The Management of Girls

The Management of Girls
An early Twentieth Century governess's counsel on dealing with young girls.
By Governess
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This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY. It contains explicit depictions of sexual activity involving minors. If you are not of a legal age in your locality to view such material or if such material does not appeal to you, do not read further, and do not save this story.
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In February 1905, a small pamphlet was published by Wilkins & Wilkins of Bristol. Its author (or authoress) was Eugenia Strang, a governess of some twelve years standing. It was entitled The Management of Girls. By all accounts, it had, in its day, and for some decades subsequently, a considerable influence. Indeed, in a heated debate in the House of Commons in 1912 on the corporal chastisement of girls in reformatory schools, it was quoted with evident enthusiasm by several Members of Parliament.

In her autobiography, Tales from the Schoolroom, Cornelia Lambert tells how Frances, a girl in her charge, after a particularly severe whipping, purloined her copy of The Management of Girls and was only just prevented from burning it in the schoolroom grate. Frances had obviously tired of hearing about Miss Strang's scheme of girl management and, worse, experiencing it at first hand. However, her spirited attempt to consign Miss Strang to the flames only resulted in her governess birching her with such vigour that it was Frances' eleven year old bottom flesh that was aflame and not the hated book.

Frances was not alone in benefiting from such an upbringing. During those years before the Great War and for some years afterwards, it was not uncommon for those advertising for a governess to specify that applicants were expected to adhere to "Strang Principles." Indeed in this period and for many years afterwards, The Management of Girls was to be found on the bookshelves of many parents who regarded strict discipline for their daughters as important as for their sons.

The key to understanding Miss Strang's approach to a girl's discipline lies in her recognition of an important difference between boys and girls. "Boys are outwardly unruly," she opined, "but have an inner spirit of compliance and a sense of fairness. Girls, however, while outwardly compliant, are often inwardly rebellious and despising of authority. Because of this they often escape punishment even though their outward compliance is all too frequently a deceitful veneer hiding a deeply rebellious spirit."

Certainly, corporal correction has often been thought more appropriate for boys than for girls, even though a girl's fuller, softer, and more rounded bottom might be thought more inviting of the birch or cane than the slimmer less fleshy rump of a boy. Surprisingly, the usual good sense of the Victorians deserted them when girls were excluded from the provisions governing the judicial flogging of delinquents introduced in the Nineteenth Century.

It may be that girls possess a more obedient spirit than boys; or may it be, as Eugenia Strang believed, that girls are more careful about expressing their disobedience in wayward behaviour. In Robert Enright's study of the thought and spirit of the Victorian age, Lords of Creation, he argues that the driving force behind all the great developments of the Nineteenth Century was a belief in divine order. "Just as God had shaped the world out of primeval chaos, so in their reforming zeal, in their development of industrial processes, in their founding of empire, the Victorians were bringing order to a disordered world." Eugenia Strang was a child of that age, and there can be little doubt that she, too, saw her vocation in that light. She was bringing "order to unruly young lives and rendering stubborn and obstinate wills biddable."

Today, parents may be less than precise in the demands they place on their offspring, but Miss Strang insisted that all children should be given a clear and comprehensive law appropriate to their age with a penalty set for each infraction. Thus, rules were set and infractions severely dealt with. However, in the authoress's experience it was less overt rule breaking that had to be confronted in a girl, rather an inner spirit of disdain and rebellion.

"To root out the serpent of self-will that stirs in a girl at around her eleventh or twelfth birthday," wrote Eugenia Strang, "there is required not only determination but a careful attention to her comportment, speech and all those little indications that open a small casement on her inner life. Does she obey with reluctance? Does she display a lack of enthusiasm for the task in hand? Does she work in the schoolroom with care and attention or does she daydream? Is there a hint of rudeness, or even worse surliness, in her response? Does she disdainfully flutter her eyes? Does an intake of breath suggest suppressed dissent? If so, then a sharp verbal reproof should be given, followed by thorough chastisement."

Many may find Miss Strang's graphic description of a "thorough chastisement" disturbing, but the later trend to understand and befriend children has arguably emasculated discipline, and encouraged increasingly selfish and irresponsible behaviour. Miss Strang believed in "a whipping administered vigorously to a child's bare buttocks and thighs." There were no half measures, no compromises. The girl's skirt or dress was raised and her undergarments lowered and the girl was left in no doubt that the painful chastisement that followed was exactly what her governess willed and intended. Although children were whipped in the privacy of the schoolroom, the telling sounds of punishment must have echoed down the corridors of a large and draughty house. Did the servants sympathise with those girls whose striped and smarting flesh was hidden beneath their long velvet dresses as they walked out with their governess; or did they secretly admire Miss Strang's strength of purpose and the disciplinary zeal that produced such "polite" children?

