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Title: The higher education of women

Author: Emily Davies

Release date: October 10, 2022 [eBook #69125]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Alexander Strahan, 1866

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN ***



                            [Illustration]




                         THE HIGHER EDUCATION

                               OF WOMEN




                     ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER


                       LONDON,      _148 Strand_
                    NEW YORK,    _178 Grand Street_




                         THE HIGHER EDUCATION

                               OF WOMEN


                            BY EMILY DAVIES


                            [Illustration]


                     ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER
                          LONDON AND NEW YORK
                                 1866




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

                                                         PAGE

  INTRODUCTORY,                                             7


  CHAPTER II.

  IDEALS,                                                  16


  CHAPTER III.

  THINGS AS THEY ARE,                                      38


  CHAPTER IV.

  THINGS AS THEY MIGHT BE,                                 72


  CHAPTER V.

  PROFESSIONAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE,                          98


  CHAPTER VI.

  SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS,                                   130


  CHAPTER VII.

  CONCLUSION,                                             164


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.


In any inquiry of a practical nature, intended to lead to some
definite course of action, it is obviously necessary to start with a
tolerably clear idea of the end in view--the object for which it is
proposed to provide. In the case of education, definitions more or less
satisfactory have already so often been given, that it might seem
superfluous to go into the question again. As a matter of practice,
however, it is found that, when it is attempted to apply the received
definitions of the general objects of education to the case of women,
they are usually questioned or modified, if not altogether set aside.
When, for instance, Mr Maurice tells us that ‘the end of education
itself is, as it has always been considered, to form a nation of
living, orderly men,’ the definition will be accepted, with the tacit
reservation that it applies only to men, in the exclusive sense of
the word, and has nothing to do with the education of women. Again,
when Milton, in his treatise on Education, lays down that the end of
learning is ‘to repair the ruin of our first parents by regaining to
know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him,
to be like Him,’ the language might be taken in a general sense; and
when he goes on to define a complete and generous education as ‘that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all
the offices, both private and public, of peace and war,’ the words
might still, perhaps, bear a common interpretation; but as soon as
he comes to describing in detail, ‘how all this may be done between
twelve and one-and-twenty,’ it becomes evident that he is thinking of
boys only. In the most recent writers, the tendency to regard general
theories of education as applying exclusively to that of men, is quite
as strongly marked.

It seems, therefore, that in attempting to treat of female education,
it is necessary once more to ask what we are aiming at, and to obtain,
if possible, a clear understanding and agreement as to the end in view.
What ought the educators of girls to be trying to make of them? What is
the ideal towards which they ought to direct their efforts, the end to
be desired as the result of their labours?

To these questions we shall probably receive one or other of two
answers. Many persons will reply, without hesitation, that the one
object to be aimed at, the ideal to be striven after, in the education
of women, is to make good wives and mothers. And the answer is a
reasonable one, so far as it goes, and with explanations. Clearly,
no education would be good which did not tend to make good wives and
mothers; and that which produces the best wives and mothers is likely
to be the best possible education. But, having made this admission, it
is necessary to point out that an education of which the aim is thus
limited, is likely to fail in that aim. That this is so will appear
when the definition is transferred to the education of men. It will be
admitted that a system of education which should produce bad husbands
and fathers would prove itself to be bad; and an education which
produces the best husbands and fathers is likely to be in all respects
the best; because the best man in any capacity must be the man who can
measure most accurately the proportion of all his duties and claims,
giving to each its due share of his time and energy. A man will not
be the better husband and father for neglecting his obligations as a
citizen, or as a man of business. Nor will a woman be the better wife
or mother through ignorance or disregard of other responsibilities.
There is, indeed, a view of male education which, having worldly
advancement for its ultimate object, regards it exclusively as a
means of acquiring professional dexterity; but such a conception
of the purposes of education--however legitimate, in a limited and
subordinate sense--when elevated into the position of the final goal,
must be looked upon rather as a lapse from a higher standard, than as
a principle deliberately maintained by any high-minded and thoughtful
person. In disinterested schemes of male education, it is usually
assumed, as a matter of course, that the great object is to make
the best of a man in every respect, leaving him to adapt himself to
specific relations, according to the state of life into which it shall
please God to call him.

A similar idea seems to underlie the other, and more comprehensive
reply, which will probably be given to our inquiry, namely, that
the object of female education is to produce women of the best and
highest type, not limited by exclusive regard to any specific functions
hereafter to be discharged by them. This answer at once brings down
upon us the terrible question, What is the best and highest type of
woman? And as this question lies at the root of the whole matter, it
cannot be passed by. Many people, indeed, talk as if it was a matter
on which the world had long since made up its mind, and which might
be assumed to be already decided. But when we ask what it is that the
world has decided, it is difficult to obtain anything like a clear and
unanimous answer. The ideal differs not only among different races, and
in different ages, but most widely in our own country, and in modern
times. Unanimity is scarcely to be found in any class of writers or
thinkers, though on this point, of all others, some sort of agreement,
at least between parents and teachers, would seem to be most essential.
It may perhaps be of service, as a step towards a mutual understanding,
to examine, though necessarily in a very imperfect and cursory manner,
some of the most commonly received notions current on the subject.


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER II.

IDEALS.


