Girlhood

“ Those who look with sympathy and love at girlhood today, cannot help wishing that some Voice of power would ring out through every place where girls are found saying—"Everybody take hold!" If everybody would respond to the task as that night in the fire and the storm, the girl, in body, mind and spirit might easily be saved. ”

“ It is the great work of Girlhood. It is the moral art to which it is to apply all its ingenuity and energy. Girlhood is not all a holiday season; it is more a working time, a study hour, an apprenticeship. ”

“ There was in this woman's being—in her eyes, her face, her every movement—that combination of nonchalance and dignity which comes to beautiful and bright-minded girls when they are beginning to leave girlhood behind them. ”

“ I DO not think I need apologise for sending out another tale about girls and for girls—a tale of everyday life, such as numerous everyday girls in this Nineteenth Century have to live. There may be already a legion of books belonging, more or less, to the same class; but the omnivorous appetite of modern girlhood is not yet satisfied. ”

“ As to the child herself, she grew steadily and normally into young girlhood, in time into young womanhood, not given to much display, reserved of judgment as well as of speech, ofttimes sullen in mood, yet withal a step or so higher than her mother on the ladder of feminine charm. ”

“ These thoughts may seem to lead us far away from the occupations and interests of girlhood; but they emphasise what is the important thing—the need to recognise the years of girlhood as years of preparation. ”

“ Girlhood comes but once.—Don’t be in a hurry to grow into womanhood. Be a joyful, playful, happy little girl just as long as you can. Of course you will not want to play or be with your friends all the time, or even most of the time. You will be in school much of the time. ”

“ Is the Girlhood of to-day a fit preparation for the duties that will devolve upon the women of the next generation? Parents ought to ask themselves this question. And all young women should consider it well. ”

“ The advice of an English lady on this point seems peculiarly pertinent. “Let women,” says she, “of a certain age beware of the affectation of youth, if they would avoid the shipwreck of their respectability and character. As the loveliness of girlhood fades from their cheeks, and the liquid brilliancy of youth departs from their eyes, let them make unto themselves charms which neither the rust nor moth of time can corrupt ”

“ The first subject will deal with the girl during the age when sex first manifests itself, in that most fascinating, interesting and puzzling period of a woman's life—the budding period, called girlhood. ”

“ They must soon know that they are made for a purpose as grand as that which brought the Saviour of the world into being. They must soon know that their powers were made for the highest order of usefulness and excellency. They must soon know that if in Girlhood they regard themselves as playthings and pets, in womanhood they will have to be drudges or the cast-off dolls of their boyish husbands, or [Pg 14] the hangers-on to a society they would but can not be a part of. Is life a preparation for eternity? so is Girlhood a preparation for womanhood. ”

“ Girls especially are fond of exchanging confidences with those whom they think they can trust; it is one of the most charming traits of a simple, earnest-hearted girlhood, and they are the happiest women who never lose it entirely. ”

“ Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint and girlhood’s influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving husbands and fathers. ”

“ The elements of a true female character should be carefully studied. It would be well if some strong hand should write out the moral philosophy of Girlhood as a book for schools and academics as well as families, that every young woman might have line upon line and precept upon precept, in the formation of her character. All desire to possess a true character, but all do not know how to acquire it. ”

“ This aloneness to Nepeese was burdened with no thought of danger. There were times, now, when the thought of being alone was pleasant to her, when she wanted to dream by herself, when she visioned things into the mysteries of which she would not admit even Pierrot. She was growing into womanhood—just the sweet, closed bud of womanhood as yet—still a girl with the soft velvet of girlhood in her eyes, yet with the mystery of woman stirring gently in her soul, as if the Great Hand were hesitating between awakening her and letting her sleep a little longer. ”

“ I regard it as one of the privileges of my youth that I was permitted to grow up among those active, interesting girls, whose lives were not mere echoes of other lives, but had principle and purpose distinctly their own. ”

“ It would be a step towards the settlement of this vexed and vexing question if girls would decline to classify each other by their occupations, which among us are usually only temporary, and are continually shifting from one pair of hands to another. ”

“ Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does not, except in appearance, lose her first thin, luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the completeness of womanly character. ”

“ It was a new world to her, and they seemed a different race of creatures from the girls whose lives were spent in dress, gossip, pleasure, or ennui. They were girls still, full of spirits fun, and youth; but below the light-heartedness each cherished a purpose, which seemed to ennoble her womanhood, to give her a certain power, a sustaining satisfaction, a daily stimulus, that led her on to daily effort, and in time to some success in circumstance or character, which was worth all the patience, hope, and labor of her life. ”

“ Late hours, children's parties, sensational novels, 'flashy' papers, love stories, the drama, the ball-room, talk of beaux, love, and marriage,—that atmosphere of riper years which is so often and so injudiciously thrown around childhood,—all hasten the event which transforms the girl into the woman. ”

“ We want the girls to rival the boys in all that is good, refined, and ennobling. We want them to rival the boys, as they well can, in learning, in understanding, in all noble qualities of mind and heart, but not in any of the rougher qualities and traits. We want the girls to be gentle—not weak, but gentle—and kind and affectionate. We want to be sure that wherever a girl is there should be a sweet, subduing, and harmonizing influence of purity and truth and love pervading and hallowing from center to circumference the entire circle in which she moves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were fair girls, to look at whom was fatal; dark girls that set one’s heart aflame; girls with red gold hair and grave grey eyes, whom one would follow to the confines of the universe; baby-faced girls that one longed to love and cherish; girls with noble faces, whom a man might worship; laughing girls, with whom one could dance through life gaily; serious girls, with whom life would be sweet and good, domestic-looking girls—one felt such would make delightful wives ”

