In past blog posts we’ve share some of Isabella’s advice columns that appeared in Christian magazines in the early 1900s. Sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, but always straightforward, Isabella answered reader questions on a variety of topics, from unwanted marriage proposals to a fear of praying in public.
Cathy and Elaine—two longtime readers of this blog—mentioned they would love to be able to have a booklet that contained all of Isabella’s advice columns.
What a great idea!
Thanks to Cathy and Elaine, today’s giveaway is an e-book collection of Isabella’s most popular bits of advice.
You can read Pansy’s Advice to Readers for free!
Choose the reading option you like best:
You can read the e-book on your computer, phone, tablet, Kindle, or other electronic device. Just click here to download your preferred format from BookFunnel.com.
Or you can select BookFunnel’s “My Computer” option to receive an email with a version you can read, print, and share with friends.
This post is part of our 10-Year Blogiversary Celebration! Join us every weekday in September for a fun drawing, giveaway, or Free Read!
Isabella Alden 
Her advice and outlook was very different from what we would advocate today. In the book Until the End, she hides her husband’s impulsive spending and womanizing from adult child. To me, it seems wiser to tell them so they can prepare themselves spiritually and psychologically for when those tendencies appear in themselves. She didn’t even advocate seeing a pastor to try to counsel the couple.
The common viewpoint was to hush things up and only hint at deeper scandals. We don’t see problems of unwed mothers or illegitimate children because they were so scandalous. These problems were common among the poorest people, but generally uncommon.
Despite women dying in childbirth, Congress banned any sort of birth control in the 19th century to discourage immorality. It was seen as a Christian position. However, I think having condoms and primitive IUD’s available through doctors only to married women who had health or financial problems or an unstable husband would have been a great thing at that time. The common moral outlook then was very strict, almost puritanical. The public would have ostracized and reported doctors who violated the law.
It’s very bad that birth control was legalized precisely at the time public morals were breaking down. Of course, the result was massive immorality, even involving women who neglected birth control. Despite all the facts about negative outcomes, people increased cohabitation and having children out of wedlock. However, in Isabella’s time almost no women could support an illegitimate child, certainly would not be hired by schools or many businesses, and cohabitation was limited to the lowest class people. There was an almost morbid fear of degradation of the family line if immorality happened. Men who were immoral were ostracized and avoided, both for moral reasons and for fear of syphilis, which resulted in many lunatics in asylum. Girls avoided dating a man with a bad reputation, but sometimes when men worked in different locations they could hide immorality. Marriage with a pregnant bride was a disgrace and would call for a simple, small wedding . Usually women were chaperoned and supervised so it took quite a bit of rebellion or carelessness to get pregnant out of wedlock, but unprotected girls in jobs like working in hotels, chambernaids etc were at great risk unless the management was paternalistic, which was expected, but not always fulfilled. My grandmother who was born in 1895 was engaged 3 times, but never kissed any of them! (World War I and the flu epidemic were related to the break ups. Breaking engagements without a really substantial reason was considered dishonorable.
The 19th century was definitely different in outlook. I’m sure Isabella cringed as she saw the breakdown of morals among the intelligentsia and fashionable people near the end of her life.
Thank you for sharing your insights, Barbara! —Jenny
Thank you for this compilation, I’m looking forward to reading it!
So many fun little stories that can be shared with kids.