There is a theory afloat, extensively prevalent, and probably
influencing many persons who have never stated it definitely to
themselves, that the human ideal is composed of two elements, the
male and the female, each requiring the other as its complement; and
that the realisation of this ideal is to be found in no single human
being, man or woman, but in the union of individuals by marriage, or
by some sort of vague marriage of the whole race. The conception of
character which rests on the broad basis of a common humanity falls
into the background, and there is substituted for it a dual theory,
with distinctly different forms of male and female excellence. Persons
who take this view are naturally governed by it in their conceptions
of what women ought to be. Having framed a more or less definite idea
of the masculine character, in constructing the feminine helpmeet they
look out, if not for the directly opposite, for what they would call
the complementary qualities, and the conclusion quickly follows, that
whatever is manly must be unwomanly, and _vice versâ_. The advocates
of this view usually hold in connexion with it certain doctrines, such
as, that the man is intended for the world, woman for the home; man’s
strength is in the head, woman’s in the heart; the man’s function is
to protect, woman’s to soothe and comfort; men must work, and women
must weep: everywhere we are to have a sharply marked division, often
honestly mistaken for the highest and most real communion. Closely
connected with these separatist doctrines is the double moral code,
with its masculine and feminine virtues, and its separate law of duty
and honour for either sex.

The general acceptance of the theory is not surprising. It gratifies
the logical instinct; and many persons, hastily taking for granted
that it is the only conception of the relations between men and women
which recognises real distinctions, assume it to be the only one which
satisfies the craving of the æsthetic sense for harmony and fitness.
Unfortunately it is not workable. We make the world even more puzzling
than it is by nature, when we shut our eyes to the facts of daily
life; and we know, as a fact, that women have a part in the world,
and that men are by no means ciphers in the home circle--we know that
a man who should be all head would be as monstrous an anomaly as a
woman all heart--that men require the protection of law, and women
are not so uniformly prosperous as to be independent of comfort and
consolation--men have no monopoly of working, nor women of weeping. The
sort of distinction it is attempted to establish, though not without
an element of truth when rightly understood, is for the most part
artificial, plausible in appearance, but breaking down under the test
of experience. When overstrained, and made the foundation of a divided
moral code, it is misleading in proportion to its attractiveness.

Happily this theory, though deeply and widely and most subtilely
influential, is not completely dominant. People who go to church,
and who read their Bibles, are perpetually reminded of one type and
exemplar, one moral law. The theory of education of our English Church
recognises no distinction of sex. The baptized child is signed with
the sign of the cross, ‘in token that hereafter he--or she--shall not
be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to
fight under His banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to
continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant to his--or her--life’s
end.’ The sponsors are charged to provide that the child be ‘virtuously
brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life, remembering always
that baptism doth represent unto us our profession, which is to follow
the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him.’
The catechism in which the child is to be instructed, gives no hint
of separate standards of duty. The catechumens are required to give
an account of their duty towards God and towards their neighbour.
The latter supplies a statement of social obligations, in which, if
anywhere, we should surely find a distinction laid down between the
duties of men and those of women. But no such distinction appears.
In Confirmation, the children, having come to years of discretion,
ratify and confirm in their own persons what has gone before, still
without a hint of divergent duties. The same principle appears in the
formularies of the Scotch Church. The Shorter Catechism teaches that
‘God created man, male and female, after His own image, in knowledge,
righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures;’ and
that ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.’

Here all is clear and consistent. Thoroughly to carry out the Christian
theory would no doubt lead to some startling consequences; but the
theory itself is intelligible and workable. Can the same be said of
any other of the standards or tests by which educators might shape
their work? The only intelligible principle on which modern writers
show anything like unanimity, is that women are intended to supply, and
ought to be made, something which men want. What that may be, it is not
easy to discover. We are met at the outset by a difficulty as to the
nature of the want. We may want what we like, or we may want what will
do us good--and the two qualities are not always combined. Usually,
however, it is taken for granted that, in this case, men like what is
good for them; and it only remains, therefore, to be ascertained what
it is that they like.

There is no lack of evidence. English literature is full of oracular
information on the subject. Mr Anthony Trollope says: ‘We like women
to be timid.’ Mr Helps complains that ‘women are not taught to be
courageous. Indeed, to some persons courage may seem as unnecessary
for women as Latin and Greek. Yet there are few things that would tend
to make women happier in themselves, and more acceptable to those with
whom they live, than courage.... So far from courage being unfeminine,
there is a peculiar grace and dignity in those beings who have little
active power of attack or defence, passing through danger with a moral
courage which is equal to that of the strongest.’

Abundance of applause has been bestowed upon Miss Nightingale and the
other ‘heroines of the Crimea,’ whose enterprise certainly required no
small share of masculine resolution. On the other hand, a writer on
the position of women confesses to ‘an admiration for the commonplace,
unambitious kind of old maid, who is content to do good in her own
neighbourhood, and among the few persons whom she really knows--who
takes a lively interest in the welfare of her nephews and nieces, and
who regales herself occasionally with tea and gossip.’

One writer tells us that there are things for which women are
exclusively fitted. ‘In the first place, women have the power of
pleasing. Accomplishments are cultivated as instrumental to the
successful exercise of this power, and therefore are not to be
rejected on the ground that they waste the time that might be given
to mathematics. The common sense of the world has long ago settled
that men are to be pleased, and women are to please. Accordingly women
acquire an agreeable expertness at the piano, and view the acquisition
as a solemn duty.’ Another, in answer to the question, what ought all
young ladies to learn, says, ‘Accomplishments are quite a secondary
matter. If men do not get tired of the songs, they soon get tired of
the singer, if she can do nothing but sing. What is really wanted in a
woman is, that she should be a permanently pleasant companion. So far
as education can give or enhance pleasantness, it does so by making the
view of life wide, the wit ready, the faculty of comprehension vivid.’

One authority, delightfully contented with things as they are, assures
us that, ‘humanly speaking, the best sort of British young lady is all
that a woman can be expected to be--civil, intelligent, enthusiastic,
decorous, and, as a rule, prettier than in any other country. We are
perfectly satisfied with what we have got.’ Another, less happily
constituted, asserts that ‘all good judges and good teachers lament
the present system of girls’ education. It is all cramming, and with
such very poor results. After all is over, girls know very little and
care about less. Most girls are decidedly stupid, and what good can
cramming of the most barren and repulsive kind do to stupid girls? We
should consider what we want women to be. That they should be trained
to be good and generous is by far the first thing.... The next thing is
that they should be well-mannered and healthy. The third requisite is,
that they should know how to express themselves--should have a right
standard in judging books and men, and public and private life....
The fourth requisite is, that they should know how to bear rule in a
household.... These are all the essentials.’

