Barbarian Males Threaten Innocent Maidens Abroad

April 10, 2008 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Cultcha, Germany, links, USA

Living in Germany, like living in any country where one is just learning the language, is difficult for me sometimes. It isn’t always a language problem; sometimes simple-seeming tasks turn out to be quite different, from culture to culture. I was trying to find out how one goes about getting a doctor’s appointment in Germany when I stumbled on this article from 1894 in The New York Times, about study abroad in Germany:American Girls in Germany: Their Independance is Often Misunderstood.

The point of the article is that the ‘Continental Education’, the notion that young people of a certain class must go abroad in order to acquire a certain social polish, is foolish. It is possible to receive a perfectly acceptable education at home in North America. This is definitely true today, when as many Europeans want to go to North America to study, it seems, as North Americans want to spend a year or two here. The article, on the other hand, takes such an anti-European tone that that message is lost. It was written before the cultural upheaval of the twentieth century, but the issues it focuses on support rather than question the intolerances of certain eras, so I feel no qualms about mocking them.

The experience of the foreign, the article tells us, is very threatening to young women. They should never be exposed to other cultures, lest they develop an unhealthy tolerance or, God forbid, appreciation for lifestyles different from their own. Young girls are impressionable and foolish, and the appealing wisdom of a Herr Doktor might weaken their certainty that the American way (stone-solid) is the only correct way to live. Where sexual harassment is a clear threat to blonde American beauties abroad, the loss of faith good American girls are sure to experience, when they go to worship in frigid Lutheran churches where no one will meet their gaze, and the services are conducted entirely in a language they don’t understand, is the true threat.

Study abroad causes atheists who prefer coffee and rolls for breakfast.

What startles me a little is that, extreme as this article is, the values it espouses have not completely disappeared. Considered the final season of Sex & the City lately? The barbarian Russian, brilliant, educated, artistic, more worldly than our humble American narrator, symbolic of everything that is not New York, worms his way through Carrie’s tough exterior, eventually persuading her to follow him to glamorous Paree. There, people are cold and inconsiderate, and Carrie, without her group of supportive Dolce-wearing gossips, is very, very lonely. She and the Russian, her only friend in the cold beyond, fight and (here’s the one point I expect you’ll remember from the episode) the Russian SLAPS her, revealing the fiery monstrosity of the continental temperament. Mr. Big shows up, a knight in a shining designer suit and whisks her back to America, to safety. Europe, my friends, is a dangerous place. Women are not treated with the gentle kindness they ought to be. Whether it’s 1894, or 2004, any right-thinking mother will not allow her innocent flower to set foot upon its barbarian soil.

Lest wealthy families continue to send their daughters abroad where they might contract free thinking, our New York Times concludes as follows:

“If the girls are going abroad, let them “finish” their education here and wait till they are well out of their teens before they go. Then send them well and properly chaperoned.

That’s it. I’m taking the red feathers out of my cap. Then, hopefully, someone will treat me with a little respect and I’ll get a doctor’s appointment before June.

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