CHAPTER LV(43)

OBJECTIONS TO THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN

"But women are charged with the petty labours of the household." The Colonel of my regiment, M. S----, has four daughters, brought up on the best principles, which means that they work all day. When I come, they sing the music of Rossini, that I brought them from Naples. For the rest, they read the Bible of Royaumont, they learn what's most foolish in history, that is to say, chronological tables and the verses of Le Ragois; they know a great deal of geography, embroider admirably--and I expect that each of these pretty little girls could earn, by her work, eight sous a day. Taking three hundred days, that means four hundred and eighty francs a year, which is less than is given to one of their masters. It is for four hundred and eighty francs a year that they lose for ever the time, during which it is granted to the human machine to acquire ideas.

"If women read with pleasure the ten or twelve good volumes that appear every year in Europe, they will soon give up the care of their children."--'Tis as if we feared, by planting the shore of the ocean with trees, to stop the motion of the waves. It is not in this sense that education is all-powerful. Besides, for four hundred years the same objection has been offered to every sort of education. And yet a Parisian woman has more good qualities in 1820 than she ever had in 1720, the age of Law's system and the Regency, and at that time the daughter of the richest farmer-general had a less good education

[Pg 228] than the daughter of the pettiest attorney gets to-day. Are her household duties less well performed as a result? Certainly not. And why? Because poverty, illness, shame, instinct, all force her to fulfil them. It is as if you said of an officer who is becoming too sociable, that he will forget how to handle his horse; you have to remember that he'll break his arm the first time he's slack in the saddle.

_Knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much mischief to one sex as to the other_. We shall never lack vanity, even in the completest absence of any reason for having it--look at the middle class in a small town. Why not force it at least to repose on real merit, on merit useful or agreeable to society?

Demi-fools, carried away by the revolution that is changing everything in France, began twenty years ago to allow that women are capable of something. But they must give themselves up to occupations becoming their sex: _educate flowers, make friendships with birds, and pick up plants_. These are called innocent amusements.

These innocent pleasures are better than idleness. Well! let's leave them to stupid women; just as we leave to stupid men the glory of composing verses for the birthday of the master of the house. But do men in good faith really mean to suggest to Madame Roland or to Mistress Hutchinson[1] that they should spend their time in tending a little Bengal rose-bush?

All such reasoning can be reduced to this: a man likes to be able to say of his slave: "She's too big a fool to be a knave."

But owing to a certain law called _sympathy_--a law of nature which, in truth, vulgar eyes never perceive--the defects in the companion of your life are not destructive of your happiness by reason only of the direct ill they

[Pg 229] can occasion you. I would almost prefer that my wife should, in a moment of anger, attempt to stab me once a year, than that she should welcome me every evening with bad spirits.

Finally, happiness is contagious among people who live together.

Let your mistress have passed the morning, while you were on parade or at the House of Commons, in painting a rose after a masterpiece of Redouté, or in reading a volume of Shakespeare, her pleasure therein will have been equally innocent. Only, with the ideas that she has got from her rose she will soon bore you on your return, and, indeed, she will crave to go out in the evening among people to seek sensations a little more lively. Suppose, on the contrary, she has read Shakespeare, she is as tired as you are, she has had as much pleasure, and she will be happier to give you her arm for a solitary walk in the Bois de Vincennes than to appear at the smartest party. The pleasures of the fashionable world are not meant for happy women.

Women have, of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their instruction. To-day they spend their time with them, they make love to them and are well received by them; what would become of them if women began to get tired of Boston? When we return from America or the West Indies with a tanned skin and manners that for six months remain somewhat coarse, how would these fellows answer our stories, if they had not this phrase: "As for us, the women are on our side. While you were at New York the colour of tilburies has changed; it's grey-black that's fashionable at present." And we listen attentively, for such knowledge is useful. Such and such a pretty woman will not look at us if our carriage is in bad taste.

These same fools, who think themselves obliged, in virtue of the pre-eminence of their sex, to have more knowledge than women, would be ruined past all hope, if

[Pg 230] women had the audacity to learn something. A fool of thirty says to himself, as he looks at some little girls of twelve at the country house of one of his friends: "It's in their company that I shall spend my life ten years from now." We can imagine his exclamations and his terror, if he saw them studying something useful.

