Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women
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George Sumner Weaver >> Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women
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This is the Beauty, young women, to which I would invite your admiring
attention. Now, in the May-morning of your lives, you should search for
the flowery wreaths of spiritual Beauty. If God has arrayed your persons
in the elegance of rich proportions and lively colorings, be thankful,
and make this outward Beauty the symbol of one more rich, lasting, and
priceless within which you will seek to adorn your minds. If your forms
and features are not attractive, then be thoughtful that you may
cultivate your minds, enrich your hearts, beautify your spirits, make
useful your lives without the temptations of an alluring outward
loveliness. Beautiful or not beautiful, it matters little so the mind be
cultivated, the heart subdued, and the life right. Nothing is more
important to young women than that they should early learn to
distinguish between outward and inward attractions, to place a proper
estimate upon each. The true woman-beauty is inward; that which makes
the woman attractive, lovely, useful, esteemed, loved, and happy, and is
deeper than the color on her cheeks or the form of her person. It is in
her mind, and is attainable by her own exertions. Every woman may be
beautiful. Every young woman may shine, attract, and be admired and
loved. She has only to be lovely in spirit and life, to be good and
useful, cheerful and agreeable.
_Cheerfulness_ is a Beauty which every body admires. A cheerful spirit
is a continual feast. It smiles its way through life. It wins crowns for
its possessor. It makes and gives happiness. All sunshine and flowers is
a cheerful heart. It shines in perpetual spring. Its birds are ever
singing, and its joys ever new. Every young woman may cultivate a
cheerful spirit, and throw its charm around her associates. _Agreeable
manners_ is another Beauty of spirit which charms every body. It is the
product of a kind heart and a refined taste. We can not describe it,
though we all know what it is. It is one of the charming graces of
cultivated womanhood. All who will, may possess it. But they can not do
it without effort, culture, and constant watchfulness over the impulses
and habits. To possess agreeableness of manners they must have a
_correct taste_. This is an inward Beauty of rare loveliness. It grows
out of a good judgment and an informed mind. Ignorance and awkwardness
are usually found together. Every young woman may inform her mind,
enrich her judgment, and thus correct and discipline her taste. She may
read; she may think; she may act; she may imitate the good and wise; she
may restrain her folly; curb her impulses; subdue her passions; awaken
good aspirations, and thus by persevering effort she may acquire a
correct taste.
Then she may cultivate _kindness of heart_. She may seek to do good to
all, to feel for their sufferings, pity their weakness, assuage their
griefs, assist them in their trials, and breath everywhere the spirit of
a kind heart.
Thus she may make herself beautiful in spirit. And she may rest assured
that that Beauty will win her laurels of life and joy. It will soon
become apparent to all with whom she associates. It will come out and
sit like a queen on her person. It will speak in all her words and
actions. She will move amid enchantment. No deformity of body can
conceal a beautiful spirit. It will shine through an ugly face, a
shriveled form, a bad complexion. Nothing made of clay can hide it. No
beauty of person can conceal deformity of spirit. A bad temper will look
hateful in the prettiest face. A hollow heart will sound its dirge of
woe through the most perfectly organized form. Peering through all
outward Beauty is seen the hateful demon of a bad heart. Shining
through all bodily deformity are always visible the angel faces of the
virtues that cluster in a beautiful spirit. All wise young women will
rest not till they possess the Beauty of spirit.
Lecture Three.
DRESS.
Religion and Dress--Variety in Nature--Dress should not be
Injurious--Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest--A
Subject of Religious Consideration--Suicide _vs._
Providence--Foolish Vanity--Taste an Element of Mind--Dress should
be Symbolical--Woman should Elevate her Aims--Appropriate Dress
Admirable.
Comfort, taste, and religion agree that _Dress_ is one of the
proprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part,
it does the whole of life. If it should direct us anywhere, it should in
the matter of Dress. There are few things upon which people are more
liable to err, and about which there is more wrong feeling than this.
