SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS.
PART VIII.
FICTION AND ROMANCE.
Self-culture by the reading of stories! One can imagine some pedant of a generation or two ago shaking his head over such a suggestion. As well write of education by the playing of games! And yet it has come to be recognised that neither connection of ideas is, in itself, at all absurd or preposterous. The influence of fiction is a force to be reckoned with in the formation of character—a force, indeed, of no small magnitude; for there are an enormous number of girls whose reading begins and ends with the story.
This is, of course, a mistake. In an earlier chapter of this series we have sought to explain why fiction, even of the very best type, should not form the staple of reading for anybody. But it will probably always constitute a very large proportion of the mental food of young people, and it is better to look the fact in the face than to bewail it and preach!
The first form in which literature appeals, with any charm or interest, to the child is as the story; and children of larger growth love the story still. What would those do, whose lives are dull, sordid, or depressing, without the power to transport themselves into the lives of other people? It is an actual necessity to exchange their own experience, even for a brief time, for the experience of others. The novel, the imaginative work, appeals more perhaps to girls than to any other section of the community. If they are lonely, ill, unhappy from any cause, they find their solace, companion, anodyne, here. If they are happy, they seek the reflection of their own light-heartedness, and greater happiness yet to come, in the story pages.
The imagination is a factor too little understood in the training of character. It is of the utmost importance to give this faculty something good wherewith to nourish it, or it will prey upon itself. Silly, vapid, or morbid girls might perchance have been made different if they had been provided with books that were at once strong and artistically beautiful, instead of the sentimental novelette.
We hold a high opinion of the value of fairy-tales of the best kind for children, and are always stirred to wrath by the superior infant who says: “There are no such things as fairies.” Fortunately there are not many children who cannot, for instance, enjoy the charm and pathos of such a story as The Little Sea Maiden or The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen, with many others by that great author too numerous to mention. There are also the exquisite creations of the Countess d’Aulnoy and Perrault, not forgetting two French authors who were the delight of our own childhood—Madame la Comtesse de Ségur and Léon de Laujon. Those delicious volumes, the “Blue,” the “Green,” and the “Red” fairy-book, by Andrew Lang, are a real treasure-store of delight. And it must not be forgotten that some of the fairy-legends they contain are of wonderful antiquity, being found, under different forms, in the early literature of many lands.
Girls, who are elder sisters, and possibly past the fairy-tale stage, be gracious in the telling of stories to the little ones who cannot read! It may be a trouble to hunt in your memory for these stories and put them into words, but it is really worth while to do it, and do it well, avoiding what is gruesome and fearful, but choosing all that is charming and attractive. Even in the way of “self-culture” the task will be good for you, and still better if you can succeed in telling a story “out of your own head.” The present writer began her work in this way when a child, writing fairy-tales, and recounting one by word of mouth, entitled, The Precipice Passage, which continued from day to day during many months, and was of the most thrilling description, as well as of superhuman length.
A most beautiful book, though not exactly a fairy-tale, for children is The Story without an End, translated by Sarah Austin from the German of Carové (Sampson Low & Marston). The child who possesses this book, with the original coloured illustrations, to pore over, will have a foundation of graceful and tender fancies for the “culture” of riper years.