A TALK WITH GIRLS AND THEIR MOTHERS.
By Washington Gladden
“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? Haven’t you something to say to them?” Thus a chorus of girls and their mothers. That I might have something worth saying, I determined 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. 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 girls 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 a 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 other children by consumption, and finding her delicate, resolved to bring her up as a boy, teaching her all sorts of athletic sports, and thus 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 either 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 are 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 are 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. “Oh, 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 for 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 am 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 inexorable 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 hollyhocks 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 to novel-reading. 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.—Washington Gladden, in St. Nicholas. (To be concluded next week.)