AMERICA 1900-1910 -- 'THE LADIES' (Part 2)

SEIFERT

Posted By: David (email)
Date: 3/7/2004 at 21:09:28

'AMERICA 1900-1910'

~~ 'The Ladies' ~~

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THE ROSY WORLD OF ROMANCE

Just as every American man knew at the turn of the century that with hard work he was bound to get ahead, so every woman took it on faith that love conquered all. If life failed to bear her out, there was a reassuring flood of romantic fiction from magazines whose sacharine covers; such as The Ladies' Home Journal - with stories to match - kept the ladies' eyes fixed on a world beyond the workaday kitchen.

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ANOTHER VIEW OF LOVE

The ladies were of two minds about love and men. Though they palpitated over the amorous embraces that filled their romantic fiction, they held strait-laced notions about proper conduct in the presence of real live men. Women's magazines reflected this duality; the same periodicals that devoted page after page to passion-filled novels ran unabashedly bluenosed articles of advice concerning the behavior of young women who had not attained the blessed estate of matrimony. The excerpt below was condensed from an article written by one Alice Preston in the Ladies' Home Journal for March 1908, entitled "A Girl's Preparation for Marriage."

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"A Girl's Preparation for Marriage"

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If I had my way every girl should be taught from her early teens that some day, in the natural course of events, Love must come to her. She should be taught that it is her fate, and a very glorious fate. On top of this she should be taught that all her days are, consciously or unconsciously, a preparation for it. she should be told that no gift, no happening of youth is comparable to this of the coming of love; because, when Love comes, it brings in its hands the keys to a Paradise which she could nowise else nor without Love's aid enter.

If we are ignorant how are we to learn? First, by wishing to know things as they are, and by being willing to accept them as they are. First of all, to get a little at this matter of ignorance as to the big bodily truths - the sacred physical facts. I do not wish to go over them, nor to go into any discussion of the truths of sex. I want merely to tell you that I believe they should be known as simply and directly as any of the other big, simple facts of life. A gardener toils in his garden, side by side with the infinite powers of life and growth, and we delight in and wonder at this partnership of the human with the divine. A man like Luther Burbank interests a nation. A man like Thomas Edison works night and day with the big forces of Nature, and we stand aside with respect and admiration as he goes past. And yet the poorest, most humble man and woman who become the father and mother of noble and worthy human beings are dealing with a power greater than any of thes!
e; are sharers in a mightier work, are laboring with more marvelous forces. You may read of electrical inventions, of scientific experiments, of marvels of discovery, with wonder; men may lift their hats to Burbank and Edison. I confess that I rise up more awed at the sight of a noble-faced woman great with child.

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'GIRLS SHOULD KNOW THE BIG, SIMPLE TRUTHS OF LIFE'

I am not making a plea for the promiscuous reading of sex literature. I know girls who have, with the best intent, no doubt, gone in headlong for the sex question, have pored over volumes only suited to a well-prepared, cool, science-steadied mind -- to the mind of a medical student or physician; volumes which, far from being good for these girls, put an undue weight on the subject, making it a matter of morbid thinking.

Too much analytic sex reading and sex thinking is one of the surest ways of breaking down even the strongest of nerves, as any physician will tell you. This is why so many of the French novels dealing morbidly with such questions are considered unwholesome.

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'IGNORANCE CAUSES LOW STANDARDS'

Generally it is ignorance that causes all of the low standards, and almost all of the unloveliness. How, then, shall I say earnestly enough the things to be said, and how shall I make you see what girlhood, the glory of it, means?

The other day I heard a hot discussion between a young and modern girl and her middle-aged and old-fashioned aunt. The aunt had discovered that "Joan's" friend "Rebecca" -- a girl of "Joan's" own age - saw no harm in allowing a boy to hold her hand - in giving him the engagement's privileges. The aunt not only rose and shone with indignation - she fairly glittered with it. The end was that "Joan" went to her room in disgrace, her cheeks flaming with indignation. By-and-by we talked things over.

"See here," I said, "I don't think your aunt was fair. It is true, I think pretty much as she does. I mean I was always taught from the time I was a little thing to look with dismay on this sort of thing that 'Rebecca' seems to think is all right. I suppose I would as soon have let a boy hold my hand as I would myself have picked up a rattlesnake. I think I got it into my head very early from Ruskin and other sources that girls are Queens, and I one in particular over my own domain. I always made it a great point never to fail of queenly dignity -- that, at least, was easy. So though I have known friendship with lots of men, also (and I say it with royal gratitude) the love of some, no one of them would any more have presumed to take the slightest liberty than a courtier would with a Queen.

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'SHE DID NOT KNOW: NO ONE EVER TOLD HER'

"The trouble is, most older people lay down the law, and never explain why the law was made -- that this sort of familiarity that your aunt condemns so hotly acts directly and subtly on the nerves of the body, renders them morbidly sensitive, rouses the emotions and passions which it is physically harmful to have roused and played upon; that it wakens and stimulates feelings and instincts and desires that should not be wakened. A girl is not told that, by allowing these liberties that she thinks so little and harmless, her nerves and forces and pores are almost certain to become diseased, and her strength undermined.
Yet these are simple and direct and serious enough facts, Heaven knows! -- that every girl has the right to know."

By the time I got this far "Joan" was no longer indignant, only earnest and interested. "I did not know," she said very simply; "no one ever told me."

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'A GIRL'S STANDARDS AFFECT HER MAN FRIENDS'

A girl I know, who holds the most lovely and womanly and reverential relationship to every man she knows, said to me one day, when I spoke to her in admiration of it: "Oh, you see, it is easy to be the finest kind of friend to them if you just keep in mind their mothers! It seems to me I can always see their mothers back of them, following me with anxious eyes, hoping with such pathetic eagerness that only the best may come to these sons of theirs, only the best women, only the best experiences. And that makes me just as noble as I know how to be, and if I were in doubt as to my place in any man's life I should make myself face squarely this one question: 'If you were his mother would you be glad at every point to have a girl act toward him just as you are acting?"

This is, I think, a very pattern and outline of girlish power and justice and reverence and loveliness.

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'THE CROWN AND CITADEL OF LOVE'

None of us can quite define what Love is; but this we know -- that its crown and citadel is the human body. To keep healthy hours, to think sound thoughts, breathe pure air, to dress with loveliness, to strive to be a type of warm, chaste girlishness - these are all of them a preparation for Love's coming.

I wonder if some of you think I have laid far too much stress on the importance and sanctity of the body. Well, I do not think it possible for us to do so. Next month I want to tell you how I think we can as girls prepare our minds and spirits the more fully and worthily for the coming of Love.

To Be Continued . . .'A House From the Wish Book'

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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
March 2, 2004