Episode 1 - What a Young Girl Ought to Know

Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Forgotten Library; I am your host and library haunter, Nikki Gee.

Since this is our first time together, I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. I actually am a librarian, but even before attaining the title of “book ninja,” as a coworker likes to refer to me, research has always been a source of keen enjoyment . . . that is, on topics I’m actually interested in or intrigued by. I tend to drift towards the obscure and the weird, so being a research librarian seemed like a natural fit.

Enough about me. I’m sure, just like when you want to find a recipe on someone’s blog and they tell you their entire life story first – just get to the good stuff, man! I want to see your mac n’ cheese, not hear about your fourteen children and horse farm. Breadcrumb topping or nah??

Sorry. Ahem.

On today’s episode, we’re going to the Back of the Stacks to What a Young Girl Ought to Know, by Dr. Mary Wood-Allen.

Dr. Wood-Allen is not someone familiar today, but in her time, she was a prominent doctor and author of what we would call sex education books now, but as the pearl-clutching populace assumed that just saying the word sex would cause people to hump like bunnies (sound familiar?), they called them “purity education” or “hygiene books.”

The social purity movement goes back to England in the late 1880s; this idea went beyond the ideas of sexual purity (such as abstinence and anti-prostitution) to touch on race and class – white, middle-class Christians soon took up this mantle in the United States and Canada. Such organizations as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Young Men’s and Women’s Christian Associations, and the White Cross Leagues all began to meet in so-called Purity Congresses, drawing hundreds of people to discuss “the repression of vice” (that is to say, prostitution), “the rescue of the fallen” (reforming prostitutes and having them come to Jesus – many of these organizations deemed alcohol as the primary devil and the vice that resulted as secondary, but no less important), and “the better protection of the young,” which was an attempt to raise the age of consent as well as teach the younger set about sex. Which brings us back to Dr. Wood-Allen.

Dr. Wood-Allen, in addition to her medical degree, was National Purity Superintendent of Michigan, as well as head of the department of purity at the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She, along with other sex reformers, believed that keeping children ignorant about sex was not good for society as a whole. However, as I stated earlier, there was debate then, as now, about the correct way to go about it, lest the children become wildly inflamed with desire just hearing the words! They entreated parents to teach their own children, especially mothers, but as some would be too embarrassed to take on this role, the purity guides did the work for them. Thus, the Self and Sex series of books, which began with What a Young Boy Ought to Know by Sylvanus Stall and Dr. Wood-Allen’s book, both in the same year (1897). These two texts culminated in other books geared at older and older readers - young women and men, wives and husbands, and women and men of 45.

The version I have obtained of What a Young Girl Ought to Know via the Internet Archive is from 1897 and the copyright is in the name of Sylvanus Stall, not Dr. Wood-Allen, which I find interesting. All of the Self and Sex series were printed by Vir Publishing, of which little information exists; however, I did find an advertisement in The Standard of June 9, 1900 where the publisher was offering a prize of $1,000 (nearly $30k today) to any woman who could pen a companion volume of Stall’s What a Young Husband ought to Know; it looks like Emma Drake is the author on that particular treatise, but it’s unclear if it was due to that particular contest.

The text begins with “Commendations from Eminent Men and Women;” these included fellow members of the purity movement, such as Frances E. Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and teachers, such as Dr. Jennie B. Merrill, Supervisor of New York City kindergartens. Professor Earl Barnes sez, “It gives information enough and not too much, and it gives it in a clean, strong form that will prove a tonic to the girls who read it.” I’m presuming without the gin. These endorsements served at least two purposes, according to Sethna in the article “Animal sex: purity education and the naturalization of the abstinence agenda” : they functioned to attract consumers while simultaneously reassuring them that because these sex advice texts were ‘pure books on impure subjects,’ they would not spark sexual desire in the reader.

In these beginning pages, we also have a picture of the good doctor herself. She seems like a grandmotherly type, with gray hair in a severe twist. Her choice of dress is unfortunate, with copious ruffles and an ill-placed, fussy scarf that looks like it would eat her.

The book is dedicated to “the thousands of girls whose honest inquiries concerning the origin of life and being deserve such a truthful, intelligent and satisfactory answer as will save them from ignorance, enable them to avoid vice, and deliver them from solitary and social sins.” In her preface, Dr. Wood-Allen states that children are naturally curious and will be observing the world around them and wondering where babies might come from. Such doings are seen as sacred, and yet, the embarrassment that surrounds them contradicts this sight. She is a bit ahead of her time, perhaps, in saying that “ignorance and innocence are not synonymous,” that children can know of such things without being tainted. She reassures mothers that these books are the answer to their dilemma, with each book geared toward a specific age group. No reading ahead allowed!

