The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1875-10-29
ONE THING AND ANOTHER.
PAPER NUAIBER TWO.
GIRLS AND NOVELS.


els will fail to produce the chief mental
aliment of our girls. A higher educa-
tion destroys a taste for trashy litera-
ture, and it is now not uncommon to
find historical and scientific works on
young lady's bookshelf, that have been
well thumbed by their fair possessor; yet
the numberIess ladies' magazines, filled
as they are with the silliest possible sto-
ries, the WaUerEy, Mercury, and all the
host of so-called literary papers, find
hundreds of thousands of readers, and it
is our girls who peruse them most
eagerly. And still more lamentable is
the fact that the greater portion of this
literary rubbish is manufactured by
women; not women of broad culture and
superior talents who seek to elevate hu-
manity, but women of selfish natures
and shallow minds, who care little what
kind of fruit the seed they sow may
produce. To these productions are due
directly much of the opposition Woman
Suffrage meets from women themselves.
Every story is supposed to teach some
truth or truths, but we must confess
that it would take more acute intellect
than ours to discover the moral to most
of these cheap fictions. The principal
part of them, in truth, have neither a
moral nor "moral character" but
simply serve to instilI in the minds of
the young, false and absurd notions of
life.
Girls who are taught that they have
nothing to look for beyond marriage,
read them, because their theme is al
ways love. How disappointed are those
readers when, in after life, they find
that love does not rob life of its burdens
and cares as they have been led to be-
Iieve Mothers who have been novel
readers in girlhood never get entirely
beyond their influence, and sometimes
DO not lose the taste for them even in
mature womanhood, although their
whole experience must have taught
them that the teachings of these pro-
ductions are utterly false. We see them
selecting names for their children from
novels; giving them the queer and silly
sounding names of the different heroes
and heroines of whom they have read,
and as the heroines are always we'll
dressed, liIy-handed do-nothings, the
mother drudges in her kitchen that the
daughters may sit in the parlor and
wait for princes to come and lay siege to
their hearts.
Psychologists and sensible people may
preach against early marriages and eff
feet but little, when all the people that
girl reads about are married young;
for all the heroines of novels, though
they may be taken through the whole
catalogue of suferings, are at last safely
married before they should be thinking
of beaux, and when they ought properly
to be in pantalets and pinafores. We
have known girls deferred from taking
full course of study because it could
not be completed before the time they
thought they ought to be married.
Some one has said that the object of
these stories was to promote marriages,
and it may be so, but why then does the
curtain drop SO soon as a couple are
united in the bonds ? Are the writers
fearful that if they follow their charac-
tiers through married life, marriages will
fail to be promoted thereby?
Invariably, when opposite characters
are delineated, the good, sweet and gen.
tie girl marries, and the selfish, ill-tem-
pered one has never proposal of mar
riage during the whole period of her
natural life. Moral: Girls, be good;
obey your parents; be sweet and lovable,
and you will-not be happy in earth
life-but oh, sweet reward you will be
sure to marry
Girls, don't read silly, romantic, un-
real and impossible love stories. They
will corrupt your taste, destroy your
love for the the noblest duties of life,
dwarf your womanhOod, and bring you
bitter discomfort. Read of science; read
history; yes, and read Mother Goose;
read anything, but let these silly stories
alone. MADGE BRIGHT.