Part 12

Why is it, that, whenever any thing is done for women in the way of education, it is called “an experiment,”—something that is to be long considered, stoutly opposed, grudgingly yielded, and dubiously watched,—while, if the same thing is done for men, its desirableness is assumed as a matter of course, and the thing is done? Thus, when Harvard College was founded, it was not regarded as an experiment, but as an institution. The “General Court,” in 1636, “agreed to give 400_l._ towards a schoale or colledge,” and the affair was settled. Every subsequent step in the expanding of educational opportunities for young men has gone in the same way. But when there seems a chance of extending, however irregularly, some of the same collegiate advantages to women, I observe that the Boston Daily Advertiser and the Atlantic Monthly, in all good faith, speak of the measure as an “experiment.”

It seems to me no more of an “experiment” than when a boy who has hitherto eaten up his whole apple becomes a little touched with a sense of justice, and finally decides to offer his sister the smaller half. If he has ever regarded that offer as an experiment, the first actual trial will put the result into the list of certainties; and it will become an axiom in his mind that girls like apples. Whatever may be said about the position of women in law and society, it is clear that their educational disadvantages have been a prolonged disgrace to the other sex, and one for which women themselves are in no way accountable. When Françoise de Saintonges, in the sixteenth century, wished to establish girls’ schools in France, she was hooted in the streets, and her father called together four doctors of law to decide whether she was possessed of a devil in planning to teach women,—”_pour s’assurer qu’instruire des femmes n’était pas un œuvre du démon_.” From that day to this, we have seen women almost always more ready to be taught than was any one else to teach them. Talk as you please about their wishing or not wishing to vote: they have certainly wished for instruction, and have had it doled out to them almost as grudgingly as if it were the ballot itself.

Consider the educational history of Massachusetts, for instance. The wife of President John Adams was born in 1744; and she says of her youth that “female education, in the best families, went no farther than writing and arithmetic.” Barry tells us in his History of Massachusetts, that the public education was first provided for boys only; “but light soon broke in, and girls were allowed to attend the public schools two hours a day.”[10] It appears from President Quincy’s “Municipal History of Boston,”[11] that from 1790 girls were there admitted to such schools, but during the summer months only, when there were not boys enough to fill them,—from April 20 to Oct. 20 of each year. This lasted until 1822, when Boston became a city. Four years after, an attempt was made to establish a high school for girls, which was not, however, to teach Latin and Greek. It had, in the words of the school committee of 1854, “an alarming success;” and the school was abolished after eighteen months’ trial, because the girls crowded into it; and as Mr. Quincy, with exquisite simplicity, records, “not one voluntarily quitted it, and there was no reason to suppose that any one admitted to the school would voluntarily quit for the whole three years, except in case of marriage!”

Footnote 10:

III., 323.

Footnote 11:

p. 21.

How amusing seems it now to read of such an “experiment” as this, abandoned only because of its overwhelming success! How absurd now seem the discussions of a few years ago!—the doubts whether young women really desired higher education, whether they were capable of it, whether their health would bear it, whether their parents would permit it. The address I gave before the Social Science Association on this subject, at Boston, May 14, 1873, now seems to me such a collection of platitudes that I hardly see how I dared come before an intelligent audience with such needless reasonings. It is as if I had soberly labored to prove that two and two make four, or that ginger is “hot i’ the mouth.” Yet the subsequent discussion in that meeting showed that around even these harmless and commonplace propositions the battle of debate could rage hot; and it really seemed as if even to teach women the alphabet ought still to be mentioned as “a promising experiment.” Now, with the successes before us of Vassar and Wellesley and Smith Colleges, of Michigan and Cornell and Boston Universities; with the spectacle at Cambridge of young women actually reading Plato “at sight” with Professor Goodwin,—it surely seems as if the higher education of women might be considered quite beyond the stage of experiment, and might henceforth be provided for in the same common-sense and matter-of-course way which we provide for the education of young men.

And, if this point is already reached in education, how long before it will also be reached in political life, and women’s voting be viewed as a matter of course, and a thing no longer experimental?

LIII. INTELLECTUAL CINDERELLAS.

When, some thirty years ago, the extraordinary young mathematician, Truman Henry Safford, first attracted the attention of New England by his rare powers, I well remember the pains that were taken to place him under instruction by the ablest Harvard professors: the greater his abilities, the more needful that he should have careful and symmetrical training. The men of science did not say, “Stand off! let him alone! let him strive patiently until he has achieved something positively valuable, and he may be sure of prompt and generous recognition—when he is fifty years old.” If such a course would have been mistaken and ungenerous if applied to Professor Safford, why is it not something to be regretted that it was applied to Mrs. Somerville? In her case, the mischief was done: she was, happily, strong enough to bear it; but, as the English critics say, we never shall know what science has lost by it. We can do nothing for her now; but we could do something for future women like her, by pointing this obvious moral for their benefit, instead of being content with a mere tardy recognition of success, after a woman has expended half a century in struggle.

