THE EUROPEAN PLAN


Every mishap among American women brings out renewed suggestions of what
may be called the "European plan" in the training of young girls,--the
plan, that is, of extreme seclusion and helplessness. It is usually
forgotten, in these suggestions, that not much protection is really given
anywhere to this particular class as a whole. Everywhere in Europe the
restrictions are of caste, not of sex. Even in Turkey, travellers tell us,
women of the humbler vocations are not much secluded. It is not the object
of the "European plan," in any form, to protect the virtue of young women,
as such, but only of young ladies; and the protection is pretty effectually
limited to that order. Among the Portuguese in the island of Fayal I found
it to be the ambition of each humble family to bring up one daughter in a
sort of lady-like seclusion: she never went into the street alone, or
without a hood which was equivalent to a veil; she was taught indoor
industries only; she was constantly under the eye of her mother. But in
order that one daughter might be thus protected, all the other daughters
were allowed to go alone, day or evening, bareheaded or bare-footed, by the
loneliest mountain-paths, to bring oranges or firewood or whatever their
work may be--heedless of protection. The safeguard was for a class: the
average exposure of young womanhood was far greater than with us. So in
London, while you rarely see a young lady alone in the streets, the
housemaid is sent on errands at any hour of the evening with a freedom at
which our city domestics would quite rebel; and one has to stay but a short
time in Paris to see how entirely limited to a class is the alleged
restraint under which young French girls are said to be kept.