And there is only one cure for it. It is that we should stop uttering or believing the lie that we must indulge our passions and should act upon the truth that continence outside marriage is perfectly possible, and that we owe it to women, to ourselves, and to God to achieve it.
CHAPTER VIII
A GIRL'S EARLY DAYS
By early days I mean the years between sixteen and twenty-one or thereabouts, and I am sure there ought to be a chapter in this book on this subject, though I am not at all sure that I can write it. I only make the attempt because I have been urged to try, and because a book that did not recognize how distressing the "emotional muddles" of this period often are, would be a very unsympathetic production.
Most men very quickly become clearly conscious of desires springing from their sexual natures, but most girls only do so very slowly. What a girl is conscious of at this period is a new stress of emotion. She finds herself easily elated and easily depressed. She has moods she cannot understand or manage, and vague yearnings after she knows not what. Sometimes she will give way to outbreaks of temper, and afterwards feel acutely ashamed. Other people say of her that she is "difficult" or wayward, or trying; and she knows it herself better than any of them. Sometimes she is irritable. Sometimes she will hear herself saying things she never meant to say, and will wonder afterwards why she did it. In society she often feels shy, awkward, and self-conscious, and then will hate herself for being like that. She may try an assumed boldness of manner to hide her shyness, and yet that plan is not a great success. She has longings for the society of others, and then having found social intercourse difficult, is tempted to withdraw into herself. She is very easily wounded in her affections, and often suffers from the effect of little slights of which the authors are quite unconscious. On some days she will feel that the world is a wonderful and splendid place, and life a glorious delight. And then on others life will seem mysterious and puzzling, and the world cruel and hard. She understands with painful clearness what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when he talked about "the coiled perplexities of youth."
It is during these years that girls wake up to the attraction of men, and yet they find that relations with men are difficult things to manage. The conventions of society often seem quite senseless, and yet the policy of defying them does not turn out well. And so, as I have said, this is a difficult period for many girls.
It is true that many get through it very happily. They may have good health, happy homes, plenty of good friends, and many interests. For them it is a time of adventure, romance, and vivid joy. They correspond to the common conception of the fresh, happy, charming girl. But many others do not get through happily at all, and it is because their case is common that this chapter is called for.
I have already said as strongly as I can that it is of enormous importance for girls to know the facts of life, and to get to know them from some clean and natural source. By the beginning of this period they ought to have been told about the wonderful and beautiful ways in which God has ordained that new human lives should be produced, and therefore they ought to be in a position to understand themselves. And if girls are not possessed of this knowledge I can only say that the sooner they take steps to acquire it in a wholesome way the better for themselves. Only take care to whom you turn. Let it be a woman of a reverent and wise mind with a large and wholesome nature. There are others.
Those who do come to understand themselves in this way will realize that the cause of their emotional complications is partly physical and partly psychological. Both body and mind are awakening, with the inevitable result that new instincts, emotions, and desires have to be reckoned with. That is a universal experience for all of both sexes, and is just the price of entering on a larger world. Life is much more complex and mysterious than we at first imagined. It may be much more varied and splendid than we at first supposed. And therefore inevitably it is also more difficult and more confusing. But it does really help us to realize that our early complex troubles have a natural and normal cause and that they are related to great possible gains.
At this point in life, further, the instinct for independence becomes often exceedingly strong. All the conventions of society and the received rules for conduct are apt to appear mere tyrannous annoyances, cramping the free expression of personality. Society itself seems rather like a monster threatening to absorb and confine us. To be compelled to consider others, and even to bow to authority, is to many very bitter. "I will at all costs be myself" is the natural cry of a human being at this stage, and because the world makes it difficult to carry out that resolve life has a strain in it. Yet here also there is something good. If each generation in turn did not thus demand freedom and self-expression the world would drift into senile decay. We cannot be independent of society. We cannot have an untrammeled freedom. And we all learn that sooner or later. But because the urge towards newness of life does reappear with every generation we do move on, though slowly. And if the price of this pulse of life in adolescents is restlessness, irritation, and even occasional depression the gain is worth the price.