Another view is, that a woman should be ‘a gentle tyrant, capricious
indeed, yet generous and kindhearted withal, varying in mood, now
clouded, now serene, though given less to tears than laughter, and
bright with gleams of hopeful sunshine like the spring. She should
be no dunce, no ignoramus, this enviable woman; she should not have
stopped in her education when the governess’s back was turned, nor hold
that to play Mr Chappell’s music creditably is the one aim and end of
all instruction; she should know enough to take her part in topics of
general conversation, to read the _Times_ with interest, and talk
about the leading article without a yawn; she should be fond enough of
learning to find that her leisure seldom hangs heavy on her hands; and
if (though it is almost too much to expect) she has sufficient patience
with the process of induction to be able to reason on any subject for
two minutes together without jumping to a conclusion either way, we
may well congratulate ourselves on having drawn the great prize in the
lottery of life.’ Mr Coventry Patmore seems to prefer that the gentle
tyranny and the capriciousness should be on the other side.

              ‘He who toils all day,
  And comes home hungry, tired or cold,
  And feels ’twould do him good to scold
  His wife a little, let him trust
  Her love, and boldly be unjust,
  And not care till she cries! How prove
  In any other way his love
  Till soothed in mind by meat and rest?
  If, after that, she’s well caress’d,
  And told how good she is to bear
  His humour, fortune makes it fair.
  Women like men to be like men,
  That is, at least, just now and then!’

The wife is here represented as rejoicing in her husband’s ill-temper,
as affording her an opportunity of dispelling it by soothing arts,
a practical illustration, it may be observed, of the complementary
theory, the woman’s patience actually demanding a man’s sulkiness to
practise upon. Contrast Mr Patmore’s ‘Jane’ with Mr Tennyson’s ‘Isabel.’

  ‘Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed
  With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,
  Clear, without heat, undying, tended by
  Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane
  Of her still spirit; locks not wide-dispread,
  Madonna-wise on either side her head;
  Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
  The summer calm of golden charity,
  Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood,
    Revered Isabel, the crown and head,
  The stately flower of female fortitude,
    Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead.

  ‘The intuitive decision of a bright
  And thorough-edged intellect to part
    Error from crime; a prudence to withhold;
    The laws of marriage character’d in gold
  Upon the blanched tablets of her heart;
  A love still burning upward, giving light
  To read those laws; an accent very low
  In blandishment, but a most silver flow
    Of subtle-paced counsel in distress,
  Right to the heart and brain, though undescried,
    Winning its way with extreme gentleness
  Through all the outworks of suspicious pride;
  A courage to endure and to obey;
  A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway,
  Crown’d Isabel, through all her placid life,
  The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.’

The self-defence which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Queen
Katherine describes a different type:--

                        ‘Heaven witness
  I have been to you a true and humble wife,
  At all times to your will conformable;
  Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
  Yea, subject to your countenance; glad or sorry,
  As I saw it incline. When was the hour
  I ever contradicted your desire,
  Or made it not mine too? or which of your friends
  Have I not strove to love, although I knew
  He were mine enemy? what friend of mine
  That had to him derived your anger, did I
  Continue in my liking? nay, gave notice
  He was from thence discharged?’

This picture of trembling devotion, of ‘distrust qualified by fear,’
appears in a selection called ‘Beautiful Poetry,’ under the heading
‘A True Wife.’ But this kind of wife would be positively disliked by
some husbands. It has been said that ‘perhaps--such is masculine
nature--a wife with more knowledge, more fixity of thought, and more
general mental power than one’s-self might be “a blessing in disguise.”
But one who is goose enough to sympathise at random on subjects of
which she knows little or nothing, because it is “feminine” to do
so, is a nuisance _not_ in disguise.... For our own part, we would
just as soon have the sympathy of a chameleon as that of a woman who
lives completely in particulars, and is quite destitute of power to
appreciate a universal principle.’

These are but a few samples, culled almost at random from the mass of
contradictory evidence to be found in English literature. Conceive a
governess or schoolmistress, duly impressed with the obligation of
training her pupils to be accomplished pleasers of men, and trying to
fashion for them a model out of such materials! Must not the result be
simply blank despair? The same conclusion might be reached by a shorter
process. Men are supposed to marry the sort of women they like. But
looking upon the infinite variety of wives to be met with in society,
could any one generalise from them a model wife, who might serve as a
pattern to educators? Would any man wish for a wife so modelled? Might
it not be as well to abandon this distracting theory--to discard the
shifting standard of opinion, and to fall back upon the old doctrine
which teaches educators to seek in every human soul for that divine
image which it is their work to call out and to develope?

The educational question depends, as we have seen, on the larger
question of women’s place in the social order. Are they to be regarded,
and to regard themselves, primarily as children of God, members of
Christ, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven, and, secondarily, as
wives, mothers, daughters, sisters? or are the family relationships
to overshadow the divine and the social, and to be made the basis
of a special moral code, applying to women only? According to the
first view, all human duties--everything that is lovely and of good
report--all moral virtues and all Christian graces are inculcated and
enforced by the highest sanctions. An ascetic contempt for wifely and
motherly and daughterly ties is no part of the Christian ideal. But the
view which teaches women to think of family claims as embracing their
whole duty--which bids them choose to serve man rather than God--sets
before them a standard of obligation which, in proportion as it is
exclusively adhered to, vitiates not their lives only, but those of the
men on whom their influence might be of a far different sort. That such
a theory is radically inconsistent with the divine order might easily
be shown. That its action on society is profoundly demoralising is a
lesson taught by mournful experience.