The text itself takes the form of intimate chats between a young girl named Nina and her mother, who has just had a baby. The chats begin with the question “How do people come into the world?” but the first portion of the book, stretching over several Twilight Talks (as each chapter is called), discusses organic and inorganic matter, plants, and seeds. God gave us seeds, and each seed does its own thing, and isn’t that wonderful? Because this is JUST LIKE how people reproduce, right? Oak trees are strong, tough, and durable; this is the sort of sex talk you want from your mum. From these chapters, you can tell what kind of Christian Dr. Wood-Allen is, as she sees God not as a “tyrant who says everyone must do everything just a certain way, but like a kind parent.” Obviously, she eschewed the fire-and-brimstone pulpits in favor of kindliness, or maybe she just didn’t want to scare children. Also, sweeping and dusting and placing the furniture cultivates your mind. The More You Know.

Dr. Wood-Allen, in the guise of Nina’s mom, really drives these plant reproduction facts home. Apparently, she was not alone. British sexologist Havelock Ellis found botany lessons in late 18th century educators’ arsenals for the “sexual enlightenment,” as he referred to it, of children. Then she shares a poem from Emma McCord called “A Botany Lesson,” in which the phrase “sleepy little seed children,” is used, which honestly, just creeps me out and makes me think of Children of the Corn.

Just like plants, animals come in two types, male and female. And like plants, animals have ovaries, but animal ovaries have eggs, not seeds. Not that it matters, cause it’s all the same thing. Never mind the fact that you will never see plants in flagrante delicto.

Roe are fish eggs, and sometimes we have eaten them for dinner, says Nina’s mom. That doesn’t seem like an appropriate place to mention that; for a turn-of-the-twentieth-century book, that seems rather scandalous! Fish go upriver to spawn, and the father fertilizes the eggs with a mysterious liquid that “looks like the white of an egg.” Sperm’s euphemism in this portion is “the principle of life,” which seems to further the Greek idea that men carried the sole component for having a child, while women were merely incubators.

We now turn to warm-blooded creatures, specifically, birds. Mother speaks of watching a pair of Baltimore orioles the previous summer, building their nest little bits at a time, and the male bird singing to the female bird as she sat on her eggs. Oh, and sometimes proud Papa would sit on the eggs, while Mama took a much-deserved break downtown, wondering at life before, when she was a free woman and not tied down.

Yet again, we learn that the eggs came from the mother’s ovary, and the father supplied a “product” in order to fertilize them. Presumably, alcohol. Lots of alcohol + weak-willed woman = bun in oven (in this case, a half dozen fuckin’ buns. Yowza).

Lest one think too long about that far-from-idyllic scene, Mom rhapsodizes about how birds teach us love and tenderness, and how nests are like little bird-homes and everything is nice. No one ever, ever gets beaten, and the nest never needs to be scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed like that damned floor that’s always dirty from your father’s hob-nailed boots.

Doctor Mom moves us further up the chain to humans, and how the egg is inside the body, but doesn’t quite say how it gets fertilized. She mentions how human babies are not as self-sufficient as their animal brethren, and after much thought, she says that it’s all God’s plan: “the more valuable the creature, the more helpless is his infancy.”

Now, supposedly, we get to the meat of the question, Where do babies come from? It’s not the stork, as that is a fairy story. Inside mother’s ovary is a teensy tiny egg, it gets fertilized, and then it stays in a little room in mother’s body, where it lies “warm and safe from danger,” and mother knows that it is there, and loves it before she ever sees it. The umbilical cord and how it helps to nourish the fetus is compared to an apple dumpling, somehow. I suppose all these food references are meant to be comforting, reassuring and familiar, for after all, that was women’s sphere, and they knew it intimately. It just seems creepy, and I’mma look askance at the next apple turnover I see.

Of course, you would not come into being without your father, and his “germ of life.” He sneezed upon your mother’s stomach, and thus, the door to the tiny waiting room within was opened, and you proceeded to wait for nine months before you could be let out from your consultation. How rude, particularly since it was dark and had no magazines to speak of.

“We cannot understand all the mystery of life,” Dr. Wood-Allen reminds us, which I suppose is code for, “If you want to know how father’s germs get inside your mother, well, you’ll find out when you’re married. Always remember this: stare at the ceiling and count the water spots. It’s the perfect way to relax and float away from the unspeakable actions being done to your lower extremities.”

Children should not be teased about being lovers and sweethearts, for that’s joking about something sacred and that’s just not done. Children have no knowledge about love, apparently, until they reach adulthood, and then you marry the first suitable boy that comes along, and then, next stop: babyville!

The rest of the book devolves into keeping good character, and health of the mind and body. Understand your bodily house, through all its doors and windows, and become acquainted with it. But not TOO acquainted with it. More on that shortly.

First, your eyes. Don’t strain them. Invest in spectacles. Never put salt in them (okay, she doesn’t say that, but that is one of my favorite Kids in the Hall sketches, and it seemed appropriate to reference). However, she does warn her daughter not to put her fingers in her eyes. And here we have some turn-of the-twentieth-century scaremongering: Mother once knew a girl who would pull the corners of her eyelids down, presumably in some early attempt at racist humor, and her face became DEFORMED. Oh, for the price of laughter . . .

