Return to 1998 SPRING Index
Featuring Girls Own Paper, March 1900...
The New Millennium marches towards us with unappeasable force. Those of us unhappy enough to be working with computers at the moment will no doubt be filling in forms assuring our suppliers and customers that all our systems are fully audited, prepared and ready for the Y2K.
The
unlucky computer that finds itself at the end of the century with an old fashioned
BIOS will jump with a start back to the future and declare itself at the beginning
of 1900. If the misplaced time machine was able to read it may there have found
itself examining a volume entitled Girls' Own Paper. This is a leather
bound collection of a teenage girl's magazine. The notice piece in the front touchingly
informs the reader in fading brown copperplate ink that this was `in memory of
Alice, who passed away on the fourth of August 1900'. Maybe she spent the last
eight months of her life waiting for each new edition, packed full of helpful hints
for her future life as a housekeeper and wife, or planning her new dress for when
she felt better. For certainly this magazine was packed with optimism unlike our
own tremulous attendance on the twenty first century.
The start of the nineteenth century appeared untroubled by its new beginning, happily unaware that only fourteen years away the first monster of World War was waiting. Buoyed up by the confidence of Empire, Girls' Own was able to say that some change was necessary for women. But not too much writes Lily Watson with all the chirpyness of a girl scout leader who would be
"...a traitor to my sex did I not rejoice in the increasing facilities for development, for a full, free and noble life offered to women. The spectacle so often seen in the past, of a number of young women shut up in one family, spending the day in fancy work or occupations simply invented to kill time, is happily becoming rare. One has heard of a family of daughters, sweet and amiable women, collecting after breakfast day by day to perpetrate monstrosities in the way of Berlin wool and Crotchet."
None
the less while a girl may be lucky enough to study at one of the new colleges for
women, Royal Holloway College for example, she was adjured not give up the ideal
of womanhood.
Ms Lilly Watson implores her readers to be "examples of lovely, self-denying, devoted examples of affection whom it does one good to meet."
When Alice turned the page she still would read that a woman's place was in the home and subject to DUTY a word which Girls' Own likes very much indeed. Under ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS (Miscellaneous) , Alice finds stern advice to The Would be Missionary:
"Of course you would act very wrongly to exchange the home duties which GOD has given you unsought for work in foreign lands. There are various ways of doing such without leaving the sphere of your natural duties."
Sadly for Alice, there was no chance of journeys to exotic countries. The March Edition of Girls' Own has an article on INVALID COOKERY. The magazine's optimism does not allow any thought that the patient may not pull through. "The preparation of light and easily digested food for the sick is a most important matter and she who can do this successfully is helping the doctor better than she could do in any other way." The recipe for Arrowroot Soufflé has been ticked twice by a hopeful hand.
There
was no respite from heartiness during the next week. Under PHYSICAL CULTURE FOR
GIRLS, Dr. Gordon Stable R.N.J wrote the body... "can be forced
to do its duty in a healthful and natural way by taking regular exercise and plentiful
supply of fresh air." Even the body and its organs are driven by a duty to
perform to the utmost. More kindly DR Stable continues "I
wish to remind you that I am not advocating the physical culture of girls with a
view to their making records in any shape or fashion whatever."
The Ladies' DressMaker is far more rigorous in her approach to exercise and fashion. Remember we are not yet in the Edwardian age and the corset has not yet reached its heyday. Nevertheless, the hour glass figure with almost long pencil like skirts are beginning to be seen. The bustle may have been reduced but the Ladies DressMaker is a strong advocate for the corset. Once again nationhood and duty is inextricably linked.
In MY CLOTHES MONTH BY MONTH she writes petulantly:
"So great a diversity of opinion exists as regards underclothing that I look upon this as the most difficult portion of my subject." By January she noticed that "Fashion has taken no account of the fact hat, even as girls, we were not all sylphs, and were, some of us- even in early youth, somewhat stout."
By march she had a change of heart and once more linked nationhood and duty
"There is no doubt that it is when she is in `tailor made' that the English girl shines the most. And this winter's models show that we are to return to one of our early loves - the severely fitted and simple habit-bodice. They are very trying, it must be confessed, to those who have allowed themselves to become stout, but in these days of bicycles, the very stout girl is almost non-existent and a very excellent thing too; for stoutness is a bar to all enjoyment in life, and a sad testimony to too much eating and too little exercise."
Fortunately Girls' Own had covered the bicycle in all its glory. Cycling seemed to be approved of as a good thing for two reasons. One it helped keep a slim waist and secondly it allowed girls movement while still keeping them corseted. "However well a girl may cycle there is always room for improvement, for graceful riding only comes with long practice." Male writers of the magazine advocated Cycle Gymnastics and Cycle Polo and in July the Ladies DressMaker had ridden to the rescue with an elegant cycling fashion plate.
By
August, Girls' Own had made brave attempts to educate their women readers
and address their fears. It was possible, it urged, to gain useful employment, look
fashionable and still run an elegant home. But its underlying message was one of
female duty and good behaviour. If women did express dissatisfaction with their
role it was due to poor education on their part rather than a genuine grievance.
One of the last articles in the volume - The September edition which Alice did not
live to read - states
"Every girl will not become a mother, but every girl ought to be prepared for this, the woman's crowning function.... If we only looked on this avocation in its true light, as one of the most important that can be entrusted to any human being we might do our work better and should not hear the occasional grumble -
`There are heaps of interesting things I might do, but there's no use thinking about them for all my time is taken up with looking after those tiresome children!"
The Time Machine closes the book,and puts it back on its shelf. In its hard disk lies information about the 20th Century,work which emancipated women have installed on it. Alice has gone and left only the faintest trace of her existence. Had she lived would she have accepted the mores of Girls' Own?. It makes no mention of Suffrage for Women. Would she have agreed with this? In our own age, the best selling British Magazine Women's Own is similarly full of receipes, gardening and keep fit methods. We too know that if we grow fat it is due to a horrible laxness on our part. A hundred years and nothing else appears to separate us.