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER III.

THINGS AS THEY ARE.


Whether it is owing to the prevailing confusion of ideas as to
the objects of female education, or to whatever cause it may be
attributed, there can be little doubt that the thing itself is held
in slight esteem. No one indeed would go so far as to say that it is
not worth while to educate girls at all. _Some_ education is held to
be indispensable, but how much is an open question; and the general
indifference operates in the way of continually postponing it to other
claims, and, above all, in shortening the time allotted to systematic
instruction and discipline. Parents are ready to make sacrifices to
secure a tolerably good and complete education for their sons; they
do not consider it necessary to do the same for their daughters. Or
perhaps it would be putting it more fairly to say, that a very brief
and attenuated course of instruction, beginning late and ending early,
is believed to constitute a good and complete education for a woman.

It is usually assumed that when a boy’s school education has once
begun, which it does at a very early age, it is to go on steadily
till he is a man. A boy who leaves school at sixteen or eighteen,
either enters upon some technical course of training for a business
or profession, or he passes on to the University, and from thence to
active work of some sort or other. In other words, he is _in statu
pupillari_ until general education and professional instruction are
superseded by the larger education supplied by the business of life.
In the education of girls no such regular order appears. A very usual
course seems to be for girls to spend their early years in a haphazard
kind of way, either at home, or in not very regular attendance at an
inferior school; after which they are sent for a year or two to a
school or college to finish. The heads of schools complain with one
voice that they are called upon to ‘finish’ what has never been begun,
and that to attempt to give anything like a sound education, in the
short time at their disposal, is perfectly hopeless. But, to take the
most favourable case,--that of a girl so well prepared that she is able
to make good use of the teaching provided in a first-rate school,--just
at the moment when she is making real, substantial progress, she is
taken away. At sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, as the case may be,
her education comes to an abrupt pause. When she marries, it may be
said to begin again; but between leaving school and marriage there is
usually an interval of at least three or four years, if not a much
longer period. These years a youth spends, as has been before said,
in preparation for his future career. In the case of girls, no such
preparation seems to be considered necessary.

Is this reasonable? Apart from immediate pecuniary necessity, is it
desirable that the regular education of women should be considered as
finished at the age of eighteen? If we are to take the almost universal
practice as an answer, it is a very decided affirmative. Even girls
whose parents must be fully aware that they will eventually have to
maintain themselves, seldom receive any adequate training for their
future work. Those whose fathers intend to provide for them, are still
less likely to be supposed to want any further education after they
leave school.

So fixed and wide-spread a custom must have had, at some time or other,
even if it has not now, a meaning and a justification. And this may
perhaps be found in the fact that our mothers and our grandmothers were
accustomed to undergo at home, after leaving school, what was in fact
an apprenticeship to household management. It seems indeed at one time
to have been customary to apprentice girls of what we now call the
middle class, to trades,--as we find George Herbert urging his Country
Parson not to put his children ‘into vain trades and unbefitting the
reverence of their father’s calling, such as are taverns for men and
lacemaking for women,’--but even where there was no apprenticeship to
a specific business, the round of household labours would supply a
very considerable variety of useful occupation. An active part in these
labours would naturally devolve upon the daughters of the house, who
would thus be forming habits of industry and order invaluable in after
life.

Probably a great many fathers, profoundly ignorant as they are of the
lives of women, cherish a vague imagination that the same kind of
thing is going on still. If Providence should at any time lead them
to spend a week in the society of their daughters, under ordinary
circumstances--not when illness has altered the usual current of
affairs--they would find that this is very far from being the case.
That great male public, which spends its days in chambers and offices
and shops, knows little of what is going on at home. Writers in
newspapers and magazines are fond of talking about the nursery, as if
every household contained a never-ending supply of young children, on
whom the grown-up daughters might be practising the art of bringing up.
Others have a great deal to say about the kitchen, assuming it to be
desirable that the ladies of the house should supersede, or at least
assist, the cook. In that case, where there is a mother with two or
three daughters, we should have four or five cooks. The undesirableness
of such a multiplication of artists need scarcely be pointed out.[1]
Needlework, again, occupies a much larger space in the imagination of
writers than it does in practical life. Except in families where there
are children, there is very little plain needlework to be done, and
what there is, many people make a point of giving out, on the ground
that it is better to pay a half-starved needlewoman for work done, than
to give her the money in the form of alms.

Having mentioned needlework, cookery, and the care of children, we
seem to have come to an end of the household work in which ladies are
supposed to take part. If young women of eighteen and upwards are
learning anything in their daily life at home, it must be something
beside and beyond the acquirement of dexterity in ordinary domestic
arts.

Many fathers, however, are no doubt aware that their daughters have
very little to do. But that seems to them anything but a hardship.
They wish they had a little less to do themselves, and can imagine all
sorts of interesting pursuits to which they would betake themselves if
only they had a little more leisure. Ladies, it may be said, have their
choice, and they must evidently prefer idleness, or they would find
something to do. If this means that half-educated young women do not
choose steady work when they have no inducement whatever to overcome
natural indolence, it is no doubt true. Women are not stronger-minded
than men, and a commonplace young woman can no more work steadily
without motive or discipline than a commonplace young man. It has been
remarked that ‘the active, voluntary part of man is very small, and if
it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be
null. We could not do every day out of our own heads all we have to do.
We should accomplish nothing; for all our energies would be frittered
away in minor attempts at petty improvement.’ The case of young women
could scarcely have been better stated. Every day they have to do out
of their own heads nearly all that they have to do. They accomplish
little; for their energies are frittered away in minor attempts at
petty improvement.

