The variations of the organization of woman do not distinctly mark the seasons of life. Many connected phenomena glide on imperceptibly; and we can distinguish the strong characters of different and distinct ages, only at periods remote from each other. Although, therefore, woman is perpetually changing, it requires some care to discriminate the principal epochs of her life.
The first age of woman extends from birth to the period of puberty.
In beginning the career of life, woman is not yet truly woman; the characters of her sex are not yet decided; she is an equivocal being, who does not differ from the male of the same age even by the delicacy of the organs; and we observe between them a perfect identity of wants, functions, and movements. Their existence is, then, purely individual; we perceive none of the relations which afterward establish between them a mutual dependance; each lives only for self.
This conformity and independence of the sexes are the more remarkable, the earlier the age and the less advanced the development.
Confining our view to woman alone, it is not only in dimensions that, at this age, her person differs from that in which the growth is terminated: it presents another model. The various parts have not, in relation to each other, the same proportions.
The head is much more voluminous; and this is not a result of the extent of the face, for that is small and contracted, because the apparatus of smell and of mastication are not yet developed. Nor is the head only more voluminous; it is also more active, and forms a centre toward which is directed all the effort of life.
The spine of the back has not either the minuter prominences or the general inflexions which favor the action of the extensor muscles, a circumstance which is opposed to standing perpendicularly during the first months. The infant consequently can only crawl like a quadruped.
Little distinction can then be drawn, and that with difficulty, from the comparative width of the haunches, and magnitude of the pelvis. That part is scarcely more developed in the female than in the male; its general form is the same; and its different diameters have similar relations to each other.
The length of the trunk is great in proportion to the limbs, which are slightly and imperfectly developed.
Owing to the great length of the chest, and the imperfection of the inferior members, the middle of the body then corresponds to the region of the umbilicus. An infant having other proportions, would appear to be deprived of the characters of its age.