Many religious sects have seen this, and have attempted to bring the
matter of Dress wholly under the ban of ecclesiastical direction. In
this they were partly right and partly in error. They were right in
believing that religion should extend a fostering and restraining care
over the subject of Dress; but wrong in believing that it should Dress
all in the same manner. Our Quaker brethren, the Friends, than whom no
purer and better people have ever lived--noble followers of the lowly
Prince of Peace--the truest _friends_ that humanity has ever found
since the days of the Apostles, or that Jesus has ever had in the
earth--the world-renowned speakers of the sweet, plain language which
hath the charm of divinity within it, and in which love always chooses
to express its tender emotions--adopted the idea that religion should
extend its sway over the subject of Dress. In this they did well; but,
in my humble opinion, erred in putting the shears into the hands of
sectarianism to cut every man's Dress by exactly the same pattern, and
to choose it all from the same grand web of drab. It is sectarianism,
and not religion, which would Dress every man alike. That is making
Dress the badge of the order. Any thing put on outwardly to tell the
world to what sect you belong is an evidence of sectarianism, and not of
religion. The Quaker wears the sign of his sect all over his body. The
drunkard wears his on his face. The Catholic wears his in his beads and
cross. If God had designed that all men should dress in one color,
methinks he would have made them all of one complexion; and not only so,
but would have colored nature in that peculiar hue--would have clothed
all the forests, fields, flowers, birds, and skies in that color, and
have fitted every man's taste to enjoy it.
If He had designed every man to cut his Dress in one form, after one
model, I see not why he did not fashion nature after that pattern, and
make that peculiar curve, and cast the grand leading ones in all his
works, and fit the universal taste to that form. But, on the contrary,
nature is robed in every variety of color and form; the human taste is
equally diversified, and the forms and complexions of men are not less
various.
It is clear to my mind that we may reason from this, that men not only
may, but should dress in different forms and colors and after differing
styles. What is pleasing to some men's taste is and ever will be
displeasing to others. Taste is an inherent quality in our minds. We
naturally possess tastes peculiar to ourselves, and no amount of culture
can make these differing tastes agreeably harmonious. Some tastes revel
in the gay, others in the grave, others in the changing. Some delight in
high colors, others in subdued; some in diversity, others in sameness.
There is nothing irreligious in this difference in taste. Each one is
equally gratified in God's beautiful and diversified works. The grave
and golden clouds, the dark and rosy tints of the sunset sky, the
gorgeous rainbow and the modest Aurora, the flashing flower and the
lowly heather, the towering pine and the creeping vine, the rich green
field of summer and the calm gray forest of winter, the thousand million
forms of the hill-and-dale landscape, and the equally diversified colors
and forms of birds and beasts, confer the richest feasts of pleasure
upon every variety of natural taste.
Looking thus upon the panoramic field of God's works, we must conclude
that he has taken especial care to gratify the varying tastes of his
creatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has an
infinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewing
this magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness,
this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye can
never reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms,
colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover
of Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works.
Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a
mantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird is
clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon
the thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God in
his works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correct
taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them?
Who can doubt that Dress is a matter properly coming within purview of
religion? Religion is what we learn of God. It is human imitation of the
Divinity. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."
Now what I mean by Dress coming under the direction of religion is, that
our manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principles
of true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debase
the mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evil
influence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to the
individual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes of
Dress are thus brought under the direction of religious principles?
First: Do our modes of Dress injure our bodies? In this, young women,
you may be judges. Are your forms permitted to expand as God designed
them? Are your organs and limbs and muscles permitted their full and
proper play? Is your blood in no way impeded in its life-mission through
your bodies? Are you protected from the winter's cold, from wind and wet
at all points, as you should be? Can you breathe freely and easily the
proper amount of air to oxygenate your blood and give you health and
strength? If so, what mean the languid faces, the sallow countenances,
the pale cheeks, the wasp-like forms, the rounded shoulders, the bent
spines, the feeble lungs, the short breathings, the cold feet, the
hampered step, the neuralgic pains, the hysteric nervousness, the weak
sides, the frailty, weakness, and painfulness so prevalent among women?