How true this is, the friends and counsellors of girls could abundantly
testify. There is no point on which schoolmistresses are more unanimous
and more emphatic than on the difficulty of knowing what to do with
girls after leaving school. People who have not been brought into
intimate converse with young women have little idea of the extent to
which they suffer from perplexities of conscience. ‘The discontent
of the modern girl’ is not mere idle self-torture. Busy men and
women--and people with disciplined minds--can only, by a certain strain
of the imagination, conceive the situation. If they at all entered into
it, they could not have the heart to talk as they do. For the case of
the modern girl is peculiarly hard in this, that she has fallen upon an
age in which idleness is accounted disgraceful. The social atmosphere
rings with exhortations to act, act in the living present. Everywhere
we hear that true happiness is to be found in work--that there can be
no leisure without toil--that people who do nothing are unfruitful
fig-trees which cumber the ground. And in this atmosphere the modern
girl lives and breathes. She is not a stone, and she does not live
underground. She hears people talk--she listens to sermons--she reads
books. And in her reading she comes across such passages as the
following:--

‘It is a real pleasure to me to find that you are taking steadily
to a profession, without which I scarcely see how a man can live
honestly. That is, I use the term “profession” in rather a large sense,
not as simply denoting certain callings which a man follows for his
maintenance, but rather a definite field of duty, which the nobleman
has as much as the tailor, but which he has not, who having an income
large enough to keep him from starving, hangs about upon life, merely
following his own caprices and fancies; _quod factu pessimum est_.’[2]

Or again:--

‘N’est-il pas vrai que la fadeur de la vie est à la fois le grand
malheur et le grand danger? Il y a une douzaine d’années, un orateur
s’écriait à la tribune: “La France s’ennuie.” Et moi je dis: L’humanité
s’ennuie, et son ennui ne date ni d’aujourd’hui ni d’hier, quoique
peut-être il n’ait jamais été plus visible qu’en ce moment. Sans la
poursuite d’un but idéal, toute vie devient inevitablement insipide,
même jusqu’au dégout. Or, comptez parmi vos connaissances les personnes
qui poursuivent un but élevé. Beaucoup vivent sans savoir pourquoi,
uniquement, je pense, parce que chaque matin ramène le soleil. Que
de femmes, si vous exceptez les mères qui se donnent à leur famille,
que de femmes, hélas, dont la vie se passe entière dans de futiles
occupations, ou dans des conversations plus futiles encore! Et l’on
s’étonne que, rongées d’ennui, elles recherchent avec frénésie toutes
les distractions imaginables! Elles accusent la monotonie de leur
existence d’être la cause de ce vague malaise; la vraie cause est
ailleurs, elle est dans la fadeur intolérable, non d’une vie dépourvue
d’événements et d’aventures, mais d’une vie dont on n’entrevoit pas
la raison ni le but. On se sent vivre sans qu’on y soit pour quelque
chose, et cette vie inconsciente, inutile, absurde, inspire un
mécontentement trop fondé.’[3]

Such things the modern girl reads, and every word is confirmed by
her own experience. With the practical English mind, which she has
inherited from her father, she applies it all to herself. She seeks
for counsel, and she finds it. She is bidden to ‘look around her’--to
do the duty that lies nearest--to teach in the schools, or visit the
poor--to take up a pursuit--to lay down a course of study and stick
to it. She looks around her, and sees no particular call to active
exertion. The duties that lie in the way are swallowed up by an
energetic mother or elder sister; very possibly she has no vocation
for philanthropy--and the most devoted philanthropists are the most
urgent in warning off people who lack the vocation--or she lives in
a village where the children are better taught than she could teach
them, and the poor are already too much visited by the clergyman’s
family; she feels no sort of impulse to take up any particular pursuit,
or to follow out a course of study; and so long as she is quiet and
amiable, and does not get out of health, nobody wants her to do
anything. Her relations and friends--her world--are quite satisfied
that she should ‘hang about upon life, merely following her own’--or
their own--‘caprices and fancies.’ The advice given, so easy to offer,
so hard to follow, presupposes exactly what is wanting, a formed and
disciplined character, able to stand alone, and to follow steadily a
predetermined course, without fear of punishment, or hope of reward.
Ought we to wonder if, in the great majority of cases, girls let
themselves go drifting down the stream, despising themselves, but
listlessly yielding to what seems to be their fate?

An appeal to natural guides is most often either summarily dismissed,
or received with reproachful astonishment. It is considered a just
cause for surprise and disappointment, that well brought up girls,
surrounded with all the comforts of home, should have a wish or a
thought extending beyond its precincts. And, perhaps, it is only
natural that parents should be slow to encourage their daughters in
aspirations after any duties and interests besides those of ministering
to their comfort and pleasure. In taking for granted that this is the
only object, other than that of marriage, for which women were created,
they are but adopting the received sentiment of society. No doubt, too,
they honestly believe that, in keeping their daughters to themselves
till they marry, they are doing the best thing for them, as well as
pleasing themselves. If the daughters take a different view, parents
think it is because they are young and inexperienced, and incompetent
to judge. The fact is, it is the parents who are inexperienced.
Their youth was different in a hundred ways from the youth of this
generation; and the experience of thirty years ago is far from being
infallible in dealing with the difficulties and perplexities of the
present. No doubt young people are ignorant, and want guidance. But
they should be helped and advised, not silenced. Parents take upon
themselves a heavy responsibility when they hastily crush the longing
after a larger and more purposeful life.

