The Young Maiden

by A. B. Muzzey

Let it not be conceived, that whatever of error woman exhibits in her attachment to fashion is to be charged on her sex alone. The other sex have, in too many instances, extolled and idolized foreign modes of dress. It has been to gratify man,—and he knew the disposition that prompted it,—that such folly and excess have been shown in her apparel. Yet will I say that it is not so with us all; few, very few of our sex are propitiated by an extravagant care for fashions. Most men are pained by the attenuated forms and pale countenances of those, who are slaves to every new mode of dress. They prefer the bloom of health, and the evidences of good taste, good sense, purity and propriety, seen in a well-dressed female, to the caricatures sanctioned only by the name of some foreign city.

The care of a young lady’s health is another interest affected much by her entrance into society. The little girl is a picture of bloom and buoyancy. And why? Because fashion permits her to sport in the freedom of nature. The laws of God are allowed, in her case, to be so regarded as to secure her health. But for our young lady, it were rude and disreputable in her to indulge in those bodily exercises essential to her physical wellbeing.

There is much ignorance, I am aware, among this sex, in reference to the conditions of health. Yet more are they who sin in this respect against light, than in the absence of it. Is it not known that the exposure of the feet to wet and cold, in shoes genteelly thin, may induce disease? Can it be, that the multitudes, who compress the lungs and chest into half the space designed for them by nature, and thus occasion diseases of the spine, if not even consumption, sin all in ignorance? A slender waist was not regarded in ancient Greece as an attribute of female beauty; in Paris it is now usually deemed a deformity. When will this perverse taste in America be corrected? Let gentlemen cease to praise such distortions of the frame, and let ladies exhibit the intelligence and regard to the laws of God, which will second and secure a reform. Who does not know that the Chinese barbarity of a pinched foot is contrary both to health and true taste? Why should we refuse instruction from the ancient models of beauty, on these points, more than on others? Is it not known that to pursue the dance in winter through the chills of midnight, and return to one’s home, as the day dawns, in summer apparel, is treading that path which has led thousands to consumption? Yes, too often are these guilty practices indulged in merely from the bondage of fashion. Not only are parental voices unheeded, but personal convictions are silenced, rather than violate its Draco-like laws.

There may be men who encourage woman in the culture of a false delicacy in reference to her health. There must be somewhere a power, before which these unhappy beings do homage. Else had we never witnessed that affected fastidiousness of appetite, and that affected sickliness, so fashionable in some circles. Let this sex, however, for the sake of self, and of posterity, of man and of God, rise above that wretched servitude, which calls for the sacrifice of sound constitutions, and sometimes even life itself, rather than permit the “tender and delicate woman to set the sole of her foot on the ground.” Let physical vigor, attended by mental excellence and moral soundness, become a part of her noble adorning. No more may childhood and youth be the only seasons, in which public opinion shall tolerate those generous exercises in the free air, by which buoyancy and vigor may be prolonged even to old age.

Fashion, if allowed its entire sway, leads woman into many modes of Affectation. Rosseau affirms that “artifice is a talent natural to woman. Let,” he says, “little girls be in this respect compared with boys of the same age; and if these appear not dull, blundering, stupid, in comparison, I shall be incontestibly wrong.” Does this, if it be true, explain in any measure the strange fact that the servants of fashion must never be known as industrious, still less laborious in any useful avocation? that they must be always at leisure for the morning call and the evening levee? Nothing, in some circles, would prove so fatal to a lady’s reputation for gentility, as the character of a working woman. The more idle and dependant on others, the greater the renown.

And then, too, to be in high repute, one must feign an ignorance of every kind of employment. To be a good housewife, to understand every domestic duty, is degrading in the extreme. It is thought a proof of vulgarity to be acquainted with ordinary things. Pride is taken in egregious mistakes as to certain persons, places, and pursuits. To show a knowledge of what is done beyond her own caste would be to forfeit her rank, and would expel her from the highest circles in society.

How many in the fashionable world conduct as though an excessive refinement of feeling were the chief praise of their sex. They cannot witness any spectacle of suffering and pain; it shocks their nerves to be present with the sick. O how fallen is she from the high station, for which God created her, who thus shrinks from scenes where the beauty and glory of her nature may be so nobly displayed! Can it be that an affected sensibility shall shut one of this sex from the chamber of sickness? Lives there the man, who commends this wretched sentimentalism? If there be one such in this land, we devoutly hope that our soil may soon cease to be polluted by his steps. Let him take refuge among the nobility of man’s fabrication; for God hath denied him a place among his.

There is but one species of affectation, to be more severely reprehended, in this connection, than that now considered; it is the opposite of this, a feigned Insensibility. I once heard a lady, who was about parting from a circle of most valuable friends, parting too from her own native spot, on being asked if she did not feel deep regret at the thought of leaving those scenes, reply, “What good would it do to cry about it?” The expression might manifest the philosophy of a Stoic, but a Christian philosophy, I am sure it did not. And a more unfeminine spirit than it discovered, I have never known in one of her sex. If it be weak in woman to exhibit great sensibility, it argues no moral strength, to guard against this by affecting to be a stock, or a stone. “The haughty woman who can stand alone, and requires no leaning-place in our heart, loses the spell of her sex.”

Another form of the disposition in question, to be avoided by her who is entering society, is Conversation for the sake of Effect. It is feared by some that the simple truth, simply expressed, will fail to attract and impress. Hence come departures into the boundless field of imagination. Ridicule is employed to color, and give zest to, the truth. Or Mirth suggests the addition of some new fact to a story, that the laugh may be universal and loud. Exaggeration is employed. The plain food of truth must be seasoned by here throwing in a circumstance, and there suppressing one. An emphatic tone, a nod, or a gesture, intimate far more than the lips dare express. A favorite phrase is continually recurring, or a set of superlatives, shewing that nothing common occurs in the sphere of this individual. Perhaps Irony is indulged, to such unreasonable extent, that a stranger to our young lady’s habits of conversation, would be totally at a loss to judge when she was in earnest, and when trifling with the truth.

Now all this “colloquial romancing,” as one styled it, is a violation of duty to God and our fellow creatures. It is a deviation from the truth of God; it is unjust to those, of whom, and to whom, it is daily addressed. She, who is soon to be exposed to this moral contagion, should be kindly forewarned of its approach. Honor, affection, and her personal good, through the range of her whole being, forbid her to yield to the temptation.