What mean the head-aches, and liver-complaints, and consumptions, and
neuralgias, and the troublesome ailments of your sex from which scarcely
a woman of you is free? Those strings which bind so closely your chests,
do they not impede your breathing, and thus weaken your lungs and
corrupt your systems? Those dresses hooked so closely that every seam in
them gapes as in agony, giving you so much the appearance of convicts in
strait jackets, are they not in the way when you want to breathe a full
breath, and do they permit the exercise of all the muscles that strive
for life within them? That enormous weight of skirts that you hang over
portions of your bodies that should be choicely protected instead of
burdened, how they hang down like so many dead weights on your vitality,
weakening and diseasing the most delicate economy of your fearfully and
wonderfully made systems! and how your whole frames are taxed every day
of your lives with this wrongly placed and worse than useless burden.
This alone is enough to bring premature disease and death to any
ordinary woman. The law of health demands that the extremities of our
bodies should be kept warm and well protected, while the parts
containing our vital economy should be only comfortably clothed and left
free to the most natural and easy action, well ventilated or exposed to
the ingress and egress of the atmosphere, without any local pressures or
means for unnatural warmth. Only think of wearing a thick, heavy girdle
of many pounds' weight around the whole zone of the abdominal region--a
sort of engirdling poultice, heating and pressing like a girdle of hot
lava, day after day and year after year! Is it a wonder that you have so
many weaknesses and pains and saddening afflictions upon you? And then
your feet treading these cold pavements, this damp earth, these frozen
or wet walks, in slippers and silk or cotton stockings! The very part of
your bodies of all others you should keep most warm and dry, you expose
to every wind and frost, water-pool and snow-storm, in the year; sit
through the whole winter with them on cold floors, where every
door-crack and floor-crack is breathing in upon them cold, damp breaths
from cellars or streets while perhaps your heads are hot in a dry stove
air, and your lungs are breathing an atmosphere so hot and close that it
has scarcely a breath of life in it, and all the while you say you are
comfortably dressed!
And then, to make the matter still worse, you trail your bedrabbled
dress into all the mud and water and tobacco filth on the yard's width
you occupy in walking, exhibiting the strangest spectacle of civilized
humanity that can well be imagined, a woman claiming good sense,
sweeping the streets all about her to make cold and wet her already
almost bare feet and ankles!
Nor is this all. These damp winter winds bathe many a bare arm, kiss
wantonly many an unprotected neck, and visit rudely many a bosom only
veiled with a gossamer gauze. To say nothing of such an exposure to
every lewd eye that roves the street, and the unwomanly impudence it
offers to every modest gaze, it is a hazardous, wicked, criminal
exposure of health, and a total neglect of all the ends and uses of
Dress. And then, to crown all, you go out in all weathers with your
heads exposed to the fiercest blasts, all unbonneted; for Webster says a
bonnet is a _covering_ for the head; but few are the women's heads we
have seen covered this season--and then wonder why you should have such
terrible colds, such troublesome coughs, such griping pleurisies, such
burning fevers, and so many ailments!
Now, I ask again, and you shall be judges, young women, if your modes of
Dress do not injure your bodies? Do they answer the ends of Dress? Any
one who has given the subject a moment's judicious consideration must
see that there has been and still is a fearful departure from the real
uses of Dress. The primary object of Dress is to clothe and make
comfortable the body, so that it may be the peaceful and happy
dwelling-place of the spirit in its earthly pilgrimage. But filling it
with disease is not making it comfortable. Hampering it in fetters is
not making it comfortable.
I have referred to a few of the most prominent evils of our present mode
of female Dress. Now, let me ask, if our women would dress warmly and
securely from wind and wet, yet not in too close confinement, their feet
and limbs; if they would shorten their skirts so they would swing clear
of wet, mud, filth, and passing obstacles; diminish their number and
dimensions, so that their weight would not be burdensome, and suspend
them from the shoulders, instead of girting them around the abdominal
and spinal regions; would give their chests a free and easy play; would
cover their heads, arms, and necks whenever exposed to cold and damp
weather or night air, and would always seek to be clothed easily and
comfortably, giving always a sufficiently free circulation of air
between their dresses and bodies, to carry off the constant exhalations
going out from every living body; if they would thus dress, would they
not be far more healthy, happy, and useful? Would the roses not return
to their cheeks, the full, swelling beauties of woman's strength to
their forms?
