girlhood

As I said in this presence last year, how can you expect complete independence for Egypt when, as shown by the last census, 95 percent. of the people are still illiterate, and when the womanhood of Egypt and its girlhood is 99.3 percent illiterate?

The British Empire and Islam 1923

Her manner in girlhood was not exactly either "meek" or "gentle;" except towards him, the only one who ever ruled her, and to whom she was, through life, the meekest and tenderest of women.

John Halifax, Gentleman 1897

Even in these years of change, when she must go to the public school, she continues to represent all that is delightful in Japanese girlhood; for her special home-training keeps her reverent, innocent, dainty in all her little ways, and worthy to remain the pet of the gods.

Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation Lafcadio Hearn 1877

The lover who wooed her in girlhood, – Percy, Duke of Northumberland, – saw her stand that trial: her condemnation he did not hear: he pleaded illness and withdrew, before the close of the proceedings; taking with him the one gleam of faint-hearted pity, to which perhaps, that struggling, despairing woman had looked for help.

English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century 1854

To the haunting consciousness that David Stuart now knew the secret of her unwooed and unrequited love in girlhood, which already oppressed her, was superadded this blunt intimation of what others supposed possible of forwardness and sin, at the present hour.

Stuart of Dunleath: A Story of Modern Times 1851

It was David himself she had loved in girlhood; he had learned that yesterday; but what was girl's love? what strength could it have had against a dream of death and wrong? what strength to outlive him - and time - and change - and the wooing of another love to fill up the blank of horror his loss and his supposed suicide must have made?

Stuart of Dunleath: A Story of Modern Times 1851

She had loved him in girlhood; but that love seemed to her among things of the past.

Stuart of Dunleath: A Story of Modern Times 1851

a graduated series of holes pierced all round the ear in girlhood, and until they can obtain the silver or gold rings they desire, the holes are kept open with points of thorns or tiny pieces of wood.

Insulinde: Experiences of a Naturalist's Wife in the Eastern Archipelago 1887

BTW The only dressed I remember from my girlhood are the ones my mother made for me.

Portrait in Blue, by Gabriel Nicolet, 1856-1921 2009

Instructive, too, to learn that the precociously gifted O'Connor thought of herself as "ancient" while still a child; the great trauma of her girlhood was her father Edward's death, from lupus, when O'Connor was fifteen, an event perceived by the stricken girl as a sign of God's grace equivalent to "a bullet in the side."

The Parables of Flannery O'Connor Oates, Joyce Carol 2009