+The Problem of Life from a Girl’s Point of View
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1914, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. VIII, No. 4. June 15, 1914 :Author: Margaret Otis, Ph.D.,
Resident Psychologist, State Home for Girls, Trenton, N. J. Aline Herzog was a spoiled child and the pet of her father, an Austrian by birth. She was early a favorite with the boys and found she could obtain her every wish by coaxing either her father or the other men of her acquaintance. She went to school pretty regularly from the time she was six till she was fourteen years of age, and went as far as the graduating class in the grammar school. Her father was a good, industrious man and very indulgent to his children. He was especially fond of Aline and thought that nothing was too good for her. Unfortunately he died when she was sixteen, just at the time when the girl needed him the most, for the mother was weak morally and was easily influenced, either for good or evil. Aline afterwards said her mother was weak and let everyone influence her.
It was just after the father’s death that the episode began that proved Aline’s destruction. In fact, on the very night after the funeral she was sent by her mother to return a bag loaned by a neighbor. She knocked at the door and it was opened by the neighbor’s husband. Aline said she felt drawn to him at that moment. Mrs. Burgess was kind to her and invited her to come again. She visited them often, played cards at the house, and was received in a friendly, neighborly way. Mrs. Burgess soon proved herself to be not the right sort of woman. She drank, smoked, and it is said she was also immoral. Aline, unconsciously at first, tried to make up to Mr. Burgess for his wife’s failings,?would try to keep the house in order when Mrs. Burgess went on a spree . The intimacy grew and Mr. Burgess yielded to a very natural love for the attractive young girl. He went too far and took her off to a hotel in New York where they lived together for a short time. Aline in speaking of this time says, “I was very happy then, or thought I was.” The happiness did not last, for the couple were arrested and Aline was consigned to the State Home. The man escaped through connivance of the police, and took up his residence in New York.
Aline’s life in the Home was not a pleasant one. Used to indulgence, she did not take kindly to orders. She was unruly and impudent. After once working her way to the Honor Cottage she became involved in some wrong doing, refused to admit herself in the wrong, and was consigned to the department where unruly girls are subjected to more stringent rules than the others. Here she stayed for four years. She became despondent and ceased trying to improve. She chummed with the most immoral of the girls and it was never possible to trust her outside.
As Aline neared her twenty-first birthday when she must necessarily be released, an effort was made by some of her friends to open the way to establish her in life again, that the past might be forgotten. Her heart was touched and she was influenced to wish to lead a virtuous life. In fact, she expressed herself as willing to do all in her power to re-establish herself in the world. She was now ready to give up her former love, though for a long time she had cherished dreams of the happiness she had enjoyed. Her lover, Joe Burgess, had written occasional letters from time to time after Aline had first been consigned to the Home, but gradually his interest had died out. The fear on the part of her relatives was that she would return to Joe as soon as she was released. That fear proved groundless, yet to prevent any possibility of this occurring, a place was found for Aline at some distance from her former home, in the household of a woman of wealth where the girl could work her way and even go on with the training of her voice. For she had a good voice, and in the Home she had been given opportunity to develop it. It was thought that with such an incentive she would become ambitious for herself. All went well for a while. The housekeeper, Mrs. Stoneman, who had charge of the establishment in its owner’s absence, seemed a good-natured, kindly personage and made things easy for Aline in every way. She was introduced to the young people of the neighborhood and had every privilege in the house that a girl could be granted. She was invited to sing at entertainments and was taken out to parties. Aline writes very happily of this period: “I have a very nice home and I can have anything I want. No one ever quarrels or fusses and no one nags at you. I feel sorry for the other girls at the Home. It’s no use telling them to behave because I know how hard it is when some one always finds fault with you. I often wonder how I stood those four years caged up like some wild beast. I couldn’t help being ungracious sometimes. Why don’t the people up here say those things about me? I wish you could hear some of the nice things they say. I am not telling you this out of conceit. I only want you to know that the people up here have an entirely different opinion of me. To them I am dear and sweet and nice.” And this was true. Aline had made a very favorable impression upon the people of the place.