Instead of the society and conversation of effeminate men, an educated woman, if she has acquired ideas without losing the graces of her sex, can always be sure of finding among the most distinguished men of her age a consideration verging on enthusiasm.

"Women would become the rivals instead of the companions of man." Yes, as soon as you have suppressed love by edict. While we are waiting for this fine law, love will redouble its charms and its ecstasy. These are the plain facts: the basis on which crystallisation rests will be widened; man will be able to take pleasure in all his ideas in company of the woman he loves; nature in all its entirety will in their eyes receive new charms; and as ideas always reflect some of the refinements of character, they will understand each other better and will be guilty of fewer imprudent acts--love will be less blind and will produce less unhappiness.

The _desire of pleasing secures all that delicacy and reserve which are of such inestimable value to women_ from the influence of any scheme of education. 'Tis as though you feared teaching the nightingales not to sing in the spring-time.

The graces of women do not depend on their ignorance; look at the worthy spouses of our village bourgeois, look at the wives of the opulent merchants in England. Affectation is a kind of pedantry; for I call pedantry the affectation of letting myself talk out of season of a dress by Leroy or a novel by Romagnesi, just as much as the affectation of quoting Fra Paolo(46) and the Council of Trent _à propos_ of a discussion on our own mild missionaries. It is the pedantry of dress and good form, it

[Pg 231] is the necessity of saying exactly the conventional phrase about Rossini, which kills the graces of Parisian women. Nevertheless, in spite of the terrible effects of this contagious malady, is it not in Paris that exist the most delightful women in France? Would not the reason be that chance filled their heads with the most just and interesting ideas? Well, it is these very ideas that I expect from books. I shall not, of course, suggest that they read Grotius of Puffendorf, now that we have Tracy's(47) commentary on Montesquieu.

Woman's delicacy depends on the hazardous position in which she finds herself so early placed, on the necessity of spending her life in the midst of cruel and fascinating enemies.

_There are, perhaps, fifty thousand females in Great Britain who are exempted by circumstances from all necessary labour:_ but without work there is no happiness. Passion forces itself to work, and to work of an exceedingly rough kind--work that employs the whole activity of one's being.

A woman with four children and ten thousand francs income works by making stockings or a frock for her daughter. But it cannot be allowed that a woman who has her own carriage is working when she does her embroidery or a piece of tapestry. Apart from some faint glow of vanity, she cannot possibly have any interest in what she is doing. She does not work.

And thus her happiness runs a grave risk.

And what is more, so does the happiness of her lord and master, for a woman whose heart for two months has been enlivened by no other interest than that of her needlework, may be so insolent as to imagine that gallant-love, vanity-love, or, in fine, even physical love, is a very great happiness in comparison with her habitual condition.

"A woman ought not to make people speak about

[Pg 232] her." To which I answer once more: "Is any woman specially mentioned as being able to read?"

And what is to prevent women, while awaiting a revolution in their destiny, from hiding a study which forms their habitual occupation and furnishes them every day with an honourable share of happiness. I will reveal a secret to them by the way. When you have given yourself a task--for example, to get a clear idea about the conspiracy of Fiescho(48), at Genoa in 1547--the most insipid book becomes interesting. The same is true, in love, of meeting someone quite indifferent, who has just seen the person whom you love. This interest is doubled every month, until you give up the conspiracy of Fiescho.

"_The true theatre for a woman is the sick-chamber._" But you must be careful to secure that the divine goodness redoubles the frequency of illnesses, in order to give occupation to our women. This is arguing from the exceptional.

Moreover, I maintain that a woman ought to spend three or four hours of leisure every day, just as men of sense spend their hours of leisure.

A young mother, whose little son has the measles, could not, even if she would, find pleasure in reading Volney's Travels in Syria, any more than her husband, a rich banker, could get pleasure out of meditating on Malthus in the midst of bankruptcy.

There is one, and only one, way for rich women to distinguish themselves from the vulgar: moral superiority. For in this there is a natural distinction of feeling.[2]

"_We do not wish a lady to write books._" No, but does giving your daughter a singing-master engage you to make her into an opera-singer? If you

[Pg 233] like, I'll say that a woman ought only to write, like Madame de Staël (de Launay), posthumous works to be published after her death. For a woman of less than fifty to publish is to risk her happiness in the most terrible lottery: if she has the good fortune to have a lover, she will begin by losing him.

