Here, plainly, is the dawn of
womanhood, and here, in our consideration of woman the individual, we
must make a start. If we recall the tentative Mendelian analysis already
referred to, we may suppose that the "factor" for womanhood begins to
assert itself, at any rate in effective degree, at this period of
puberty, when a girl becomes a woman; and that its most effective reign
is over at the much later crisis which we call the change of life or
climacteric. In other words, though sex is determined from the first,
and though certain of its distinctive characters remain to the end, we
may say that our study of womanhood is practically concerned with the
years between twelve or thirteen, and forty-five or fifty. Before this
period, as we have suggested, the distinction between the sexes is of no
practical importance so far as _regimen_ and education are concerned.
After this period also it is probable that the difference between the
two sexes is diminished, and would be still more evidently diminished
were it not for the effects which different experience has permanently
wrought in the memory. We begin our practical study, then, of woman the
individual, with the young girl at the age of puberty; and we must
concern ourselves first with the care of her body.
VIII
THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS
We shall certainly not reach right conclusions about the physical
training of girls unless we rightly understand what physical training
does and does not effect, and what we desire it should effect.
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