It is commonly considered to be a step forward in civilization, that whereas ancient and barbarous nations exposed children to special hardships, in order to kill off the weak and toughen the strong, modern nations aim to rear all alike carefully, without either sacrificing or enfeebling. If we apply this to muscle, why not to mind? and, if to men’s minds, why not to women’s? Why use for men’s intellects, which are claimed to be stronger, the forcing process,—offering, for instance, many thousand dollars a year in gratuities at Harvard College, that young men may be induced to come and learn,—and only withhold assistance from the weaker minds of women? A little schoolgirl once told me that she did not object to her teacher’s showing partiality, but thought she “ought to show partiality to all alike.” If all our university systems are wrong, and the proper diet for mathematical genius consists of fifty years’ snubbing, let us employ it, by all means; but let it be applied to both sexes.

That it is the duty of women, even under disadvantageous circumstances, to prove their purpose by labor, to “verify their credentials,” is true enough; but this moral is only part of the moral of Mrs. Somerville’s book, and is cruelly incomplete without the other half. What a garden of roses was Mrs. Somerville’s life, according to some comfortable critics! “All that for which too many women nowadays are content to sit and whine, or fitfully and carelessly struggle, came naturally and quietly to Mrs. Somerville. And the reason was, that she never asked for any thing until she had earned it; or, rather, she never asked at all, but was content to earn.” Naturally and quietly! You might as well say that Garrison fought slavery “quietly,” or that Frederick Douglass’s escape came to him “naturally.” Turn to the book itself, and see with what strong, though never bitter, feeling, the author looks back upon her hard struggle.

“I was intensely ambitious to excel in something; for I felt in my own breast that women were capable of taking a higher place in creation than that assigned them in my early days, which was very low” (p. 60). “Nor ... should I have had courage to ask any of them a question, for I should have been laughed at. I was often very sad and forlorn; not a hand held out to help me” (p. 47). “My father came home for a short time, and, somehow or other finding out what I was about, said to my mother, ‘Peg, we must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days’” (p. 54). “I continued my mathematical and other pursuits, but under great disadvantages; for, although my husband did not prevent me from studying, I met with no sympathy whatever from him, as he had a very low opinion of the capacity of my sex, and had neither knowledge of nor interest in science of any kind” (p. 57). “I was considered eccentric and foolish; and my conduct was highly disapproved of by many, especially by some members of my own family” (p. 80). “A man can always command his time under the plea of business: a woman is not allowed any such excuse” (p. 164). And so on.

At last in 1831—Mrs. Somerville being then fifty-one—her work on “The Mechanism of the Heavens” appeared. Then came universal recognition, generous if not prompt, a tardy acknowledgment. “Our relations,” she says, “and others who had so severely criticised and ridiculed me, astonished at my success, were now loud in my praise.”[12] No doubt. So were, probably, Cinderella’s sisters loud in her praise, when the prince at last took her from the chimney-corner, and married her. They had kept for themselves, to be sure, as long as they could, the delights and opportunities of life; while she had taken the place assigned her in her early days,—“which was very low,” as Mrs. Somerville says. But, for all that, they were very kind to her in the days of her prosperity; and no doubt packed their little trunks, and came to visit their dear sister at the palace, as often as she could wish. And, doubtless, the Fairyland Monthly of that day, when it came to review Cinderella’s “Personal Recollections,” pointed out, that, as soon as that distinguished lady had “achieved something positively valuable,” she received “prompt and generous recognition.”

Footnote 12:

p. 176.

LIV. FOREIGN EDUCATION.

There is a fashionable phrase which always awakens my inward protest,—“the advantages of foreign education.” Every summer brings within my view a large class of people who have perhaps spent their youth in Europe, and then have taken Europe for their wedding-tour; and then, after a year or two at home, have found it an excellent reason for going abroad again “to give the children the advantage of foreign education, you know.” And, as it is in regard to girls that this advantage is especially claimed, it is in respect to them that I wish to speak.