The first discordant note was sounded, however, when Aline began to make an equally favorable impression upon the boys of the town. In ten days she writes as follows: “You said I should make as many friends as I could. Did you mean only among my own sex? There are many nice boys that go to school here. I know some of them and I like them very much. Well, tonight one of the girls and I went walking. Not very far from the house we met this boy and we asked him to walk with us. When we returned a lady told me that Mrs. Stoneman had been looking for me. Well, I got a lecture. She told me that I was in her care and that I wasn’t to go with any men. … I am through with her. I will do what she tells me to do but that is all. Will you write and tell me what to do?”
Mrs. Stoneman’s point of view appeared shortly in a long letter as to Aline’s character. She wrote as follows: “Three weeks have passed since Aline came to us. She is a splendid worker, is quick and thorough and seems interested enough to do her work well. But she has other qualities that seem to be irrepressible and that make her an undesirable person in the house. She completely loses her head over men and over boys even of fifteen years.” Various details of Aline’s misconduct were described in full, and her own treatment of the situation outlined. This was, in brief, to forbid absolutely any communication between Aline and the young men of the town. A letter sent to Aline with the intent to help her understand the world’s point of view met with this response: “Conventionality! I can lead the respectable life but as to the conventional? well, I hate convention. Isn’t it better to be the sweet, true, natural self? What does conventionality do? Doesn’t it sometimes make life a lie? Sweetness and truth don’t belong to convention. I don’t know how you think but that is what I think and know. Convention and hypocrisy belong together. It has been proved. If all the world were against me I would stick to what I think is nght. … If a wealthy society woman receives men into her house and has wrong intercourse with them the world hasn’t anything to say against it. If a common, everyday girl speaks to men, perhaps walks a little way with them, acts in a decent, respectable way the world condemns such a woman. Is that fair? Is that justice? What do you call that? … What is a hypocrite? Some people pretend to be so good, so perfect, and all that. Are they? Their minds might be polluted and their bodies too, but they are so perfect in hypocrisy that they deceive everybody. I am not pretending to be good, but I know that I have a wholesome mind and body. Do you understand me a little better now? or are things more complicated than they were before?”
Matters went from bad to worse. Mrs. Stoneman did not understand how to restrain Aline, and the girl rebelled under her attempts. To Mrs. Stoneman Aline seemed defective in self-control and destined to become a willing victim of prostitution, while Aline’s view of her own attitude was far different. She says: “Of course I am fond of the boys. I like all men, but I don’t like any of them enough to ever marry them or let anything serious happen. Why I am so fond of them no one understands. I only know that. I can trust men. You said something about flirting one time. To be called a flirt, I have to be taught how to flirt first. That is an art I have never learned. Do you believe me? If I flirted I’d be less attractive.”
Aline was told that she should do her best to please Mrs. Stoneman or that she could stay in that place no longer. She dreaded the poverty and bareness of her own home, so for a time she retracted from her defiant attitude and gave up her male acquaintances. She wrote very lovingly and tried honestly to improve herself. At the end of a letter was the following: “I am trying to study physics and I am getting to be quite friendly with the stars?astronomy, you know. I will be smart after a while. Don’t you think so? Good-night. Love, love, love. Yours, Aline.”
The good mood did not last long, for soon there came a letter from Mrs. Stoneman: “There have been developments in Aline’s case the past week which make it impossible for her to stay here. As I told you she is defective in self-control, which means that she must be watched every minute. She is not to be trusted to look after herself. I am thinking of the time when Miss Rochester (the owner of the establishment) will take up the housekeeping as she will when I go away for a change and rest. She will be wholly unable to cope with the problem. I have seen enough of Aline to be quite certain that she will go into an immoral life as soon as she has control of herself. She might not if she were fifteen or sixteen years old, but she is too old and too far gone to do anything for herself.” In another letter: “Aline was not restrained until she persisted in doing the things that could not be done here. The school boy in question is only fifteen years old and was perfectly bewitched. It upset his school work. The principal of the school said to stop it for his sake. There was nothing else to do. Aline is like a child. She has only the one idea, that is, to be with the opposite sex. There are other instances with other young men. She .embraced the school boy with kisses from which he tried to get away. The Irishman she let kiss her on the cheek. Yesterday Aline received a letter from ‘Joe’ which made her very happy. I wish that you would plan for Aline to go from here as soon as you receive this.”