I know but one exception: it is that of a woman who writes books in order to keep or bring up her family. In that case she ought always to confine herself to their money-value when talking of her own works, and say, for example, to a cavalry major: "Your rank gives you four thousand francs a year, and I, with my two translations from the English, was able last year to devote an extra three thousand five hundred francs to the education of my two boys."

Otherwise, a woman should publish as Baron d'Holbach or Madame de la Fayette did; their best friends knew nothing of it. To print a book can only be without inconvenience for a courtesan; the vulgar, who can despise her at their will for her condition, will exalt her to the heavens for her talent, and even make a cult of it.

Many men in France, among those who have an income of six thousand francs, find their habitual source of happiness in literature, without thinking of publishing anything; to read a good book is for them one of the greatest pleasures. At the end of ten years they find that their mind is enlarged twofold, and no one will deny that, in general, the larger the mind the fewer will be its passions incompatible with the happiness of others.[3] I don't suppose anyone will still deny that the sons of a woman who reads Gibbon and Schiller will have more genius than the children of one who tells her beads and reads Madame de Genlis.

A young barrister, a merchant, an engineer can be

[Pg 234] launched on life without any education; they pick it up themselves every day by practising their profession. But what resources have their wives for acquiring estimable or necessary qualities? Hidden in the solitude of their household, for them the great book of life necessarily remains shut. They spend always in the same way, after discussing the accounts with their cook, the three _louis_ they get every Monday from their husbands.

I say this in the interest of the tyrant: the least of men, if he is twenty and has nice rosy cheeks, is a danger to a woman with no knowledge, because she is wholly a creature of instinct. In the eyes of a woman of intellect he will produce as much effect as a handsome lackey.

The amusing thing in present-day education is that you teach young girls nothing that they won't have to forget as soon as they are married. It needs four hours a day, for six years, to learn to play the harp well; to paint well in miniature or water-colours needs half that time. Most young girls do not attain even to a tolerable mediocrity--hence the very true saying: "Amateur means smatterer."[4]

And even supposing a young girl has some talent; three years after she is married she won't take up her harp or her brushes once a month. These objects of so much study now only bore her--unless chance has given her the soul of an artist, and this is always a rarity and scarcely helpful in the management of a household.

And thus under the vain pretext of decency you teach young girls nothing that can give them guidance in the circumstances they will encounter in their lives. You do more--you hide and deny these circumstances in order to add to their strength, through the effect (i) of surprise, and (ii) of mistrust; for education, once

[Pg 235] found deceitful, must bring mistrust on education as a whole.[5] I maintain that one ought to talk of love to girls who have been well brought up. Who will dare suggest in good faith that, in the actual state of our manners, girls of sixteen do not know of the existence of love? From whom do they get this idea so important and so difficult to give properly? Think of Julie d'Étanges deploring the knowledge that she owes to la Chaillot, one of the maidservants. One must thank Rousseau for having dared be a true painter in an age of false decency.

The present-day education of women being perhaps the most delightful absurdity in modern Europe, strictly speaking the less education they have, the better they are.[6] It is for this reason perhaps that in Italy and Spain they are so superior to the men, and I will even say so superior to the women of other countries.

[1] See the Memoirs of these admirable women. I could find other names to quote, but they are unknown to the public, and moreover one cannot even point to living merit.

[2] See Mistress Hutchinson refusing to be of use to her family and her husband, whom she adored, by betraying certain of the regicides to the ministers of the perjured Charles II. (Vol. II, p. 284.)

[3] It is this that gives me great hopes for the rising generation among the privileged classes. I also hope that any husbands who read this chapter will be milder despots for three days.

[4] The contrary of this proverb is true in Italy, where the loveliest voices are heard among amateurs who have no connection with the theatre.

[5] The education given to Madame d'Épinay. (Memoirs, Vol. I.)

[6] I make an exception as regards education in manners: a woman enters a drawing-room better in Rue Verte than in Rue St. Martin.

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