ABSTRACT
In this chapter, it is advice about a girl’s physical well-being and her physical behaviour that will concern us. The authors will begin with an analysis of Victorian advice about the physiological manifestations of female puberty – that is, about menstruation, and the physical changes accompanying its onset. Physicians generally held that the physical events of puberty triggered psychical manifestations of femininity. This belief that it was the physical events of puberty, and all the physical event of menstruation, that caused the flowering of the psychological manifestations of femininity has important consequences for the way in which femininity is perceived. Many Victorian doctors extended the dangerous time of menstruation to the entire period of puberty. For females in childhood, it will be remembered, advice books recommended non-confining styles that were not radically different from the styles recommended for male children. When it came to offering suggestions about dress for girls after puberty, tone of Victorian advice changed sharply.
