THE MAIDRN'S PROGRESS.

Observer, Volume 1, Issue 8, 6 November 1880, Page 59

THE MAIDRN'S PROGRESS.

ALL who are interested in the future well-being of the English race must view with considerable misgiving the change which is coming over English girls. The question is a serious one, and the consequences may be in the last degree deplorable. If the boy be father to the man, the girl is undoubtedly mother, and with influences far more potent for good or evil. The maidens of this generation will be the mothers of the next. Will they be patient, lovable, self-sacrificing, of pure mind and healthy constitution, possessing the finest qualities of the perfect woman, of the typical mother, "that holiest thng alive" ? The answer, it is to be feared, must be given in the negative. Neither the moral nor physical training of modern English girls is such as to justify the hope that they will be invariably above reproach. The lives they lead, the lessons they learn, the aims set before them, all tend to degeneracy and deterioration. They are permitted as they grow \ip to develop all the lesser vices unchecked. They are subjected to unwholesome physical processes calculated to work as much mischief to their bodies as evil counsels and bad examples will do to their minds. They are allowed a freedom from restraint, an independent broadness of speech, a latitude in thought and action, which might easily lapse into worse, and drive them across the slight barrier which now-a-days separates propriety from its opposite. The progress of our_ modern maidens, like that of the bad apprentice, is downward from the first. They come under the influence of vicious treatment almost in. their cradles. Vanity arid frivolity they absorb their mother's milk While still the merest infants, they acquire a passion for dress j their earliest prattle is of furbelow and flounce ; their first joys to appear in smart clothes, like their elders, with wide sashes of satin or silk, withlaced pinafores, and big rosettes on their shoes. The paramount

importance of personal charms is dinned into their ears long before they leave the schoolroom; and they learn early to appraise and appreciate those -which they natter themselves they really possess. The silly people who surround them foster and fan this into a constantly glowing flame. Girls, to compass beauty or its counterfeit, will cheerfully lend themselves to the tormenters, and gladly face present torture and future injury if they think their appearance will thereby be improved. There can be found no more grevious example of this than in the rage for tight-lacing, ..which is the latest fashion with its development of ' the figure ' has recentlybrought so much in vogue. A well-authenti-cated is on record of a mother who, being dissatisfied with the size of her daughter's waist, at that time aged twelve, persuaded her, nothing loth, to wear perpetually a pair of stays fashioned like a cuirass, but with a padlock always fastened, of which the mother kept the key. The husbands, possibly of professional beauties, at any rate of wives of whose appearance they were proud, have been known to personally superintend the process of lacing, insisting ruthlessly upon the reduction of rebellious contours, and prepared to resort the mechanical appliances in order to bring the circumference ot the waist -within the limits of a span, other men, n<>t only near relatives, but that large host of admirers wlio.se approval is grateful to every daughter of • vc, exercise indirectly the same pernicious influence by according prai-e only to the mort monstrous distortions of the human form divine. What are the tortures and. discomforts undergone by the wretched victims to this false standard of beauty, they themselves alone can tell. But we may form some conception of it by observing any sylphlike figure as she passes up the street in her slrintight garments, walking painfully in her narrowpointed high-heeled shoes, which disturb the Balance of her body, and destroy all grace of gait. If fatigue overtakes her, as it assuredly will, she may hail a cab; but she is —the curious observer may notice this any day for himself —far to tightly trussed to be able to lift her foot on to the step, and will have to choose j between dismissing the cabman or being lifted into her seat. Follow her a dozen yards farther, and you will probably notice her turn aside, ostensibly to look into a shop-Avindow, but really to gather strength from her smellingsalts, and thus avoid fainting in the streets. Nor do these horrible and more immediate inconveniences sum up the pernicious effect of this abominable practice of tight-lacing, which is now carried to such dangerous excess. The more remote, but inevitable, consequences are absolutely fatal to health. Modern fashion is a hideous Moloch, and the maiden vowed to its worship is doomed. She may escape for a time; but the germs of disease are there, and will someday come to rapid maturity. The truths of medical science, if sought out, would convey an awful warning, which the most reckless could not fail to lay to heart. This artificial construction of the waist is a foul misusage of the human frame, and the penalty is malformation and utter disorganisation of the internal organs. It will inevitably lead to a series of terrible maladies, will superinduce premature old age, perhaps end in an early death. Possibly the enumerations of these physical evils may serve to frighten those responsible for them, and in due course tend to work their cure. But their removal must be accompanied by more enlightened moral treatment, if we would check effectually our maidens' downward descent. If their frail bodies are cruelly treated, so also are their minds. Mothers are sometimes culpably neglectful; more often they do irreparable mischief by suffering their daughters to see and hear, even take part in, everything that goes on. The little girl may listen at first without harm to doubtful conversation ; but she will soon develop precocious quickness of apprehension. She may not grasp the exact meaning of flirtation ; but, like all children, she is imitative, and she will soon understand how to use her eyes. Long before she is introduced and out in the Avorld she will have mastered the use of the weapons she is to handle against mankind. The education may have been imperceptible ; more probably it has been stimulated by the vicious help of personal example. The blushing '' debutante,'' in whom we look for guileless iunoceuce and simple ignorance of the world and its ways, is already deeply versed in them. Her further progress is certainly not towards improvement. Within a season or two she will have distinctly deteriorated. She has realised that to succeed she must continue to appeal to the senses of men. Just as the pernicious teachings and treatment of childhood have led her to emphasise and make the most of her personal attractions, so has later experience counselled her to be free and unrestrained in manners, hardy in conversation, eager at all cost to please. A prudent marriage to a sensible man might still arrest her downward career ; but sensible men are not too numerous ; and the few there are would scarcely choose her for a wife. But she is by this time almost entirely unfitted for marriage. Maternity would bring her fuw joys ; and she would be nearly disqualified for, if not quite useless in, the sacred functions of mother. She would be little likely to prove a true helpmate, but might certainly be expected to pass over to that increasing contingent of frisky matrons who are already bringing discredit to the Victorian age. It is but a step thence to the scandal of the divorce-court and the last fatal fall.