A very powerful influence on the physical and moral well-being of the girl at puberty is exercised by her domestic upbringing. The general truth of _Gœthe’s_ saying, that the circumstances into which we are born exercise a determining influence on the whole life, being admitted, we have to remember that this applies with especial force in the case of girls.
The educational views which obtain at the present day among the upper ten thousand, are by no means calculated for the production of a woman healthy in body and sound in mind. From the time when the young girl becomes sexually developed, the claims which society makes upon her become pressing. Every day, by a number of stimuli, her curiosity and her desires are directed toward sexual matters. Visits to museums, picture galleries, and theatres, the perusal of modern romances, the free mingling of the sexes in all places of amusement—all these combine to awaken prematurely an instinct to which the “old fashioned” methods of education allowed a much more prolonged slumber. In other cases, the mother’s supervision of the developing girl is hindered and rendered insufficient because the mother herself is claimed by her society duties and taken much away from her home. In addition, the young brain is overburdened with mental work, the modern idea of the equality of the sexes in matters of love is instilled, and a desire is artificially evoked, and is matured by a certain idle vanity, to indulge the “natural” instincts—to manifest sexual passion and to indulge it to excess—and thus the modesty so natural and so becoming to young girls is completely lost. Nourished in such a soil, neurasthenic and hysterical states, disorders of menstruation, and masturbation, cannot fail to flourish.
In these respects also a change is requisite, and a mode of upbringing must be inculcated from which everything likely to inflame the sexual impulse is removed. For the adolescent girl a systematic alternation of work and recreation must be arranged. From great entertainments where she will mix with young men, from theatres, evening parties, and balls, the young girl at the time of the menarche, at the period when menstruation commences, must as far as possible be kept away, and such pleasures must be reserved for a more advanced stage of this period of development. Intellectual overstrain, the overtaxing of the young head, must be avoided; the acquirement of knowledge must take place gradually and slowly, and in a manner adapted to individual peculiarities. Intercourse with female friends also requires supervision in respect of the moral characteristics of these latter. Religious reverie must be avoided, but also to be avoided is the modern nihilism in respect of religion and good morals. Books must be carefully chosen in order that the imagination may remain pure and in order that girlish illusions may not be prematurely destroyed. Domestic recreations in the way of games, music, singing, painting, and other forms of artistic culture, are of importance for the development of a strenuous faculty for learning. Travel in regions where the scenery is beautiful, forms a most valuable means for the ennoblement of the intellect and the emotions.