That such an impulse is worthy of respect can scarcely be denied.
The existence of capacities is in itself an indication that they are
intended for some good purpose. Conscious power is not a burden, to
be borne with patience, but a gift, for the due use of which the
possessor rightly feels accountable. To have a soul which can be
satisfied with vanities is not eminently virtuous and Christian, but
the reverse. To be awake to responsibilities, sensitive in conscience,
quickly responsive to all kindling influences, is a sign that education
has, so far, done a good work. A flowing river is no doubt more
troublesome to manage than a tranquil pool; but pools, if let alone too
long, are apt to become noxious, as well as useless. The current may
require to be wisely directed; but that there should be a current of
being, wanting to set itself somewhere, is surely a cause for thankful
rejoicing. It is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the true state
of the case that makes parents sigh over what might well be their
happiness and pride: one more exemplification of the sluggishness
which hates nothing so bitterly as to be called upon to think--to
consider a new idea--perhaps to go farther, and take a step out of the
beaten track. It is much easier, no doubt, to say to a daughter who
comes to you with her original notions--‘My dear child, put it out of
your head directly; it cannot be thought of for a moment’--than it
would be to hear her patiently, to consider how far her crude ideas
are practicable, to help her, so far as may be, in carrying them out.
And one ought not to wonder that the easiest course is the one most
commonly chosen. How far it may, or may not, be the duty of daughters
to sacrifice their own wishes to the temporary pleasure of those to
whom they owe so much, is a separate question. It is at least well for
parents to know that, far more than they are at all aware of, it is
felt to be a sacrifice, and that they must accept it as such, if at
all.[4]

The representation here given is, of course, not universally
applicable. It is quite possible that in some senses, and to some
persons, an apparently empty life may be easier, and even richer, than
one of toil. There are people to whom the Happy Valley kind of life is
by no means intolerable; and even earnest-minded and conscientious
girls, urged by a strong sense of the heinousness of discontent, often
manage to crush troublesome aspirations, and make themselves happy.
There is something undignified in being miserable, without a just and
intelligible cause to show for it; and many young women, capable of
higher things, accommodate themselves with a considerable degree of
cheerfulness to a narrow and unsatisfying round of existence. Nor is
it intended to represent ladies as habitually doing nothing. On the
contrary, they have many resources. Among them are various arts and
handicrafts, gardening, letter-writing, and much reading. Of these,
the last is perhaps the most popular and the most delusive. A girl
who is ‘very fond of reading’ is considered to be happily suited with
never-failing occupation, and no thought is taken as to what is to
come of her reading. On this subject, the observations of Miss Aikin,
herself an experienced reader, are worth considering. ‘Continual
reading,’ she says, ‘if desultory, and without a definite object,
favours indolence, unsettles opinions, and of course enfeebles the
mental and moral energies.’ And Mr Robertson of Brighton, speaking in
reference to girls, remarks that they ‘read too much, and think too
little. I will answer for it that there are few girls of eighteen who
have not read more books than I have.... That multifarious reading
weakens the mind more than doing nothing; for it becomes a necessity
at last, like smoking, and is an excuse for the mind to lie dormant,
whilst thought is poured in, and runs through, a clear stream, over
unproductive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. It is the idlest of
all idlenesses, and leaves more of impotency than any other.’

The same might be said of all merely _dilettante_ occupation. Its fault
is simply that it _is dilettante_--literally a pastime. It may as well
be done, if nothing else turns up, and that is all. And this drawback,
belonging to nearly all the ordinary work of young women, they are by
themselves unable to overcome. Of course, the case is partly in their
own hands, and those who are by nature abnormally energetic, will make
a career for themselves in spite of difficulties. Where the inward
impulse is irrepressible, it becomes a lantern to the feet, and a lamp
unto the path, making the way of duty plain and unmistakable. But for
the few whose course is thus illumined, there will be the many hovering
in uneasy doubt, their consciences and intellects just lively enough
to make them restless and unhappy, not sufficiently clear in their
minds as to right and wrong, either to be nerved for vigorous action,
or to accept contentedly the conventional duty of quiescence. There
must be something wrong in social regulations which make a demand for
exceptional wisdom and strength on the part of any particular class;
and that such a demand is made upon average young women is sufficiently
clear. What society says to them seems to be something to this effect.
Either you have force enough to win a place in the world, in the face
of heavy discouragement, or you have not. If you have, the discipline
of the struggle is good for you; if you have not, you are not worth
troubling about. Is not this a hard thing to say to commonplace
girls, not professing to be better or stronger than their neighbours?
Why should their task be made, by social and domestic arrangements,
peculiarly and needlessly difficult? And why should it be taken for
granted that, if they fail, they must be extraordinarily silly or
self-indulgent? More than any other class, at the same age, they are
exempted from direction and control--liberally gifted with the kind
of freedom enjoyed by the denizens of a village pound. Within their
prescribed sphere, they may wander at will, and if they ‘there small
scope for action see,’ it is explained to them that they must not ‘for
this give room to discontent;’ nor let their time ‘be spent in idly
dreaming’ how they might be

                            ‘More free
  From outward hindrance or impediment.
  For presently this hindrance thou shalt find
  That without which all goodness were a task
  So slight, that virtue never could grow strong.’

In reply to such admonitions they are tempted to inquire what task,
other than that of dreaming, is set before them--what virtue, always
excepting that one virtue of passive submission, has any chance of
growing strong under such conditions. The ‘slow,’ who sink into dull
inertia, and the ‘fast,’ who get rid of their superfluous energy
in silly extravagances, have alike the excuse, that at the moment
when they need the support of a routine explained and justified by a
reasonable purpose, discipline and stimulus are at once withdrawn,
leaving in their place no external support beyond the trivial demands
and restraints of conventional society.