In some ways, undoubtedly, the early foreign training offers an advantage. It is a thing of very great convenience to have the easy colloquial command of one or two languages beside one’s own; and this can no doubt be obtained far more readily by a few years of early life abroad than by any method employed in later years at home. There are also some unquestionable advantages in respect to music, art, and European geography and history. The trouble is, that, when we have enumerated these advantages, we have mentioned all.

And, as a further trouble, it comes about that these things, being all that are better learned in Europe, are easily assumed, by what may be called our Europeanized classes, to be all that are worth learning, especially for girls. When, in such circles, you hear of a young lady as “splendidly educated,” it commonly turns out that she speaks several languages admirably, and plays well on the piano, or sketches well. It is not needful for such an indorsement that she should have the slightest knowledge of mathematics, of logic, of rhetoric, of metaphysics, of political economy, of physiology, of any branch of natural science, or of any language, or literature, or history, except those of modern Europe. All these missing branches she would have been far more likely to study, if she had never been abroad: all these, or a sufficient number of them, she would have been pretty sure to study at a first-class American “academy” or high school. But all these she is almost sure to have missed in Europe,—missed them so thoroughly, indeed, that she is likely to regard with suspicion any one who knows any thing about them, as being “awfully learned.”

Yet it needs no argument to show that the studies thus omitted by girls taught in Europe are the studies which train the intellect. That a girl should know her own powers of body and mind, should know how to observe, how to combine, how to think; that she should know the history and literature of the world at large, and in particular of the country in which she is to live,—this is certainly more important than that she should be able to speak two or three languages as well as a European courier, and should have nothing to say in any of them.

A very few persons I have known who contrived, while living abroad, to keep a home atmosphere round their children, and who, by great personal effort, succeeded in giving to their girls that solid early training which is to be had in every high school in this country, but is only to be obtained by personal effort, and under great disadvantages, in Europe. Wiser still, in my judgment, were those who trusted America for the main training, but contrived early to secure for their children the needful year or two of foreign life, for the learning of languages alone. Perhaps we exaggerate, too, the absolute necessity of foreign study, even for modern languages. The Russians, who are the best linguists in Europe, are not in the habit of expatriating themselves for that purpose; and perhaps we have something to learn from them in this direction, as well as in the line of Professor Runkle’s machine-shops.

LV. TEACHING THE TEACHERS.

Cotton Mather says of his father, Increase Mather, that, when he became president of Harvard College, it was from the desire to teach those who were to teach others, or, as he expresses it, not to shape the building but the builders,—_non lapides dolare sed architectos_. It is curious to see that women are admitted more readily to this higher work than to the lower. Thus I know a lady who teaches elocution professionally, and has clerical pupils among others. One of these assures me that he finds his power and influence in the pulpit much increased through her instruction. Yet there is scarcely a denomination which would admit her into the pulpit: she can direct the builders, but can take no share in the building.

It sometimes occurred to me, when a member of the legislature of Massachusetts, that the little I knew of political economy was mainly due to the assiduous reading, in childhood, of Miss Martineau’s stories founded on that science. Yet it would have been thought something very astounding, were some such woman to have a seat in that legislature. So I have seen classes of young men and maidens, in a high school, reciting political economy out of Mrs. Fawcett’s excellent textbook,—and sometimes reciting it to a woman; and yet, should any one of these boys ever become a member of “the Great and General Court,” as the legislature is called in Massachusetts, he could not even invite this teacher, or Mrs. Fawcett herself, to sit beside him and aid him with her advice. Can any one help seeing that this distinction is a merely traditional thing, and one that cannot last?

At the last teachers’ convention which I attended, I heard a lady, Mrs. Knox, give an address on the best way of teaching English composition. There was assembled a great body of teachers, some five or six hundred; the church was crowded; and yet this lady faced the audience for some three-quarters of an hour,—she being armed only with a piece of chalk and a blackboard,—and held it in close attention. Without perceptible effort, and without a word or an attitude that was otherwise than womanly and graceful, she taught the teachers, men and women alike. I do not see how it is possible that the alleged supremacy of man can long withstand such influences.

It seems very appropriate to read from town after town, in reference to the late school elections, “The first lady to deposit her ballot was Miss ——, a teacher in the high school.” Who else should be first? I do not think that men generally comprehend how absurd it is to an experienced teacher, who has for years been putting into the brains of dull boys all the activity they possess, to see those boys grow up to be men and voters, and decide what to do with the money she pays in taxes, while she is set aside as “only a woman.” Her pupils cannot make a speech in town-meeting, they cannot present a report on any subject, they cannot show any capacity of leadership, without exhibiting the influence she has had over them. Yet they are now as entirely beyond her direct reach as if she were a hen who had hatched ducklings, and had lived to see them swimming away. But the teachers are worse off than the hens; because they have actually taught their ducklings to swim, and could swim themselves if permitted. After all, Horace Mann builded better than he knew. Every step in the training of women as teachers implies a farther step.

