The Girl and Her Religion

The Girl and Her Religion

Margaret Slattery

5.0
Comment(s)
41
View
18
Chapters

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Chapter 1 THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL

She has certain inalienable rights, regardless of race, color or social state. When it has thought about her at all, society in general has supposed, until recently, that in a free country, a glorious land of opportunity, the girl has her rights-the right to work, the right to play, the right to secure an education and to enter the professions, the right to marry or to refuse, the right in short to do as she shall choose. And in a sense and to the casual observer this is true. Our country gives to her some rights which she can enjoy nowhere else in the world.

But as one learns to know her, little by little the stupendous fact is impressed upon him that girlhood has been and is being denied its rights.

It is the right of every girl to be born into a community where the sanitary conditions are such that she has at least a fair chance to enter upon life without being physically handicapped at the start. But hundreds of girls every year open their baby eyes in dark inner rooms where the dim gas light steals what oxygen there may chance to be in the heavy air, take their first steps in foul alleys, find their first toys in garbage cans and gutters. They have been denied their rights at the start. In a Christian land, they grow weak, anemic, yield to the white specter and in a few years pass out of the unfair world to which they came, or remain to fight out a miserable existence against terrific odds. They make up an army of girls who have been denied their rights. And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in compensation for that which she has been denied?

It is the right of every girl to be born under conditions which will make possible sufficient food and clothing for her natural growth and development. But scores of little girls go shivering to school every morning after a breakfast of bread and tea, they return numb with cold after a dinner of more bread and tea and they go home to a supper of the same with a piece of stale cake or a cookie to help out. Nature calls aloud for nourishment and there is no answer. The girl enters her teens, finds a "job," goes to work, hungry the long year through, fighting to win out over the cold in winter, and to endure the scorching days of summer. And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in compensation for what she has been denied?

It is the right of every girl to receive, through the educational work of the community, training which shall fit her for clean, honest and efficient living. Yet every year sees hundreds of girls turned out into the world wholly unequipped for life, their special talents undiscovered, their energies undirected, their purposes unformed, their ambitions unawakened.

It is the right of every girl to be shielded from the moral danger and physical strain of labor for her daily bread, at least until she shall reach the age of sixteen. Yet every year sees a long procession of girls from eight to sixteen entering into the economic struggle who cannot claim their rights.

It is the right of every girl to have a good time, to play under conditions that are morally safe, and to enjoy amusements that leave no stain. Hundreds of girls live in communities where this is absolutely impossible. What has religion to offer to a girl denied an education which will fit her for the life she must live, compelled to enter into a fierce struggle for daily bread while still a child, surrounded by every sort of cheap, exotic amusement behind which temptation lurks? Has it anything to offer in compensation, if it permits conditions to go on unchanged?

It is the right of every girl to enjoy companionship and friends. Thousands of girls toil through the day in shops, factories, offices and kitchens and at night sit friendless and alone until the loneliness becomes unendurable and they seek companionship of the unfit and the refuge of the street. Has religion anything to do with lonely girlhood?

It is the right of every girl to receive such instruction regarding her own physical life and development as shall serve to protect her from the pitfalls laid for the thoughtless and ignorant, and shall fit her to understand, and when the time comes accept the privileges and responsibilities of motherhood. Every year sees thousands of girls enter the teens whose only knowledge of self and motherhood is gained through the half truths revealed by companions, the suggestions of patent medicine and kindred advertisements, or the falsehoods of those who seek to corrupt. What has a girl's religion to do with these simple undeniable facts?

It is the right of every girl to receive the protection of wise parental authority. The guidance of parents who earnestly, wisely and with the highest motives require obedience from those too young to choose for themselves is the right of every girl. Yet thousands of girls every year are left to decide life's most important questions, while parents, weak, indifferent or careless sleep until it is too late. Has religion anything to offer to girls whose parents have laid down their task and neglected their duty?

It is the right of every girl to receive such moral and religious instruction as shall develop and strengthen her higher nature, fortify her against temptation and lead her in the spirit of the Author of the Golden Rule into service for her fellows. Yet thousands of girls are without definite moral and religious instruction and unconscious of the fact that it is their right, and thousands more receive moral and religious training in haphazard fashion and from sources inadequate to the task.

When the community awakens to the necessity for sanitary conditions in the environment of every girl and honestly seeks the solution of the problems of economic injustice; when the educational system seeks to prepare its girls for the life they must live; when laws for the regulation of labor for girls are made in the interest of the girl herself; when the community makes it possible for its girls to play in safety and makes provision for friendless and lonely girlhood; when mothers instruct their daughters in the most important facts of life, parents exercise protective authority and the church provides adequate assistance in the task of moral and religious instruction, then, and not till then, will the girl receive her rights.

And the girl's religion? The girl is naturally religious. Without religion no girl comes into her own. Whenever and wherever religion concerns itself with the rights of a girl it becomes a girl's religion to which she can pledge body, mind and soul. For the coming of that religion the world of girlhood eagerly waits.

* * *

Continue Reading

You'll also like

Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

SHANA GRAY
4.3

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book