The book is designed both to marshall this enthusiasm towards sympathy for working-class girls and to provide a manual that supports the practical application of that sympathy.
Stanley's rationale for girls' clubs takes for granted pre-existing class and gender relations and stresses the importance of femininity as a source of stability and heightened ambition within working-class families. She believed poor girls were deprived of the means to achieve their feminine potential and club work would compensate for these deficiencies.
Clubs could offer a safe environment underpinned by middle-class, Christian virtue. Here, girls could engage in healthy recreational and educational activity leading to the fulfilment of femininity. Such femininity, Stanley believed, had a spiritual dimension that could transcend material life.
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