly prove an additional and very powerful danger for woman's chastity.
Undoubtedly the special destiny of woman is to be wife and mother. If, from mysterious causes, she fail of this destiny, there are the poor and motherless, the forsaken and the down-trodden, the sinful, and the sorrowful, and the suffering—behold her charge! Behold the spiritual children of "old maids!"
Reforms are needed—none can be more sensible of this fact than we—and the remedy can be applied by woman; this we not only concede, but claim. But it is as woman, as wife, as mother that she must do the work: as woman, to soften asperities, and to refine what else were coarse and brutal; as wife, to render home bright and cheerful, "the sweetest place on earth;'* as mother, to direct and inspire the noble and righteous aspirations of her sons—to train and mould to exquisite beauty, grace, and loveliness the character of her daughters—to implant in all her children that piety, and filial love, and obedience, which are the surest guarantees of respect for civil law and authority.
Then let us have our daughters educated as women, and not as men. Let us have them trained for the duties of the household and the nursery, and the sweet enchantments of the domestic hearth. "Be that you are—that is, a woman; if you be more, you're none."