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Abstract
In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, as periodical literature itself diversified and increased in volume, a growing amount of copy was devoted to the medical issues of the day, including debates about the limits of young women's energy and the impact of the extension of their activities in education, public life and sport on their health and vitality, and their future role as mothers. The article explores the ways in which doctors in particular utilized these outlets to convey their opinions and concerns, revealing a great diversity of viewpoints as well as the flexible editorial policies of many of these journals. Both male and a growing cohort of female doctors employed the platform of the periodical to popularize and make relevant medical ideas, while also building on, highlighting and creating broader cultural and gendered perspectives and emblems of girlhood.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Explored in Marland, Health and Girlhood; this article focuses on the ways in which doctors and other self-styled authorities on girls’ health utilized periodical literature to convey their opinions.
2. Anon., “Women's Beauty.” The article summarized eminent psychiatrist Sir James Crichton-Browne's take on the challenges of female education for women.
3. Flint, The Woman Reader, 57.
4. Scull, MacKenzie, and Hervey, “Degeneration and Despair”; Turner, “Henry Maudsley”; Brock, British Women Surgeons; Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson; and Elston, “Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett.”
5. Maudsley, “Sex in Mind.”
6. Vertinsky, The Eternally Wounded Woman, 46.
7. Anderson, “Sex in Mind.”
8. Flint, The Woman Reader, 57. For the debate and its follow-up, see Burstyn, “Education and Sex”; Newman, Men's Ideas/Women's Realities; and Marland, Health and Girlhood, ch. 4.
9. Vann and VanArsdel, Victorian Periodicals, 3, 7–8.
10. Van Vuuren, Literary Research, 145.
11. Fraser, Green, and Johnston, Gender and the Victorian Periodical.
12. Martineau, “How to Learn to Swim”; Hoggan, “Cycling for Ladies.”
13. Marland, Health and Girlhood, 122–31, and for the contributions of medical practitioners to the debate on cycling 103–18.
14. See also Parratt, “Athletic ‘Womanhood’,” 43.
15. Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own?, preface, ix.
16. Ibid., 89, 91.
17. Ibid., 138. See also Drotner, English Children; Tinkler, Constructing Girlhood; and Mitchell, The New Girl.
18. For the Girl's Own Paper (GOP), see Skelding, “Every Girls’ Best Friend?”; Drotner, English Children, ch. 10; Marland, Health and Girlhood, 75–82; and Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own?, ch. 9.
19. Peterson, “Medicine.”
20. Vann and VanArsdel, Victorian Periodicals, 5.
21. Kingsford, Health, Beauty and the Toilet. See also Richardson, “Transforming the Body Politic.”
22. Davis, “Hygiene for Girls,” 655–60. See also Verbrugge, Able-Bodied Womanhood, 121–2.
23. See Marland, Health and Girlhood, 51–2, 75–82 for Stables’ publishing exploits and the GOP.
24. Scharlieb, “Adolescent Girlhood,” 179; Scharlieb, “Adolescent Girls,” 1015. See Jones, “Women and Eugenics in Britain.”
25. Stables, The Girl's Own Book, preface, 174–82.
26. ‘Medicus’, “The Weather and Health,” 23–4.
27. ‘Medicus’, “Can Girls Increase their Strength?” 534.
28. ‘Medicus’, “Health, Strength and Beauty,” 758; ‘Medicus’, “Health All the Year Round,” 166.
29. Mitchell, The New Girl, 65, for citation of Nesbit, E. ‘The Girton Girl’, Atalanta 8 (1895), 755–759, on 755.
30. Anon. [Linton, E. Lynn], “The Girl of the Period,” Saturday Review 25 (March 14, 1868), 339–340. Reprinted in Linton, The Girl of the Period, 6, 2. See also Fraser, Green, and Johnston, Gender and the Victorian Periodical, 32–4 for the complex gender formations taking place in Girl of the Period Miscellany.
31. Horwood, “Girls Who Arouse Dangerous Passions,” 654; McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation; Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 42. See also Macrae, Exercise in the Female Life Cycle, ch. 3 for the experiences of young girls after 1930.
32. Schofield, “The Modern Development,” 818.
33. Imber, Trusting Doctors, 85–7.
34. Schofield, “Nervousness and Hysteria,” 415.
35. Schofield, “Modern Hygiene in Practice,” 672, 673.
36. See Marland, Health and Girlhood, ch. 3.
37. Kenealy, “Woman as Athlete,” 635, 641.
38. Ibid., 643, 645.
39. Chant, “Woman as an Athlete.”
40. Kenealy, “Woman as an Athlete: A Rejoinder,” 916, 920.
41. Ibid., 924, 926, 928.
42. Playfair, “The Nervous System,” 221. Playfair was citing a leading article, ‘The New Woman – Old Style’, The Speaker (January 12, 1895), 39–41, on 40.
43. Anon., “The Month,” 111.
44. Schofield, “The Modern Development,” 818.
45. Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 54–5, Lake, “Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis,” 703–4.
46. Schofield, “The Cycling Craze,” 185.
47. Richardson, “On Recreation for Girls,” 546.
48. Simpson, “Respectable Identities,” 69, 68.
49. Richardson, “Arabella Madonna Kenealy.”
50. Walker, Beauty Through Hygiene, preface, 10, 11.
51. Playfair, “Remarks on the Education.”
52. F.H. [Hird], “Women's Work,” 51.
53. Schofield, “On the Perfecting,” 662.
54. Fenton, “A Medical View of Cycling,” 797.
55. Anon., “A Lady Doctor on Cycling”; Stables, Girls’ Own Book, 62. For dress reform and sport, see McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation, ch. 8.
56. ‘Medicus’, “A Plain Talk,” 597.
57. Stables, Health upon Wheels, 43.
58. Stables (‘Medicus’), “Health,” 716.
59. Stables (‘Medicus’), “Man-Games,” 503.
60. Ibid., 503.
61. See also Marland, “Unstable Adolescence.”