American girl

“ The American does not repress his daughter. You admit that you like the result. Why wrinkle your brow in contemplation of the future? Why not believe that what seems to be true is true, that the American girl flourishes agreeably in her freedom? ”

“ It begins to look as if it was at college that the American girl learned that it is not good for woman to be alone—even with her family. At any rate, that independence which is so characteristic of the American girl, which is, as I have been informed and believe, somewhat disconcerting to men, is, undoubtedly, largely the result of the American girl’s improved relations with her sister women. When she is as successfully gregarious with regard to women as men are with regard to men, her sex maturity will be complete. ”

“ I feel it in my bones that in spite of a gleam of intelligent interrogation as to the wisdom of pampering the American girl, I am going to keep right on—”
“You mean, if you will be honest,” blurted the Professor, “that you will keep on letting her alone as you do the boy child. That is all. Own up. The most that you have done is cease the special repression of the girl. For better or for worse the American has done simply that: forget sex in rearing his young.”
“Ah, Professor! when we forget sex are we not in danger of a costly transgression? Are we not combating nature?” ”

“ The American girl is, however, born into an atmosphere of unconsciousness of all this, and, unless she belongs to a very narrow coterie, does not reach this point of view either as believer or antagonist. This endues her, at her best, with a sweet and subtle fragrance of humanity that is, perhaps, unique. Free from any sense of inherited or conventional superiority or inferiority, as devoid of the brutality of condescension as of the meanness of toadyism, she combines in a strangely attractive way the charm of eternal womanliness with the latest aroma of a progressive century. ”

“ I believe that it is quite commonly agreed that while the French girl in society is, perforce, much more reserved than the American, the English girl at a ball or an “evening” exhibits a freedom from restraint not commonly seen in America. These things, however, count for little except as showing the domination of mere form, for there can be no doubt that in social life, using the term broadly, the American girl has more liberty, and uses more liberty than the English girl. ”

“ Social custom is so arbitrary that it might be, and doubtless would be, a reckless and inconclusive thing for any one to assume that the American girl in society is actually so radical as her reputation in other avenues might suggest. ”

“ I am talking always of the American girl of good parentage and refinement, who is the average New York business girl; not of the gum-chewing, haughty misses of stupendous pompadour and impertinence, who condescend to wait on one in the cheaper shops. The average girl is sinned against rather than sinning, in the matter of impudence. Often of remarkable prettiness, and always of neat and attractive appearance, she has not only the usual masculine advances to contend with, but also the liberties of that inter-sex freedom peculiar to America. ”

“ She was of opinion that every true-born American girl has her head so well balanced and such a fine sense of beauty and the fitness of things that she could never step from the paths of wisdom, or stray from that straight white road that her religion and early training had laid down for her; that the more you trust an American girl the more she is trustworthy. ”

“ Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. ”

“ The young ladies certainly bore some resemblance to the type of American girl which one never fails to meet in travelling. They were dressed in the height of the fashion, pretty with the delicate evanescent beauty of too many of our girls, and all gifted with the load voices, shrill laughter, and free-and-easy manners which so astonish decorous English matrons and maids. ”

“ I mean that in knowing so much and assuming so much the American girl child may be missing some of that sweetness that for her lies in a more old-fashioned girlhood. As a kind of unbent twig she is losing some of the more dependent happiness belonging to her and not grudged to her. ”

“ Meanwhile it is pleasantly easy to detect many interesting changes in the situation of the American girl within the span of the century. Whether she merely illustrates the social and political changes which have taken place, or, as we so often have been urged to believe, actually indicates why they have taken place, she presents a spectacle of peculiar interest, a spectacle which has so successfully piqued the analytical spirit of the period that it would be expounding the commonplace to do more than quickly sketch a few of the outlines. ”

“ She described herself as a servant-girl, out of place; and her charm lay in all her manifestations,—her tones, her gestures, her look, her way of speaking and what she said, being so appropriate and natural in a girl of that class; nothing affected; no proper grace thrown away by attempting to appear lady-like,—which an American girl would have attempted,—and she would also have succeeded in a certain degree. If each class would but keep within itself, and show its respect for itself by aiming at nothing beyond, they would all be more respectable. ”

“ The American girl isn’t any girl; she’s a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species. ”

“ It is the intangible, esoteric philosophy which permeates the households of thousands of American families, where the mothers are the companions and confidantes of the daughters. It is an understood thing. You would be surprised to know how young some girls are when they have thoroughly mastered this wonderful tact with men. And what is it that makes the American girl so dangerous for all the other women in the world to compete with? It is because she studies her man. ”

“ Teach the girls to be American; to be independent; to scorn to copy fashion, manners, or habits that come from decaying civilizations, and which outrage all sentiment of refinement, laws of life, or principles of common sense. The American girl is naturally independent and well endowed with reason and common sense. Once shown the wisdom and importance of this American movement, and she will not be slow to cordially embrace it. ”

