READING ABOUT FEMININITY

There was nothing more influential than the example of one's mother and the reification of the domestic role in the schoolroom. But in the nineteenth century a new force came to exert a considerable influence over the con­struction of femininity within the domestic sphere.

New family magazines of the 1840s idealised family life and promoted marriage as the only appropriate role for women. The first periodicals aimed explicitly at women readers appeared in the 1850s, exemplified by the most famous of the genre in Britain, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (first published in 1852), and in Germany the long-running Gartenlaube (1853-1900).⁷5 Directed at the middle-class female market, these magazines constructed the woman reader as moral, maternal and feminine, expressed through a mixture of recipes, sewing patterns, advice on domestic manage­ment, fashion news, fiction and articles on subjects designed to appeal to women such as marriage, motherhood and child care. In Wales, Y Gymraes (The Welshwoman) aimed at the respectable middle class, set out to create and perpetuate the perfect Welshwoman: ‘neat and tidy, modest, unassuming, thrifty, loyal, pure, religious.'⁷⁶ It was also the duty of the Welshwoman to uphold Welshness by wearing native dress and ensuring the use of the Welsh language in the family.

Literature designed for girls, in the form either of school textbooks or of popular pamphlets and even religious tracts, tended to reinforce a view of the ideal feminine character. Indeed, girls' fiction was even more pre­occupied with images of innocence, purity and the cult of domesticity than literature intended for the adult female market. The female heroines con­formed to a moral, pious and self-sacrificing model of femininity which we can also see portrayed in school textbooks from the middle of the century. The heroine of La Petite Jeanne (1853), probably one of the most popular school-readers used in French primary schools, encapsulates the values deemed desirable in all classes of girl. When the motherless Jeanne is taken in by the wealthy Madame Dumont, we read that ‘Mme. Dumont's daughters were very friendly with Jeanne because she was as modest in her language as in her behaviour. She loved them so much she would have gladly died for their sake.'⁷⁷ Jeanne, of course, was a good, pious and self-sacrificing child who always saw the best in others and regarded it as her duty to sublimate her desires to theirs. Similarly, the story of young Ethel May in The Daisy Chain by the popular British children's writer Charlotte Yonge, published in 1856, strongly parallels the trials and tribulations experienced by Suzette, the heroine of a series of volumes widely used in French primary schools from the 1880s.⁷⁸ Both Ethel and Suzette had lost their mothers and were forced, prematurely, to take on the maternal role enduring self-sacrifice in order to enable the survival of their families. Stories of ‘household fairies in training' emphasised to young girls that their primary role was in the home and that such a role was a position of strength and honour as well as duty.⁷⁹ Ethel May is transformed from a tomboyish and studious child into the ‘angel in the house', whilst Suzette, who had always known and understood her future role, became the idealised rural housewife.

The image of the daughter who sacrifices her own desires for the good of her family was, then, pervasive in secular and religious literature for girls throughout Europe until the end of the century. They were complemented by more practical works, clearly influenced by Rousseau, which instructed girls in how to be a good wife. In France the popular Premiere annee d’economie domestique published in 1893, preached subservience to the husband and offered advice on how to please him, rejecting book-learning in favour of good grooming, a silent disposition and the ability to make a good omelette.⁸³ Sarah Stickney Ellis's training manuals for girls were packed with advice on how to fill the day productively, for a good middle-class wife could not be permitted to idle away her hours, a view promulgated by the author William Cowper (1731—1800), the creator of the term ‘angel in the house'.

By the end of the century a new kind of girls' literature began to appear which, to some degree, recognised the changing nature of opportunities for girls. Coupled with the extension of education and in the wake of the acknowledgement that marriage and domesticity was not certain for many women, the appearance of girls' magazines such as Girl’s Own Paper in Britain, first published in 1883, offered new kinds of role models in a new kind of style whilst simultaneously sending the message that marriage and motherhood was still the ideal state. Containing fiction, fashion and home tips, practical advice and a readers' column, Girl’s Own Paper continued to evoke the romantic feminine ideal with its stories on how to meet the right man and warnings of the perils of spinsterhood, and it was not until the 1920s that it spoke to girls in a language which recognised wider educational and employment opportunities. The readers of Girl’s Own Paper were warned in no uncertain terms that marriage could not be every girl's destiny although it remained the ultimate aim.⁸⁵ The female heroines of popular literature began, gradually, to reflect the changes in women's opportunities and expectations. Such girls had resilient and resourceful characters, they had the capacity to cope with unexpected problems and stress. And yet, such mental and physical strength was not generally used to the heroine's personal advantage at the expense of home and domesticity; rather such women became ‘home goddesses', pro­fessional, managerial women who had much to offer their future husbands or else they took on roles such as missionaries which allowed them to rein­force their femininity outside the home.⁸⁶

The end of the century heralded a subtle shift in the messages conveyed to girls via reading matter and the education system. The demographic situation in much of western Europe had forced a reconsideration of the belief that women's only true role was marriage and motherhood.