It may seem that an exaggerated importance is here attached to the
interval between school and marriage; and if the considerations
brought forward had reference to this period only, the charge would be
just. But rightly to estimate the value of these years, we must bear in
mind that they are the spring-time of life--the season of blossom, on
which the fruit of the future depends. It is then that an impress is
given to character which lasts through life. Opportunities then thrown
away or misused can scarcely be recovered in later years. And it has
seemed necessary to dwell upon the existing tenour of young women’s
lives, because, in dealing with the question of extending the duration
of female education, we must be largely influenced by our conception of
the alternative involved in leaving things as they are. It has been
said that the end of education is ‘to form a nation of living, orderly
men.’ If it has been shown that the course now pursued tends to make a
large part of the nation inanimate and disorderly, a case would seem to
be established for urging efforts at improvement.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] As this pursuit is sometimes recommended with apparent seriousness,
it may be as well to point out to the uninitiated, that if mistresses
are to do the cooking, masters must dine alone. Dinners cannot be
cooked an hour beforehand, and left to serve themselves up. In this,
as in other arts, the finishing touches are among the most important.
This does not mean, of course, that a mistress may not give directions
and occasional help, or that it may not be a very good thing for girls
to lend a hand, now and then, by way of learning to cook. That is a
different thing from regularly spending a considerable part of their
daily lives in the kitchen.

[2] Letter to Dr Greenhill, an old pupil, in ‘Life of Dr Arnold,’ p.
392.

[3] Sermons par T. Colani.--_Deuxième Recueil_, p. 293.

[4] ‘M. de Parthenau would have been surprised had any one suggested
that this peaceful life was less to the taste of his children than
himself. Like so many excellent fathers, he sincerely believed that
because it suited him, it must suit them. He had forgotten his own
stormy youth, to find himself happy by his fireside, and it never
occurred to him to ask, “Is my daughter happy?” So much the better,
since he could have done nothing; and Thérèse was the last person to
make him suspect that she was not perfectly satisfied. Yet, whoever had
seen her, would have thought her destined for a wider sphere than that
of the narrow world where she strove to be content. It had not always
been so. Now, however, she stifled all the aspirations, the radiant
visions which once haunted her, under the crowd of occupations which
she found for herself. She silenced the cry of her intellect, and yet
heard it always; perhaps because she shunned as snares the natural
outlets which presented themselves, refusing each rare opportunity of
leaving home, lest she should return discontented; and putting away
books and pencils, that she might have no interests but those of her
father and her poor dependents. It was an honest, mistaken effort
to do right; and the confessor, who stood to her in the place of a
conscience, approved it--nay, urged it on her. It was strange, this
mute, ceaseless conflict, known only in its full extent to herself, and
hidden under so monotonous and peaceful a life!’--_Sydonie’s Dowry_, p.
24.

May not something like a counterpart of this mute, ceaseless conflict
be hidden under many a monotonous and peaceful English life?


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER IV.

THINGS AS THEY MIGHT BE.


Supposing so much to be granted, it will be asked, What can be done?
Clearly, girls cannot be kept at school indefinitely till they marry.
When they leave school, say at eighteen, what are they to do next?
The answer must chiefly depend on circumstances. Where the resources
of the parents are such that there is a reasonable certainty of an
abundant provision for the future, an education corresponding with that
given by the universities to young men--in other words, ‘the education
of a lady,’ considered irrespectively of any specific uses to which
it may afterwards be turned--would appear to be the desideratum. And
clearly ‘the education of a lady’ ought to mean the highest and the
finest culture of the time. The accurate habits of thought and the
intellectual polish by which the scholar is distinguished, ought to
be no less carefully sought in the training of women than in that
of men. This would be true, even if only for the sake of the charm
which high culture gives to social intercourse, a charm attainable
in no other way. But apart from this consideration, the duties of
women of the higher class are such as to demand varied knowledge
as well as a disciplined mind and character. Difficult cases in
social ethics frequently arise, on which women are obliged to act
and to guide the action of others. However incompetent they may be,
they cannot escape the responsibility of judging and deciding. And
though natural sagacity and the happy impulses of which we hear so
much often come to their aid, prejudice and mistaken impulses ought
also to be taken into the account as disturbing elements of a very
misleading kind. In dealing with social difficulties, the value of a
cultivated judgment, able to unravel entangled evidence, and to give
due weight to a great variety of conflicting considerations, would
seem to be obvious enough. It would be well worth while to exchange
the wonderful unconscious instinct, by which women are supposed to
leap to right conclusions, no one knows how, for the conscious power
of looking steadily and comprehensively at the whole facts of a case,
and thereupon shaping a course of action, with a clear conception of
its probable issues. Of course, a merely literary education will not
give this power. Knowledge of the world and of human nature, only to be
gained by observation and experience, go farther than mere knowledge
of books. But the habit of impartiality and deliberation--of surveying
a wide field of thought--and of penetrating, so far as human eye can
see, into the heart of things--which is promoted by genuine study even
of books alone--tends to produce an attitude of mind favourable for
the consideration of complicated questions of any sort. A comparison
between the judgment of a scholar and that of an uneducated man on
matters requiring delicate discrimination and grasp of thought, shows
the degree in which the intellect may be fitted by training for tasks
of this nature. A large and liberal culture is probably also the best
corrective of the tendency to take petty views of things, and on this
account is especially to be desired for women on whom it devolves to
give the tone to ‘society.’

