Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1874-02-19
FRENCH GIRLS.

From French Home Life.l
Every one will assent to the PROPOSE
| tion that the most marked feature of the
character OF the French is the develop.
ment of their emotional and sensational
faculties. This development exists in
both sexes, but it is far more evident
among the women than among the men,
it acquires force with education, and is
most glaringly conspicuous in the high
est classes. Repression of manifesto
tions of feeling forms no part of French
teaching; on the contrary, those mani
festations are regarded as natural and
desirable. We, therefore, find that
French mothers rather encourage their
children, and especially their daughters,
never to conceal the impressions which
may agitate them, providing always that
those impressions are honest and real,
and are not of a nature to shock either
convenances or principle. 1t follows
that the impulses of children remain un-
checked; that they rush into light di-
rectly they are felt, and that the inhu-
ence of mothers and of governesses is
employed to guide such impulses to
faithful and graceful form of express
sion far more than to suppress or even
control them in themselves. There is a
vast deal to be said in favor Of this sys-
TEN. 1t stimulates individuality it for
tifies the affections, it develops sonsi-
bility in many of its varied forms. 1t
has been applied for generations, and it
has produced an herediterily acquired
capacity of sentiment, which, at this
present time, is certainly greater than
that possessed by any other nation. The
range of this capacity is most extensive.
1t applies to almost every position and
almost every accident of life, to art, and
even to science; but its full effects, its
full consequences, are naturally OBJ
served in the tenderer sympathies, in
the emotions and in the gentler duties
which fall particularly on women.
There is in most French women a gush-
ingness, an unrestrained outporing of
inner self, which is reproduced in their
daughters as abundantly as in them
selves. Girls, from their very baby
hood, live side by side with demonstra-
tive mothers, who show and say what
they think and feel with natural frank
ness of which they are scarcely con-
scious. The children not only inherit
this disposition, but are aided to de-
velop it in their own little hearts by ex-
ample, contact and advice. They are
born impulsive. They are shown how
to be so. They are told that, provided
impulse be well expressed, and be d.
rected to worthy objects, it is a source
of Joy, of tenderness and of charm.
The English theory is very contrary to
this; but such matters are questions of
race and Of national habit. And, further
more, if we are honest, we shall own
that keen susceptibility of emotion is
infinitely attractive in a true woman.
Young French girls have it to an aston
ishing extent, particularly in the upper
ranks. Their heads and hearts live in
the open air; their natures are all out
side. They have no place where they
can hide away thought from their
mothers sight; it must come out. 1t is
easy to understand, even at a distance,
how this simplifes the guidance Of a
child. lis merits and its defects come
right into its mothers hand. She has
not got to hunt for them, and to doubt |
whether she sees the truth; it glares at
her in the hundred little acts and words
of her expansive girl. The French
child wears no mask.
And the direct action of the mother
becomes all the stronger from the al
most universe; custom of keeping her
children with her day and night. Many
a girl in France has never slept outside |
her mothers chamber until she leaves it |
to be married; and, at the worst, she is
no farther off than the next room, with
the door open between. Such unceas-
ing neighborhood brings about an action |
which may be not only intellectual and |
moral, but possibly physical and mag
netic too. The mother passes into the
daughter, the daughter absorbs the |
essences get mixed; and |
hence it is that French women exercise
such singular power over their girls, and
that the girls so generally become an
exact reproduction Of the mother, under I
whose cOnstaht eye they have grown to
womanhood. Between the transparent
Of the child's nature and the
proximity Of the parent