Undoubtedly, Eugenia Strang administered chastisement with a relish that to later parents and guardians might seen highly suspect. But she was a governess of her age, who took seriously the admonition in the Book of Proverbs to "withhold not correction from the child," with its ensuing promise that thereby the child would be saved from Hell. The birching of a disdainful eleven year old's quivering bottom was to assist the child to climb the ladder of salvation, for it broke the will and opened the path to a contrite and submissive spirit. So it should occasion little surprise that she wielded the rod with enthusiasm and delighted in its power to chasten and humble.

Boys who were sent away to school to be birched or caned, probably had little idea that their sisters were subject to a similar or even more austere regime at home. When serving as governess to a town family, Miss Strang "reluctantly" used a traditional rattan cane, but in the country she delighted in employing a traditional birch-rod. She found it "salutary" for children to accompany her "in the selection and gathering of the birch twigs and to assist in the preparation of the rod." This was then hung in the schoolroom until needed. If after three days no birching had been necessary, then the rod was replaced, for as she said "to be effective a birch-rod needs to be green, supple and fresh." The regular replacement of the rod might seem onerous, but as she points out, "children need to be walked daily and that provides a regular opportunity to renew the implement of their discipline."

Today it requires a leap of imagination to re-enter a world where a girl, under her governess's supervision, had to select, cut and bind up the rod with which she was to be corrected. To many this may seem like a condemned prisoner being forced to dig his own grave. But that is not how Miss Strang saw it. "To make a girl prepare the rod for her own correction has inestimable benefits. First, it makes her acutely aware of her governess's authority over her. And secondly, it instils a sense of responsibility for her own actions and their consequences. If she chooses to resist authority, then she has already made the rod for her own back, and its use in such circumstances is implicit in its preparation."

Few today will have used, or even seen, a birch and it may be of some interest to record Miss Strang's reasons for preferring this implement of correction over others. First, she places great importance on its unique purpose: "a birch rod is dedicated to the sole purpose of providing painful, effective chastisement and its presence in the schoolroom is a constant reminder of a governess's unswerving dedication to the provision of such correction." The fact that a birch rod is uniquely useless unless applied to bare flesh also seems to have counted with Miss Strang. "Unlike a cane, a birch is rendered ineffective by even a thin layer of clothing. Its exclusive use will ensure that the girl's buttocks are regularly bared for correction. This sends the clear and vital message that just as a layer of clothing, however thin, is not allowed to stand between her bottom flesh and the implement of correction, neither will excuses, protestations, or pleadings prevent the administration of a beneficial and effective whipping."

To read The Management of Girls makes one aware of how much an ever increasing sentimentality has sapped the will of parents and guardians and adversely affected our governance of children. We have increasingly rejected any punishment that might shame or lower a child's sense of self-esteem. This has largely been driven by the embracing of a false equality between men and women and, perhaps more importantly, between adults and children.

For most people today, sexual equality means that the responsibilities and rights of men and women are indistinguishable. But for Miss Strang equality meant an equal respect for and acknowledgement of their distinctive roles. For her men led, and women served. Not that this implied that men were superior beings and that women were servile underlings. They were equal but different. And just as men and women differed so did children from adults. And here there was indeed an inequality of status. Children were subservient and owed complete obedience to those adults who ruled them. A governess was "to rule the nursery and schoolroom without interference, and to ensure that a submissive and obedient spirit is inculcated in the children under her governance."

As we have seen, Miss Strang recognised that as a girl approached puberty she might be ostensibly obedient, but nevertheless despising of the authority set over her; and in that case she had no hesitation in administering discipline that was intended to be not only painful but also shaming. She refers with satisfaction to the fact that for an older girl the baring of the buttocks for chastisement is experienced as "deeply shameful and humbling. A girl of two probably feels little shame; while for a girl of seven a bare bottom certainly adds a most salutary element of embarrassment; but by the age of ten or eleven, whipping a girl on her naked fundament is the very acme of shame. And is entirely appropriate for a girl who at that age displays disrespect for her governess's authority."