Never put sticks or stones in your ears, and never, never let anyone else do so! Every organ is sacred and needs protection, not the least of which are your sexual organs. “You should never handle them or allow anyone else,” Mother says. But – what does one mean by “handle?” When your daughter gets married, her husband is going to have to “handle” that organ, in some way or other. Hmm.

Dr. Wood-Allen does make a small reference to female masturbation here. It is wrong, wrong, totally WRONG and sinful, and is what as known as “solitary vice.” Oh, and don’t try to hide it, as it leaves its mark upon the face. Everyone is going to know that you’re manhandling your punani in the outhouse, because the blush will creep upon your cheek and spell out, “I’m lovin’ it.”

To further the scare-mongering, Mother quotes from a very wise physician about the horrid effects pleasuring oneself has upon the body. Backaches, sideaches, tender spine, indolence [okay, maybe I’ll give him that one, but only as a brief aftereffect], pallid complexion, hollow eyes and languor. The good doctor goes on to say that he can always tell when a girl is heading down the road called Solitary Vice. Her health declines; she becomes irritable and disobedient. This is the best part, though: “She will manifest an unnatural appetite, sometimes desiring mustard, pepper, vinegar, and spices, cloves, clay, salt, chalk, charcoal, etc., which appetites certainly are not natural for little girls.” One could venture to say that clay, chalk and charcoal are not “natural” for ANYONE to consume, least of all girls or women, but who am I to say? I suppose vinegar and mustard are for MANLY men. Tights optional.

The danger alarm was sounded long before this series was published, all starting with a quack doctor named John Marten. It was never completely certain if he wrote the pamphlet entitled Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution in the early 1700s, but apparently this is the origin of all the ways that masturbation can make you certifiably insane, give you all sorts of illnesses, and eventually kill you. Even respectable medical men and women took up this crazy-ass banner and waved it as wildly as they could, cowing their patients into telling them about their solitary habits.

Bottom line: all organs have a specific use ordained by God; don’t mess with that plan. My reasoning has always been: if God would not have wanted you to masturbate, your arms and hands would not be long enough to reach your pudenda. End of story.

Oh, get this: apparently, refined ladies DO, in fact, urinate and defecate. Just do it in the privacy of the bathroom, as opposed to, you know, crapping on the floor like a dog.

So, girls, if another little girl of your acquaintance sidles up to you in the closet or parlor, and wants to speak to you about your reproductive organs, what do you say? With a deep breath, and a haughty toss of your head, you say, “I would rather you would not tell me about it. I will ask my mother and she will tell me. Mother tells me everything that I ought to know and she tells me in such a way as to make it very sweet to me, and so I have my little secrets with mother, and not with other girls.” Which is a stellar way to make new friends on the playground, wouldn’t you say?

In short, your body is like Disney World, but you’re not allowed on any of the rides.

Having boy friends is alright, but make sure they are good. Don’t get too intimate, even with your girl friends. Keep secrets to yourself, or with Mother. Don’t tell family tales to others. Girls and women should not kiss each other in public places, so I presume it is okay for them to do this in the privacy of their own home. Girls and boys should not kiss each other anywhere at anytime, and if you are the recipient of such a kiss and don’t want to tell about it, well, then you KNOW it’s bad news. It is particularly sad when little girls are “caressed and fondled by men. It often makes the little girls bold in their conduct, and certainly destroys the bloom of purity and self-respect.” Whoa. Little girls being touched by men? Hello, sexual abuse?

Women help make man who he is, whether for bad or good. Mother’s influence lasts for a long time. The wife is almost as important, but not quite. The best times in the world are enjoyed by Christians. As a child of god, you are his heir, and therefore have divine possibilities. Use them for good, not evil, and above all, don’t touch yourself!

[break]

In closing, so much of this at first glance seems ridiculous and very far removed from our society today, and yet, in 2019, we have ultra-conservatives here in the United States that believe abstinence only sexual education is the way to teach children about sex, because, you know, if you say the words, they’re just gonna do it. Over a hundred years have gone by, and we progressed, and then regressed. I don’t really know what the answer is, except, if you’re embarrassed to talk to your kids about sex, there ARE some stellar books out there that can teach your kids what you can’t or won’t. Don’t let them rely on the internet. Your local library is a good place to start; they can give you some suggestions, and the best part? Most of them can answer this question for you via a chat or email feature (check your local area for details), so you don’t even have to look anyone in the face when you do it!

Well, that’s the show. If you liked this episode, or have a suggestion for a book you’d like me to delve into, please drop me a line in the comments. Until next time, I'm Nikki Gee, your intrepid library haunter.

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Sources:

Pierce, J. (2011). What Young Readers Ought to Know: The Successful Selling of Sexual Health Texts in the Early Twentieth Century. Book History, 14, 110-136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/bh.2011.0009

Sethna, C. (2010). Animal sex: purity education and the abstinence agenda. Sex Education, 10(3), 267-279. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2010.491636

Wood-Allen, M. (1897). What a Young Girl Ought to Know. London, England: Vir Publishing. Link to a copy at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/whatayounggirlo00allegoog