LVI. “CUPID-AND-PSYCHOLOGY.”

The learned Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, England, is frequently facetious; and his jokes are quoted with the deference due to the chief officer of the chief college of that great university. Now, it is known that the Cambridge colleges, and Trinity College in particular, are doing a great deal for the instruction of women. The young women of Girton College and Newnham College,—both of these being institutions for women, in or near Cambridge,—not only enjoy the instruction of the university, but they share it under a guaranty that it shall be of the best quality; because they attend, in many cases, the very same lectures with the young men. Where this is not done, they sometimes use the vacant lecture-rooms of the college; and it was in connection with an application for this privilege that the Master of Trinity College made his last joke,—the last, at any rate, that has crossed the Atlantic. When told that the lecture-room was needed for a class of young women in psychology, he said, “Psychology? What kind of psychology? Cupid-and-Psychology, I suppose.”

Cupid-and-Psychology is, after all, not so bad a department of instruction. It may be taken as a good enough symbol of that mingling of head and heart which is the best result of all training. One of the worst evils of the separate education of the sexes has been the easy assumption that men were to be made all head, and women all heart. It was to correct the evils of this, that Ben Jonson proposed for his ideal woman

“a learned and a manly soul.”

It was an implied recognition of it from the other side when the great masculine intellect, Goethe, held up as a guiding force in his Faust “the eternal womanly” (_das ewige weibliche_). After all, each sex must teach the other, and impart to the other. It will never do to have all the brains poured into one human being, and christened “man;” and all the affections decanted into another, and labelled “woman.” Nature herself rejects this theory. Darwin himself, the interpreter of nature, shows that there is a perpetual effort going on, by unseen forces, to equalize the sexes, since sons often inherit from the mother, and daughters from the father. And we all take pleasure in discovering in the noblest of each sex something of the qualities of the other,—the tender affections in great men, the imperial intellect in great women.

On the whole, there is no harm, but rather good, in the new science of Cupid-and-Psychology. There are combinations for which no single word can suffice. The phrase belongs to the same class with Lowell’s witty denunciation of a certain tiresome letter-writer, as being, not his incubus, but his “pen-and-inkubus.” It is as well to admit it first as last: Cupid-and-Psychology will be taught wherever young men and women study together. Not in the direct and simple form of mutual love-making, perhaps; for they tell the visitor, at universities which admit both sexes, that the young men and maidens do not fall in love with each other, but are apt to seek their mates elsewhere. The new science has a wider bearing, and suggests that the brain is incomplete, after all, without the affections; and so are the affections without the brain. The very professorship at Harvard University which Rev. Dr. Peabody is just leaving, and which Rev. Phillips Brooks has been invited to fill, was founded by a woman, Miss Plummer; and the name proposed by her for it was “a professorship of the heart,” though they after all called it only a professorship of “Christian morals.” We need the heart in our colleges, it seems, even if we only get it under the ingenious title of Cupid-and-Psychology.

LVII. MEDICAL SCIENCE FOR WOMEN.

In reading, the other day, a speech on the Medical Education of Women, it struck me that the most important reason for this education was one which the speaker had not mentioned,—the fact that the medical profession stands for science; and that women peculiarly need science, since their natural bent is supposed to be a little the other way. The other professions represent tradition very generally: the lawyer must be bound by precedents; the clergyman generally admits that he must go back to his texts. But the physician claims, at least, to be a man of science, and stands for that before the world. Hence the sacredness with which his position has always been surrounded. The Florida Indians, according to the early voyagers, not only took the physician’s medicine, but they took the physician himself internally, after his death. All other men were buried; but the body of the physician was burned, and his ashes mixed with water, by way of a permanent prescription.

At any rate, the physician himself popularly stands for science; and, in this point of view, his position is very noble. I have known physicians whose professed materialism was more elevated than most of what the world calls religion. To trace that wondrous power called life, which takes these particles of matter, and makes them think with thought, or glow with passion, or put forth an activity so intense as to be the parent of new life from generation to generation,—this study is something sublime. He who reverently ponders on this may call himself theist or atheist, he is yet worthy to be revered: if he can teach us, he blesses us. “I touch heaven,” said Novalis, “when I lay my hand on a human body;” and the popularity among physicians of that fine engraving of Vesalius standing ready for his first dissection, shows that they take a higher view of their vocation than the world sometimes admits.