“ What can home, school, and society in general do for the adolescent girl, that her awakening may be sweet and sane, that her future usefulness may not be impaired or her life embittered by wrong choice at the brink of womanhood? ”

“ But, on the other hand, the keynote of the girl's adolescent mental life is awakening. Her whole nature calls out for a larger, fuller, more intense life. Home, school, society, dress, all take on new aspects under the transforming power of the new sex life stirring and perfecting itself within. The world is beckoning to the emerging woman, and her every instinct leads her to follow the beckoning hand. ”

“ If the child that I carry under my heart is a girl, what shall I wish for her? I shall wish that she may live a rich full life, and that she may complete the work that her mother has begun. She shall never be compelled to do anything abhorrent to her deepest feelings. ”

“ With girls, we foster the womanly ideal and encourage them in the direction of proper feminine conduct to promote the accredited qualities of womanhood.
We also see evidenced at times the wish to remain a child, and to retain the privileges and attentions of childhood, which apply to neurotic persons. ”

“ A holy war of the sexes was proclaimed, and the sacred shibboleth of the New Thought, the New Ethics, and the New Love was soon in the mouth of every woman possessed of the true feminine esprit de corps. And with the praiseworthy object of adjusting the balance of nature, and of arriving so far as possible at the ideal harmony of an almost perfect equation, in some cases even the little boys would be brought up as girls, while, conversely, the little girls would be educated as boys. ”

“ But, notwithstanding girls should not be treated with unkindness, nor the first openings of the passions blighted by cold severity; yet I am of opinion, that young females should be accustomed very early in life to a certain degree of restraint. The natural cast of character, and the moral distinctions between the sexes, should not be disregarded, even in childhood. That bold, independent, enterprising spirit, which is so much admired in boys, should not, when it happens to discover itself in the other sex, be encouraged, but suppressed. ”

“ So, too, when our own novelists carry their stock puppets through the nine hundred pages held 245 to be necessary for the due display of their follies and disasters, we may be sure that they are of the kind which finds favour in the eyes of the ordinary English reader; that the girls are the girls who please young men or do not alarm mothers, and that the men are the men in whom women delight, and think the ideals of their sex. ”

“ Illustration of the subject by a Scripture anecdote. Misery and danger of indecision. How to reform. Perseverance. Errors of modern education.
This trait of character has been recommended to young men too exclusively. I know of no reason why it is not equally important to young women, and equally becoming the sex in general. One thing, at any rate, I do know; which is, that thousands of young women—and the world through their imperfection—suffer, in no trifling degree, from the want of this virtue. ”

“ What I would, therefore, teach the girls is this: that they have got to mother the boys, that they are the guardians of all that is best and highest in them, of all that makes for the chivalrous American gentleman, and that their womanhood should therefore be to them a fountain of fine manners, of high thoughts, and noble actions. ”

“ Here the first lessons of human life, the incipient principles of morality, and the rules of social intercourse are to be impressed on the plastic mind. The boy is here to receive the model of his permanent character, and imbibe the elements of his future career. Here the instinctive delicacy of the young female, one of the characteristic ornaments of her sex, is to be expanded into maturity by precept and example. ”

“ She not only dwelt with persistent minuteness on the many details of her more humble life, but told of her connection with the Girl Pioneers, the pleasure it had brought her, the fineness of its aims and purposes, and the wholesomeness of a life lived in the open, with its knowledge of bird and tree lore, and the many new avenues of knowledge it opened to a girl. ”

“ She taught her that a girl must dress beautifully to be beautiful, that she must learn all the world's ways and secrets, and at the same time appear in speech and manner like a child of Nature, like a newly opened rose. ”

“ When nine out of every ten of the girls you meet in smart society have a distinct vocation of their own; when a girl who only sings or plays or crochets is considered by her sister-women to be a butterfly; when society girls are being trained nurses; when, if you are paying calls upon a fashionable friend, you are quite apt to be told that she is living at Hull House this month; when a girl whose face generally appears in the society column suddenly comes out as the composer of a new song ”

“ As our little girl emerges from babyhood she finds the life opening before her a bright and happy one, but one hedged about by proprieties, and one in which from babyhood to old age, she must expect to be always under the control of one of the stronger sex. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Sex against sex, and, if possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know such a person—a girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the purpose. Why she uses her talents in this direction—why, with means enough to play the part natural to her as a successful débutante, she consents to occupy herself with social and other mysteries, you must ask her, not me. ”

“ In every class of society the young women should awake to their duty. They have a great work to do. It is not enough that they should be what their mothers were. They must be more. The spirit of the times calls on woman for a higher order of character and life. Will young women heed the call? Will they emancipate [Pg 204] themselves from the fetters of custom and fashion, and come up a glorious company to the possession of a vigorous, virtuous, noble womanhood—a womanhood that shall shed new light upon the world, and point the way to a divine life? ”