Reader, I want new wisdom on walking for girls.
I know the stories about straying too far from the path, about deportment lessons, and good or naughty toes. I know about road safety and stranger danger, about how few children learn plant names these days, and to get her feet measured properly. I just think there might be something more to talk about.
This project is inspired by the conduct books of the Romantic era*, through which mothers were supposed to cultivate their daughters; often by taking them on walks. Laughably prim as they are, somehow we still teach girls to walk appropriately. In the 21st century, could we teach them something new?
I’m in the process of “embroidering” some Romantic thoughts, but these are not done quietly by the fireside. Instead they are stitched on the landscape, using GPS tracking as my needle. Soon I will be collecting contemporary thoughts to embroider, too. Eventually I’ll share them here, and in a new performance.
You can send any thoughts you have to:lizziephilps@gmail.com. Let me know if you want to remain anonymous.
*Here’s an example:
To repress discontent, to inculcate the necessity of submitting cheerfully to such situations as Fortune may throw them into; to check that flippancy of remark, so frequently disgusting in girls of 12 or 13; as well as to give them a taste for (…) the sublime beauties of Nature; has been my intention.
Charlotte Smith, Rural Walks (1794).