This subject has weighty moral and religious considerations connected
with it. Have we any moral right thus to abuse our bodies, thus to
commit a snail-working suicide? What matters it, so far as the guilt is
concerned, whether we kill ourselves in a minute or a year, a year or an
age? We have more suicides among us than we sometimes imagine. The
young miss goes out in a cold night, with bare arms and head and neck,
and wafer-like slippers on her feet, with her waist engirded in cords
and whalebones, and her load of burdensome skirts, and dances in high
glee two thirds of the night; then, with a vail on her head and her
under-garments not yet dry from the recent perspiration, she goes to her
cold chamber and bed, to get a troubled sleep, and awaken in a fever
which carries her to her grave. Then round her mutilated body gather her
mourning friends to bid it a long farewell and hear her minister talk of
the inscrutable ways of God's providence. Call it by what name _you_
will, to _me_ it is suicide. Another, by daily exposures in wet and cold
and change of climate in the common woman-dress, takes cold after cold,
till a consumption fastens upon her lungs and she slowly passes away.
Another circle of mourners weep, and another minister talks of the
inscrutable ways of God; but to me it is still another case of suicide.
Another passes through the common lot of girlhood, with the common
succession of colds and coughs, fevers and pains; in due time marries,
with her chest cramped into half its proper dimensions, her lungs small
and weak, her female economy all diseased and weakened by the abuses of
dress and exposure. At length the period of maternity approaches. Too
weak to sustain its labors and burdens, she dies amid them. Friends come
weeping again, and the minister condoles them with the sad old story of
God's inscrutable ways. But to me it is not inscrutable. It is another
case of suicide. Could the grave-yards all over the country speak, they
would utter fearful tales of this suicidal abuse of Dress.
The second question is, Do our ideas of Dress corrupt our hearts? One
may almost worship at the shrine of Dress. Many are the young ladies
whose thoughts rise no higher than the dress they wear and the bonnet
that decks their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws and
tinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustle
about them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye and
bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of
womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of
vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid,
cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose only
ambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women who
traffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter in
diamonds. How many such there are we would not say. But I doubt not,
that not a little like them are many who are otherwise women. They love
Dress; love it inordinately; love it when they ought to love something
worthier; and spend their time, and thoughts, and mind, and heart, and
money on what they shall wear. The fashion-plate is their profoundest
study. The science of dressing is the only one they care to know. The
cut of a collar is a matter of sublime importance. How much of this
foolish vanity there is in the world! How many otherwise good women does
it spoil! And now the question with every young woman should be, How do
I feel about my dress? Is it a matter too bright in my eye--a subject
too important in my mind? Am I vain of my dress? Does it corrupt my
heart, take my attention from virtue, from mental improvement, from the
graces of a good life, from religion, from my Saviour, and my God? Do I
devote thoughts to Dress that ought to be given to the great problems of
duty, life, womanhood, to the development and culture of my powers of
heart and mind; to science, conversation, language, and the objects of
living? Why am I? Why do I live? To what end? Is there a great object in
my being? Have I any thing to do in its attainments? Does my love of
Dress interfere with the true objects of woman-life? This is the
questioning mind which every young woman should possess. Now let me ask,
Does not your love of Dress lead you from the great ends of woman-life?
Are you not taken captives by the glitter of Dress? sold bond-slaves to
your bonnets and shoes?
Oh, what a fearful waste of time and talent is given to the frivolity
and vanity of dress! what a sacrifice of soul and body, principle and
life, is made upon its altar!
What multitudes of young women waste all that is precious in life on the
finified fooleries of the toilet. How the soul of womanhood is dwarfed
and shriveled by such trifles, kept away from the great fields of active
thought and love by the gewgaws she hangs on her bonnet! How light must
be that thing which will float on the sea of passion--a bubble, a
feather, a puff-ball! And yet multitudes of women float there, live
there, and call it life. Poor things! Scum on the surface! But there is
a truth, young women; woman was made for a higher purpose, a nobler
use, a grander destiny. Her powers are rich and strong; her genius bold
and daring. She may walk the fields of thought, achieve the victories of
mind, spread around her the testimonials of her worth, and make herself
known and felt as man's co-worker and equal in whatsoever exalts mind,
embellishes life, or sanctifies humanity.
But notwithstanding Dress has fascinated so many thousands, and led them
down the paths of vanity and frivolity, it is still a means of culture,
an instrumentality in the hands of virtue, an evidence of civilization.
