Last week I wrote about The Boy’s Own Paper with it’s mix of tales about adventurers, swimming The Channel with Captain Webb, foreign countries and peoples, sport and other outdoors pursuits. All in all an exciting read for Victorian boys. Well a year after it started the same publisher came up with The Girl’s Own Paper and the content was very different, reflecting the still held view that girls were effectively in training to be home-makers and certainly didn’t need, or want, tales of adventure. I don’t have as many copies of The Girl’s Own Paper but I can do the same as I did last week and look through the first ever issue from January 3rd 1880.
The front cover looks similar to the boy’s version only the masthead is somewhat less interesting, The drawing is based on the relief sculpture “The Spirit of Love and Truth” by Joseph Edwards and as such is entirely in tune with the Victorian attitude to girls. The story on the front is a long running part work, you can follow Zara for months as the magazine comes out each week. This is presumably because the serialised stories proved so popular in the boy’s version, this contrasts with the one off tale that appeared in their first edition but this was soon changed to serials in future examples. This opening section of the tale is a full four pages long.
Instead of tales of daring do with the dashing Captain Webb girls have the life of the young Princess Victoria which is altogether more refined and ladylike and also runs to almost three full pages. It is clearly intended to be an example of moral rectitude to inspire the readers and is pure hagiography as would be only expected really. The balance of the seventh page of the paper is occupied with The Girls Own Alphabet which is frankly dire and ends:
Woman is formed from girlhoods first plan –
Xantippe or Claudia, Queen Mary or Anne
Young friends to be happy, now learn to be wise
Zeal without knowledge is a head without eyes
After the first seven pages consisting of the story plus Princess Victoria and the poem, an article on fashion though the ages was pretty well compulsory. A girl is naturally interested in dress styles and outfits so the next double page spread is concerned with this. The hat on the lady for 1787 on the far right of the second page is described as ‘more dressy’ it makes you wonder just how over the top an outfit had to be before it was queried.
and logically following on from that are long sections on needlework and of course cookery. As I said at the beginning the target audience are home-makers in preparation, if a woman of the time did work she would be a domestic servant or nanny if she was lucky and not forced into the extremely hard work of the mills or markets, the poorest though would not be frittering their money on something as ephemeral as this magazine, the readership could be relied upon to be at least middle class so housewife was the aim for almost all. The cookery class in this edition is about roasting and apart from the fact that it assumes you would be doing so over a fire rather than in an oven a lot of the advice would not be out of place in a modern cookery book. There then follows a couple of shorter stories before we reach..
The Useful Hints sound initially as if they are envisaging a poorer reader and the chilblains remedy sounds positively dangerous, but soon normal service is resumed with hints for reviving gilt frames and renovating silk dresses. Now this is still a make do and mend mentality there is none of the waste of throwing away perfectly serviceable items so prevalent today, girls would be expected to have the skills needed to fix things regardless of their social standing, needlework was an expected ability and it would be surprisingly advanced.
Like last week I have looked forward to edition three of the Girls Own Paper to see what they are expected to be able to make; and again what would today be seen as an astonishing amount of craft is regarded as normal.
The bed satchel prize competition is for Crewel Work, a type of embroidery which uses wool, competitors had three months to complete the item, the winner to get two guineas and a second prize of one guinea. These are substantial prizes, the equivalent of almost £240 for the winner in today’s money. The work was to be 19¼ inches by 13 inches and use the pattern illustrated, it also had to be all the girls own work and this had to be stated in an accompanying letter written by a minister, teacher or parent. Colours are suggested in the hints section and the flowers named so that the correct shades would be used. No entrant would get their work back as
It is intended to present the well-worked satchels to the various hospitals and other charitable institutions for the use of poor patients, who will find them most handy for holding their nightdresses, pocket handkerchiefs, scent bottles, scissors etc.
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