Another appeal to Aline helped the situation for a while. She wrote: “Mrs. Stoneman told me this morning that I was very good this week. She hasn’t said anything to me about leaving, but if she tells you again that she wants me to go, of course I will have to. I have no wish to lead the old life. My tastes are entirely different. I am going home to visit sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll stay. If I did stay I wouldn’t have to go back to Joe, would I? If he were a single man, perhaps I could care for him again, but as it is, I can’t. It will be many, many years before I will ever love another man. I told you that I like the boys, and I do, but I couldn’t take any of them nearer to my heart. I am set on becoming a singer and I won’t have any peace until I begin my music lessons again. I never thought so much of my voice, but I do now, because I have made so many people happy with it. I sang for a few old ladies, an invalid, and different people that came to the house. Oh! they are all so pleased and it makes me very happy. I think every thing will be all right now. Mrs. Stoneman is very nice to me and she always treats me very kindly. She only has one fault. She seems to have an idea that women ought to have all rights and that women oughtn’t to associate with men. She knows in her heart that I haven’t done any wrong.”
This assumed goodness did not last long, and finally Aline was sent away. She was soon to be twenty-one, showed no inclination to conform to conventional standards, and accordingly was allowed to go home. She showed by her attitude, however, that in her heart she was ashamed and chagrined at her failure. After going home she wrote back: “I am happy because I am making some one else happy.” She wrote again: “I have seen Joe Burgess and talked to him. I can have him at my feet any moment?if I wanted him.
But you and all the rest can set your minds perfectly at ease?I don’t want him. Up in Tarrytown I had a nice time with the boys, in the right way, because they were innocent (at least the ones I knew) and I was too, but down here?I laugh at all men. Did you know I’ve met the right one? Home, even though it isn’t beautiful and as I am used to, is home. I would rather be unhappy here than unhappy among strangers. I am free here at any rate.” In another letter she says: “The people connected in any way with the law always stoop to falsehood. I know it because I can prove it.” Again: “I am just beginning to live. I love life now, and I am enjoying it too. It won’t be a long life, and?so why not enjoy the little I have before me? “
This case may show nothing unusual, but a combination of certain traits of character and motives that make for an undesirable element in a community: hatred of poverty, love of luxury, love of freedom, desire to be admired by men, the feeling of being entitled to the best the world can give in the way of enjoyment; added to this the daily drill in vicious thought that is part of an institution life where girls of the lowest type are housed together; and a feeling of injustice,?of having been robbed by society of part of the young life that is the birthright of every one. What influence can overcome the effect of this combination of early lack of training and bad environment, together with four years of institution life which certainly did not prove to be uplifting?
Such was the unfortunate combination of circumstances that resulted in embittering and hardening a girl who had ability and intelligence which perhaps might have been saved to the world. To allow this ability and intelligence to be wasted, is false economy. Yet it can hardly be said that Aline was subjected to unreasonably cruel treatment either in the institution where she was confined or in the home where she was sent, for there she was welcomed and given every opportunity to rise if she had been able to profit by it. But the question arises,?what shall society do with a girl of this type? Can such a one be led to lead a reputable life? No institution in particular is in fault; the difficulty is more far-reaching. Blame should rather be attached to existing social prejudices and conventions. The fact that there is a prison reform movement sweeping over the country indicates that the public conscience is being awakened to a criticism of present methods of dealing with wayward natures.
The result in this particular case was that Aline found employment near her home, and wrote of accepting the attentions of a man whom she expected to marry. Later on she had changed her employment” and seemed to have a number of admirers. She is working out her life problem in her own way. The final outcome,?who can tell?
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