It addresses itself to the taste, and affords opportunity for its
improvement. Taste is an element of mind. It is the spring-source of the
fine arts, of all the embellishments of life, of poetry, and all that
pertains to elegant literature. It is the grand refiner of life.
Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, and
refines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And this
is just the proper office of Dress. It is true that Dress has a mission,
a good one, a moral one, ay, a religious one. It is a refiner, a
cultivator, a subduer of coarseness, barbarity, rudeness. Pity the soul
that has no taste for Dress. The Dress of a man speaks out his soul. In
other words, a man is known by his Dress; not by its richness, not by
its conformity to fashion, but by its neatness, appropriateness,
harmony, and the way he carries it. A clown will carry a king's dress
clownishly; and a true king will carry a clown's dress kingishly. It is
not the Dress that makes the man, but the man that makes the Dress.
Every state of society is manifest in its Dress. The savage is fond of
gewgaws, glitter, paint, feathers, colors, mere show, with little or no
reference to utility or taste. The barbarian approaches one step nearer
the true standard. He exhibits a faint idea of utility and taste; he
subdues and blends colors, puts ornaments into use, and varies his Dress
a little to suit circumstances. The civilized man shows more taste, less
ambition for glowing colors, a greater skill in making, a better idea of
fitness and propriety. The enlightened man is more grave in the
character of his Dress, wears less ornaments, admits none save where it
combines utility and taste, is chaste, subdued, harmonious, classical in
every thing that pertains to Dress. We can not yet lay full claims to an
enlightened Dress. Our female Dress is a half barbaric costume--a rude
mixture of ornament and utility, in which ornament greatly predominates.
Our soldier's Dress, very appropriately, retains all the elements of
savagism--high colors, sharp contrasts, profuseness of ornament. This is
as it should be. But every enlightened man should regret that our female
Dress is not more grave, classical, chaste, subdued, and appropriate,
combining taste and utility, refinement and strength. A woman in full
street Dress, with her profusion of ornaments, her flounces and
fly-about gewgaws, is a very poor representation of good sense,
refinement, and cultured, classic taste. If our artists should carve and
paint their master-pieces in such taste, we should pronounce it
barbarism at once.
I would gladly pursue this theme, and trace the office of Dress in all
its operations as a reforming and refining agent, and show how to
improve our tastes, correct our judgments, and utilize and at the same
time beautify our dresses. But time will not permit. I will only say in
addition, that the love of Dress, when properly used, is noble; when
abused, is evil; when wisely directed, it combines utility and beauty;
when abused, it possesses neither.
But the idea which I am most anxious to impress upon the minds of young
women, is the symbolic use of Dress, is the fact that they have _minds_
to dress as well as bodies. Our outward Dress should be symbolic of an
inward Dress. While we toil to robe in beauty these perishing bodies, we
should labor more industriously to adorn those immortal qualities which
shall wear their adornments when a new heaven and a new earth shall
succeed to those that now are. This is the point at which young women
err more than elsewhere. They labor to dress the body, and sadly neglect
the soul. O what a fearful dearth of soul-dress, of mental adornment, of
interior beauty there is among young women! Scarcely can one in ten of
them speak their mother-tongue correctly, converse intelligibly ten
minutes upon any subject of common interest, write a simple business or
friendly letter correctly, or comprehend the simplest natural sciences.
What do they know of mechanics, science, literature, government,
theology, history, reform--the great questions that stir the world of
mind? How little, how little! There are some noble exceptions to this
remark, I know. But we must not disguise the fact, that there is a
fearful want of mental culture among young woman. They give forty
thoughts to dressing their bodies to one for their minds; they spend
forty dollars for bonnets, shoes, and clothes to one for books,
instruction, and improvement; they give forty hours to toilet to one to
solid study and serious reflection; they put forty adornments upon their
persons to one upon their minds. How sad the thought! Compare a
well-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dress
with a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up an
ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes and
flowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face and girt up her waist, and
I ask you if this side of a painted feathered savage you can find any
thing more unpleasant to behold. And yet just such young women we meet
by the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. It
is awful to think of. Why is it so? It is only because woman is regarded
as a doll to be dressed--a plaything to be petted--a house ornament to
exhibit--a thing to be used and kept from crying with a sugar-plum show.
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