“ But her elders know, looking on, that our American girl, the comrade of her parents and of her brothers and their friends, brought up from babyhood in the eager talk of politics and society, of religious belief, of public action, of social responsibility—that this typical girl, with her quick sympathies, her clear head, her warm heart, her outreaching hands, will not permanently be satisfied or self-respecting, though she have the prettiest dresses and hats in town, or the most charming of dinners, dances, and teas. ”

“ And if this is true of our English girls, still more would it be true of the American girl, who has a unique position and influence of her own, and is dowered with that peculiar capacity and graciousness which seem to belong by divine right to the American woman. ”

“ Miss America is no illusion, if some spectators have doubted their senses.
By the grace of nature she is that she is. If the American man continues to pay her the supreme compliment of not understanding her, that is his [21] affair. It always is easier to perceive the other’s folly than our own—especially when the exciting cause is a woman. We know better than the spectator why we permit certain seeming tyrannies! We analyze the American girl in a purely Pickwickian [22] spirit, not because we expect actually to discover facts, but for the immediate pleasure of the speculation. ”

“ Thoroughly American, they show well, first the half-bantering, half-real feeling of the poet, artificial in expression, yet not altogether untrue, while her answer shows the American girl pure and simple, the conventional courtesy of the first being happily balanced by the naïve frankness of the second. ”

“ We can understand that there is a merely relative difference of attitude between the savage lover who woos his lady with a club, and the modern suitor who swears to give up all of his clubs for her sake. What perplexes us is our anxiety to explain our modern instinct, and (what is more perplexing) our anxiety to explain her; to ascertain and even to catalogue her essential traits—to discover, if not why we prefer the American girl, at least what manner of girl it is that we thus are instinctively preferring. ”

“ We are proud of the ideal American girl. We do not mean, of course, the self-esteemed, arrogant young miss who derides all conventions and calls herself "free." In her we are not interested at all. But there is the true American type—the young girl who is essentially a lady, who has self-reliance but is not bold, who is firm without being overbearing, who is brainy but not masculine, who is courageous, strong and fearless, yet feminine. She has no need of the chaperon; and it is because of her that the "decay of the chaperon" has been so rapid in America. ”

“ The American girl, as above said, strikes one as individual, as varied. In England when we meet a girl in a ball-room we can generally—not always—"place" her after a few minutes' talk; she belongs to a set of which you remember to have already met a volume or two. In some continental countries the patterns in common use seem reduced to three or four. In the United States every new girl is a new sensation. Society consists of a series of surprises. Expectation is continually piqued. ”

“ The American girl is only a girl after all, and because she has acquired a conversational fluency which the Englishwoman will only arrive at twenty years later, it is not just to suppose that she must also have acquired an additional twenty years' maturity of mind.
Most English readers are familiar with the picture of the American girl who flits through Europe seeing nothing in the Parthenon or in Whitehall beyond an inferiority in size and splendour to the last new insurance company's building in New York. ”

“ This is the American spirit, the inquiring spirit, the tendency to insist upon the re-establishment of standards. The American girl always is in the attitude of being willing to admit the superiority of man—if he can prove it. Here enters her Americanism. Her contention is that you cannot transmit relativity. She summons science to show that new criteria are necessary, and she continually is calling man into the lists to defend his titles, to repeat his victories, or surrender the trophies. ”

“ There is, of course, a widespread impression in England that American women as a rule are not womanly. The average American girl acquires when young a self-possession and an ability to converse in company which Englishwomen only, and then not always, acquire much later in life. Therefore the American girl appears, to English eyes, to be "forward," and she is assumed to possess all the vices which go with "forwardness" in an English maiden. ”

“ How much more numerous the motives which can be given an American girl than one who lives on foreign soil! Look at the German girl, for example. Her country arbitrarily divides its people into high and low. The peasant maiden has so long stayed one side of the barrier, she thinks she always must; so, with her scanty loaf of black bread near her on the ground, she leans against a tree, knits her stocking, and tends the flock. When night comes she goes home to her rude stone cottage, lifts a prayer to the Virgin, if she is an Austrian, and one for the king. ”

“ The American girl child is getting a good deal of sugar—figuratively. The question comes, Is it good for her? Is her freedom, her undomestic training, her intellectual development, to the advantage of the race? I believe with Mr. Ruskin that you can’t make a girl lovely unless you make her happy. ”

“ The American girl is past-mistress in the art of turning to account her little capital of beauty, youth, and virtue. To bring about the realisation of a dream, she knows how to employ all love's artillery, and if the object of her desire is recalcitrant, she can fire red-hot balls. ”

“ The American girl is bright, cultivated, and refined; she is pretty and interesting, and yet when you hear her say, as many a one does every day of her life, about a book, or a song, or a play, or somebody's manner, "Oh, I caught on to it," or about something of which she was tired, something that wearied her, "Oh, I'll give it the shake," or of somebody who was very quick in manner or perception, "Oh, ain't he fly?" ”

“ The young American girl, however, of the better and of the best classes, is to be met and observed everywhere. She moves through life with the assured step of a princess, too certain of her position and familiar with her power even to dream of a fear. She looks on her surroundings from above with the eye of a mistress, and expects, of course, to see all things give way before her, as in our republican society they generally do.
During the few months I had spent in New York I had diligently kept out of society. ”