The Young Woman's Guide. Alcott William Andrus
have an influence on the regeneration of the world, of which no human mind—uninspired at least—has ever yet conceived.
Would that our young females—sisters especially—had but an imperfect conception of the power they possess to labor in the cause of human improvement! Would that they had but an imperfect idea of female responsibility!
My remarks are applicable to all young women; but they are particularly so to elder sisters. To them is given in special charge, the happiness and the destiny of all younger brothers and sisters, be they ever so numerous. As the desires of Abel were to be expressed to Cain, and the latter was appointed to rule over the former, so is the elder daughter appointed to rule over those whom God has, in the same manner, committed to her trust. Happy is she who has right views of her weighty responsibilities; but thrice happy is she who not only understands her duty, but does it!
But if the moral character, much more than the physical and intellectual well being of the family, is given in charge to elder sisters, and even to all sisters, it is scarcely possible for them to form a correct idea of the weight of their influence, in this respect at least, till they are past the age when that influence is most necessary, most persuasive, and most effectual.
I have seldom found a young man who had strayed long and widely from the path of virtue, who had enjoyed the society and influence of a wise, and virtuous, and attentive sister. On the contrary, I have almost uniformly found such individuals to have been in families where there were no sisters, or where the sisters were not what they ought to have been; or to have been kept at schools where there were none but our sex.
I beseech every young female reader to make herself acquainted, as far as she possibly can, with the nature of her influence, and the consequent responsibilities which devolve upon her. Let her understand that the day has gone by in which physical force was supposed to rule the world. Moral influence is now the order of the day; and they whose moral influence is most weighty and powerful, are they who most effectually bear rule. But as it is reserved for woman, when sensible, enlightened, virtuous and pious, to exercise the most weighty moral influence, consequently it is her province most effectually to bear rule. Kings, and emperors, and presidents, parliaments, and congresses, and assemblies, and courts, and legislators, and judges, may labor in vain to influence or to reform mankind, so long as female influence is not what it should be. But let females be rightly educated, and let them do what a good education will enable them to do, and vice will ere long hang her head, and virtue and piety—which alone exalt a nation, or the individuals that compose it—will resume their sway. Then will the wilderness and the solitary place be glad, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose.
CHAPTER III
SELF-EDUCATION
Views of Agesilaus, king of Sparta—of Solomon, king of Israel. Mistake corrected. What the wisest and best parents cannot do. What, therefore, remains to the daughter. Necessity of self-education. The work of self-education the work of life—a never-ending progress upward to the throne of God.
Woman, then, now so often miseducated, must be trained in the way she should go. But let us consider a little more in detail what this education or training of woman should be, and what it should accomplish.
When Agesilaus, king of Sparta, was asked what things he thought most proper for boys to learn, he replied—"Those which they ought to practise when they come to be men." Nor does this essentially differ from the direction of Solomon, which has been quoted.
If females do, in effect, rule the world, they ought, as I have before said, to be trained to sway the sceptre of moral rule in the right manner. If they now stand in the same position, as regards the world and the world's happiness, with that which boys were supposed to occupy in the days of Agesilaus, and if this thing was correct in his opinion, then it follows that a proper answer to the question, What things are most proper for girls to learn? would be—Those which they ought to practise when they come to be women.
But it will not be forgotten that the definition I have given of the term education includes much more than merely direct efforts to teach. Whatever affects the health or the progress of body, mind or soul, even though it were that in which the individual is mostly passive, as in sleep, is a part of our education.
There is one point in which the views of Agesilaus concerning education, if not incorrect, are at least defective. He appears to countenance an idea, still very prevalent, that children and youth are not only in a state of preparation for the future, but a state of preparation, merely.
They are to be taught what they ought to practise when they come to be men, according to Agesilaus; but according to the views of one who was wiser than he, they are to be trained in the way they should go. The latter view comes nearer the truth of the case than the former. It requires, or at least permits us, to train up the child to-day for the enjoyments of to-day, as well as for those of to-morrow—a point which the maxim of Agesilaus does not seem to include.
Young people are taught, almost universally—by example, if not by precept—to consider merit, if not virtue and happiness, as belonging exclusively to maturity. They are not enough assured that youth, though a state of preparation and trial, is also a state of reward; and that neither usefulness nor happiness is confined to place, age or circumstances.
I wish to see the day arrive when the young—young women, especially—will not look forward so much to a distant day and to distant circumstances, for a theatre of action, and for the rewards of action, as they are accustomed to do; for they thus deprive themselves of a vast amount of happiness which is due them in the present, without in the least enhancing the value or the pleasures of the future.
I wish to see them so educated that they will not only be what they should be, when they come to adult age, but also what they should be now. They have or should have a character to acquire now; a reputation to secure and maintain now; and a sphere of personal usefulness and happiness to occupy now.
It is true, indeed, that childhood and youth are more specially seasons of preparation, and less specially seasons of reward, than maturer and later life; but it is also equally true, that every stage of life, not excepting its very evening, is little more than a preparation for a still higher state, where reward will predominate in a degree which will make all previous preparation seem to dwindle almost to nothing.
Existence, in short, is a state of progress, having, at every step, so far as we know, its trials and rewards—the rewards always, however, predominating, and the trials diminishing, in proportion as personal holiness renders the latter unnecessary.
It will happen, unavoidably, that many young women to whom this little volume may come, will have been trained up, to the time of casting their eyes on these pages, in the old fashioned belief to which I have alluded—viz., that they can neither do nor be much in the world, except to submit passively to certain processes which have received the name of education, till their arrival at a certain size or age. The fault, reader—if such should be the case—is not chargeable, solely, on your parents. They followed a custom which they found; they did not make it. But however this may be, it is clear that your great object should now be, to see what you can do for yourself.
Now, then, here you are, twelve, fourteen, perhaps sixteen years of age. Your parents have brought you up according to the existing customs, for the future. They have not sought to make you feel your present responsibilities, your present power to do good, your present capacity for communicating and securing happiness, so much as to make you believe there are responsibilities, and powers, and capacities, and rewards, to be yours when you come to be large enough and old enough to appreciate or receive them.
But whatever your parents may have left undone in regard to the formation of your character, it is yours to do. Need I urge the necessity of the case? The present is an exceedingly important period of your life; and what is to be done, must be done quickly. But what your parents have hitherto left undone, they will be likely to continue to leave undone. Unless you apply yourself, therefore—and that immediately—to the finishing of a work, that, owing to the circumstances in which they have been and still are placed, and the views they have entertained, they have left unfinished, your education is not likely to be, by any means, so perfect as it should be. You must take