There is no hint in Miss Strang's writing that she regards shame in this context as anything but beneficial. While to humiliate a girl for an honest mistake in her schoolwork is wholly unacceptable, faults of a moral nature are judged quite differently. "A girl, whatever her age, needs to be taught that shame is the right emotion to feel when discovered in a sin; and the way for her governess to do that is to ensure that the disciplinary response to her sinning is deeply shaming as well as painful."

There is a remarkable perceptiveness in Miss Strang's analysis of a girl's psychological response to traditional discipline. While we may loosely regard shame as little more than embarrassment, for her it is "the emotional response that arises when a disordered and rebellious will is confronted with the demands and imposition of the authority that it has sinfully rejected."

She expands on this point in a later chapter. "An arrogant twelve year old who has shown a disregard for her governess's authority needs the heavy moisture of sin to be wrung from her. Hot tears of shame need to wet her cheeks, and salt her tongue. She needs to have the pretension of maturity whipped from her and to suffer the shame of being curbed and broken: for without shame there is no contrition, and without contrition she will be unable to implore and accept forgiveness."

The sentimentality of later times was to find this shocking. And where the infliction of such suffering was accompanied by an expression of concern for the victim, this was regarded as hypocrisy. But for Miss Strang, such simplicity of outlook would have been extraordinary. She conceded that "it is an awesome and demanding responsibility to lay a bright, intelligent twelve year old for whom you feel great warmth and affection across the schoolroom ottoman; to lower her knickers and roll down her stockings; to birch her vigorously on her bare tender flesh, while ignoring her screams and protestations; and to continue her correction until she is thoroughly shamed, sobbing and begging for forgiveness. It is something that most governesses would wish to avoid; but when necessary, it must be done."

To a modern reader the question that most immediately springs to mind is how an unwilling teenage girl could be made to present herself half naked across the "schoolroom ottoman" for a sound birching. But we must remember that we are looking back on an age when authority was not only more clearly defined but routinely respected, and where there was general approval of such discipline. Miss Strang refers to the "rare" occasions when a spirited girl might resist and recommends that "in such circumstances the governess's will must prevail and the girl should be restrained in an orderly and seemly fashion."

Was a male member of the household summoned to horse the girl over his back; or was she held helplessly struggling across the schoolroom ottoman by two parlour maids; perhaps she was secured in some way to the ottoman? Miss Strang does not say. Of what we can be sure is that her correction for displaying such a spirit of opposition and disorder would have been thorough indeed. Not that her governess would have displayed anger or birched her with anything less than an even temperament. As always the aim would have been to reduce the girl to tearful submission, prepared contritely to beg and implore forgiveness. But before forgiveness was granted, we may be sure that Miss Strang would have imposed an additional penalty for such defiance and resistance. Perhaps a fresh birch was procured; perhaps to prove her contrition she had to accept further remorseless cuts on her already raw and smarting flesh, lying unrestrained across the ottoman, displaying acceptance of her governess's will and of her own need for discipline.

Certainly where an older girl was beginning to prove restive under authority, Miss Strang referred to the "need to constrain her more tightly within the corset of her governess's will." And her little book graphically describes a number of procedures to that end.

She recommends the imposition of a task that has no other purpose than to teach obedience. "After a whipping take a handful of rice and scatter it across the schoolroom floor, and make her clear it grain by wearisome grain, on her knees, with her dress fastened up and with her freshly whipped bottom displayed for all to see."

She recommends that "a girl whose attitude declares that her inner spirit is not constrained by her governess's will may profitably suffer the indignity of having a short leash attached to her wrist. This is a shaming experience for an older girl both within the household and most certainly when she is led out in public. It is an outward sign to her of the inward and spiritual grace of submission that she needs to acquire."

For Miss Strang not to confront self-will in an older girl by birching her soft sensitive flesh and by providing whatever supplementary discipline was necessary was an abrogation of responsibility. She concludes by saying, "I have done my duty; and if what I have written encourages other to do likewise, then I shall be well pleased."

But increasingly, as time went by, it was sentimentality rather than the birch that ruled. Its benign tyranny, even then, was slowly passing away. A sorry state of affairs. But those who are fortunate enough to have a faded copy of The Management of Girls on their shelves may carefully turn its pages and look back to a wiser era. To a time when the true needs of children were still lovingly met.