That Transformation in the Girl..

Science has established that the age of adolescence is a dangerous stage for the boy and the girl alike, because of the strange phenomena and perceptible changes that appear in each of them, caused by transformations of the constitution — the renewal of cells, the completion of manhood in the boy and of womanhood in the girl.

From the ripening of the glands result numerous changes that touch even food, drink, dress, and inclination, besides what appears on the parts of the body, especially in the woman: the swelling of her breasts, the rounding of her thighs, the filling out of her hips.

This physical upheaval is followed by an upheaval in the psyche of each of them: a change of temperament, a disturbance of thought, an excess in traits.

The girl feels the changes in her growth, and those phenomena that signal the completion of her womanhood and her entry into a new stage astonish her; she becomes prey to an inner psychological struggle that at one moment promises her good and at another warns her of evil.

What is this contradictory struggle? Is it perpetual in her psyche? Or is it a passing accident that time is bound to remove?

What does the future hold for her? Is there some dreadful event that frightens her?

Do those phenomena and that physiological-psychological upheaval have an effect on that future, beyond the dread of release from the bondage of childhood, or the awe of entering the stage of complete womanhood?

To solve this riddle we must grasp the girl's psyche at this stage. It seems to me that she wishes to keep the era of her childhood, not out of any hatred for the ripe world of woman, but out of fear of a new world whose aspects she has known only in imagination.

What is it that makes her fearful of those upheavals? What is it that halts her, mute, before difficulties whose nature she cannot grasp, of which she has as yet tasted nothing?

This hesitant pause is the cause of the inner disturbance that comes over her in the stage of adolescence and works an upheaval in her thinking: the truth of things changes in her eyes, and doubt creeps into her belief.

No wonder in that: the artless child is about to become a ripe woman; she is bidding farewell to a merry era and welcoming a new one.

The first of the girl's manifestations at the opening of this era is her leaving her male playmates of childhood, at play and at school; to her they have become men, not companions. The quickest glance that flickers with admiration or esteem, the lightest word cast into her hearing, drives her to precautions which she begins to carry out: she lengthens her dress, conceals her bosom, covers every corner of her ripening body, to ward off what those glances and those words provoke.

The remarks she hears, whether from her mother or from others, betray her ripeness; they embarrass her and stir in her a shyness that shows on her face.

The halo of admiration that shows in the eyes of her family and kin, mingled with hopes and wishes, makes her seek solitude...

And how the girl's fear grows, how horror sweeps her, at the sight of those first red drops that come of the woman's event.

She takes refuge in silence, as though fearing to alert her mother or waken her friends' notice, and she may pass spells filled with suppressed pains and aches.

She keeps to her room most of the time, throwing her failing body on her bed, sobbing, weeping, silent.

She hides the truth from whoever asks her about the source of that flush in her face, about the cause of the gloom and weariness plain in her eyes. She chooses the world of solitude to settle alone the buried secret that oppresses her breast; she struggles to smother her condition, and finds nothing to relieve her but her troubled silence.

Her state may grow severe, and she sees no refuge but to give her tears free rein.

This new event, which has turned her mirth to bewilderment and her innocence to doubt and suspicion,

wears her down utterly; she waits for darkness to hasten to wash away what her blood has stained, and to hide the trace of what she imagines a shame that fate has unjustly cast upon her.

Many women have told of the kinds of fear that came over them at the start of this new stage. Some believed they had lost their virginity, and suffered such torments of doubt as made them imagine the disgrace that had crept into their minds through ignorance of the truth.

Others remained, even after marriage, unaware of the source of those red drops, silently concealing what they were unable to understand.

I lay the blame upon the mother, in this East of ours, for the disturbances she causes in her daughter's psyche by her rigidity and reserve in that daughter's upbringing. She does not appreciate change, nor does she consider it her duty to impart such truths to her daughter when she expects their occurrence, and to direct her thoughts, in the guise of counsel, toward anticipating this stage, so that the girl may receive it knowing its truth and understanding its consequences.

Yes! The mother's frankness in such matters is the hand that tears away the film of ignorance and rescues her daughter from pitfalls that may lead her to delusions and fancies she can well do without. Everything the girl hears frankly from her mother, preparing her to meet the events of life, is stamped upon her mind; for the mother is the one person in whom the girl has learned to place all her trust, and on whom she relies to protect her from the dangers that could affect her future.

What the Eastern woman suffers from the pains of ignorance of life's surprises and the developments they entail comes either of the mothers' own ignorance, or of their closing their eyes to the duty of teaching their girls the truths of things — an ignorance that often delivers them into the grip of pain, and leaves them exposed to bearing afflictions and wounds they endure because of the mothers' neglect.