Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women: On the Various Duties of Life, Physical, Intellectual, And; Moral Development; Self-Culture, Improvement, Dress, Beauty,; Fashion, Employment, Education, The Home Relations, Their; Duties To Young Men, Marriage, Womanhood And Happiness.Weaver, G. S. (George Sumner)
Science
Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women: On the Various Duties of Life, Physical, Intellectual, And; Moral Development; Self-Culture, Improvement, Dress, Beauty,; Fashion, Employment, Education, The Home Relations, Their; Duties To Young Men, Marriage, Womanhood And Happiness.
Weaver, G. S. (George Sumner)
Conduct of life; Young women
Having hinted these general principles of Education, we may now address
ourselves especially to young women, and apply them to their life. The
daily life-education of the mass of young women is not what it should
be. It is much like the life-education of the mass of young men. It is
the Education of circumstances, custom, society, etc. Young women live,
think, and act just as society dictates. They wear what fashion says
shall be worn; they say what etiquette say is proper; they do what
custom dictates; their ideas of gracefulness, propriety, and life are
molded in the common mint of popular sentiment. They float on the stream
of society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do not
direct their own Education as though they had any object in life. They
seem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthings
of the day. These remarks are not very inapplicable to young men also.
There is a great body of young men who float on the stream of life with
no self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tell
you, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and his idea of being a man is
to be able to do these things with grace and dignity. To ask any one of
the mass of young women what she lives for, and if you can get her to
say it out, she will tell you, "to get married." Now it is certainly
right to get married, and to live with this object in view. But there is
a grand educational preparation needed for this. And this preparation is
the very thing most neglected. Every young woman should have some noble
purpose in life, some grand aim, grand in its character. She should, in
the first place, know what she is, what powers she possesses, what
influences are to go out from her, what position in life she was
designed to fill, what duties are resting upon her, what is she capable
of being, what fields of profit and pleasure are open to her, how much
joy and satisfaction she may find in a true life of womanly activity.
When she has duly considered these things, she should then form the high
purpose of being a true woman, and of making every circumstance bend to
her will for the accomplishment of this noble purpose. There is no
higher thing beneath the bending heavens than a true woman. There is no
nobler attainment this side of the spirit-land than lofty womanhood.
There is no purer ambition than that which craves this crown for her
mortal brow. To be a genuine woman, full of womanly instincts and power,
possessing the intuitive genius of her penetrating soul and the subduing
authority of her gentle, yet resolute will, is to be a peer of earth's
highest intelligence. All young women have this noble prize before them.
They may all put on the glorious crown of womanhood. They may make their
lives grand in womanly virtue. There is in every woman-child the seed of
womanhood. She may water and nourish that seed till it shall blossom in
her soul and make her spiritually beautiful. Woman has a power, a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account