Foreword
Considered as a place to live and bring up children, the modern world, as most readers will have discovered by now, is a rough, mean, wicked place which is full of unpleasant surprises, and sensible adults have regulated their lives accordingly. Society in the twentieth century abounds with con men and criminals, drug-peddlers and pimps, plus sex maniacs of various persuasions, not to mention all the other types who have made it their nefarious business to lead young people astray. The wise parent has done his" best to prepare his children for these unpleasant but inevitable contacts.
But the innocent continue to go forth to the slaughter. Consider the statistics: at a prominent university in the United States, school administrators found that 87% of those female students who became pregnant without the benefit of husbands or matrimony were ignorant of the rudiments of sexual education, excepting what little they needed to know to get themselves pregnant in the first place.
And who is to blame? To a certain extent, society at large or the university itself, but it seems clear that much of the responsibility for these human tragedies lies with the parents who have sent their adolescent daughters off to deal with the hazards of modern life without instructing them in the fundamentals of elementary morality, not to mention effective birth control procedures.
The same survey, (as reported in the American Medical Society Journal) found that young men between the ages of 18 and 22 were approximately seven times more likely to contract syphilis or some other veneral disease than any other age group. The explanation? Total ignorance of the basic facts about the effects and symptoms of these 'social' diseases.
In an attempt to answer the age old question, 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?', the American Council on Social Relations recently did an in-depth study of prostitution in the United States, and anyone who thinks that this has disappeared will find some surprising information in this report. According to their most recent publications on the subject, the Council has determined that over three quarters of the young women currently engaged in the practice of prostitution in the USA come from upper middle class homes. Over fifty percent of the girls interviewed in the survey reported that their parents were church-goers. Furthermore, an astonishing percentage of these unfortunate people were themselves college graduates!
Why? The Council suggested that we might look for the answer in the words of an old college song:
"Her mother never told her, The things a young girl should know...."
Yes, in many cases, a few hours of frank talk between mother and daughter might have averted the tragedy, but too often these innocent young women were left to discover the facts of life the hard way.
After a series of consultations with the Publishers, author Christopher Robinson has prepared a stimulating and moving study of one such drama. Jane Holloway, the heroine of this compelling novel, could hardly complain of neglect at the hands of her doting parents. From the earliest days of her childhood, this fictional Jane was showered with gifts, praise, attention, love and religious training. Horseback riding, music and ballet lessons, and an elegant girl's finishing school all contributed to the creation of the carefully reared young lady we meet in the opening pages of Mr. Robinson's absorbing novel. But what does Jane Holloway lack? Where have her parents failed her?
As she leaves the protection of her home for the first time, the answer becomes tragically clear. Going away to college, Jane is encountering totally unprepared, the dangers and corruption offered by a large twentieth century metropolis. Armed only with a foolish and naive belief in the basic goodness of mankind, her familiarity with sexual affairs is minimal, and her knowledge of the hazards of the big city is limited. Jane's parents have sheltered her all of her life from the perverse realities of the world and now she finds herself naive, unsophisticated and very, very vulnerable.
Her education proceeds rapidly and cruelly and the reader will encounter passages which may seem at first to be unduly harsh and earthy. Some may be offended at the blunt naturalistic vocabulary used by certain characters in this book, or by certain scenes which the faint hearted may regard as overly explicit. However the Publishers believe that this novel, as it stands, is a realistic and honest treatment of a difficult and dangerous situation. The harshness, the obscenity, the violence-all of these things exist in the world; the author has merely written them down.
-The Publishers Sausalito, California June, 1972