How far it may be desirable or justifiable for women to take part
in political affairs is a vexed question, into which it is the less
necessary here to enter, inasmuch as it is evident that the same
kind of intellectual training which forms the groundwork of the
education of a statesman is needed for other purposes. Women who think
at all can scarcely help thinking about the condition of the poor,
and to arrive at sound conclusions on so vast a subject involves an
acquaintance more or less complete with almost every consideration
which comes within the range of the politician. Unpaid work, such as
the management of hospitals, workhouses, prisons and reformatories,
and charitable societies, naturally devolves upon the leisurely
classes, and offers a field in which cultivated women may fitly labour.
And the moment they enter upon such work, or attempt in any way to
alleviate the sufferings of the poor, they find that a strong, clear
head is as necessary as a warm heart. The problem how to deal with
pauperism--the very same difficulty which has hitherto baffled the
wisest of our statesmen--meets them at the threshold of their works.
The encouragement or discouragement of the pauper spirit depends
in a great degree on the discretion of district visitors and other
charitable agents; and the women who act as the almoners of the rich
and the advisers of the poor need for their difficult task something
more than mere gushing benevolence. Or to take national education. ‘My
Lords’ make codes, revise and re-revise them, and Members of Parliament
exhaust themselves in debates upon them; but a large share of their
practical working devolves upon the wives and daughters of the clergy,
and other ladies. Similarly of sanitary reform, which now attracts much
attention. Sanitary laws and regulations have been enacted, and no
doubt with good effect, but boards of health and inspectors can do but
little without the intelligent co-operation of the women, on whom it
depends to enforce personal and household hygiene in every family. Many
other social questions might be mentioned on which women are required
to know and to act. It would, in fact, be difficult to point out any
measure of domestic policy which has been brought before Parliament
during the last few years, on which it is not as directly important
that right opinions should be formed by women as by men.

The higher education already spoken of would serve as a preparation
for literary work, and as a groundwork for more definite technical
instruction in every department of art. And, lastly, an extended course
of study is, above all things, necessary for those who are to undertake
the office of teaching others. The incompleteness of the education
of schoolmistresses and governesses is a drawback which no amount of
intelligence and goodwill can enable them entirely to overcome. It
is obvious that for those who have to impart knowledge the primary
requisite is to possess it; and it is one of the great difficulties
of female teachers that they are called upon to instruct others,
while very inadequately instructed themselves. The more earnest and
conscientious devote their leisure hours to continued study, and, no
doubt, much may be done in this way; but it is at the cost of overwork,
often involving the sacrifice of health, to say nothing of the
disadvantages of working alone, without a teacher, often without good
books, and without the wholesome stimulus of companionship.

These considerations lead up to the more distinctly professional side
of the question, that which relates to the pursuit of any particular
calling as a means of maintenance. Every one knows that there are
women, some even of the upper class, who must earn their own living;
and this being admitted, it will scarcely be disputed that they ought
to be put into the best way of doing it. The thing to find out seems to
be what professions are there, taking the word as including business of
all sorts, to which they might betake themselves with a fair prospect
of success? Perhaps we may gain some light by looking into history, and
seeing what went on in earlier times, before the advance of science,
with its infinite subdivisions of labour, had made it almost impossible
to carry on any profitable pursuit within the precincts of home.

Confining ourselves, for the sake of brevity, to English history, we
find among the ordinary avocations of women Medicine and Surgery,
including the compounding and dispensing of drugs; the service of the
afflicted and distressed in mind, body, or estate; farming; marketing;
and a variety of domestic manufactures, too numerous to recite in
detail.

Would the same pursuits, under regulations adapted to altered
conditions, be proper for women now? Among those which have been
mentioned, that of Medicine appears peculiarly desirable, as affording
scope for the exercise of the highest gifts, in a field in which
women’s close acquaintance with the details of domestic life would
be a valuable adjunct. The medical profession is now accessible to
any competent woman who is able to defray the cost of instruction.
The licence of the Court of Apothecaries, which constitutes a legal
qualification for general practice, is given on passing the required
examinations. There is no difficulty in the way of apprenticeship, and
lectures and hospital practice are attainable, though at a higher cost
to individual students, than would be incurred if the expense were
divided among several. The objection often urged against the practice
of medicine by women, that they have no confidence in each other, and
that a medical woman would therefore find herself without patients,
can only be conclusively answered by facts. _À priori_, there is some
reason to believe, that, always assuming the education to be equally
thorough and equally well attested, the services of a lady will be
preferred; but till women have full opportunity of choice, it is
impossible to say positively what they will choose. The experience of a
few years will decide. In the meantime, Miss Garrett’s very remarkable
success is at least encouraging to other aspirants in the same field.

Closely allied to the practice of medicine are the functions of
educated women in ministering to the poor, the insane, and the
criminal. These services, so far as they are paid, are now chiefly
carried on in workhouses, hospitals, reformatories, and penitentiaries.
The superintendence of nurses and the offices of matron and
schoolmistress are in the hands of women, and there seems room for
further development in this direction. It may be a question for
consideration whether in some cases it might not be desirable to
substitute the services of an educated Christian lady for those of the
chaplain. The duties of a workhouse chaplain are thus defined by the
Poor-Law Board:--


‘ART. 211. _Duties of the Chaplain._

 ‘The following shall be the duties of the chaplain:--

 ‘No. 1. To read prayers, and preach a sermon to the paupers and
 other inmates of the workhouse on every Sunday, and on Good Friday
 and Christmas-day, unless the guardians, with the consent of the
 commissioners, may otherwise direct.

 ‘No. 2. To examine the children, and to catechise such as belong to
 the Church of England, at least once in every month, and to make a
 record of the same, and state the dates of his attendance, the general
 progress and condition of the children, and the moral and religious
 state of the inmates generally, in a book to be kept for that purpose,
 to be laid before the guardians at their next ordinary meeting, and to
 be termed “The Chaplain’s Report.”

 ‘No. 3. To visit the sick paupers, and to administer religious
 consolation to them in the workhouse, at such periods as the guardians
 may appoint, and when applied to for that purpose by the master or
 matron.’

The work laid out under the two last clauses might certainly be done
as well, in some respects perhaps better, by a duly qualified lady;
and on the face of it, there seems to be no particular reason why
paupers should not attend their parish church and be visited by the
clergyman like other parishioners. The desirableness of workhouse
visiting by ladies has been much discussed, and is now beginning to
be acknowledged. The presence of a lady in an official capacity might
be still more valuable, both as being permanent and as waiving the
difficulties which are so apt to come in the way of philanthropic
interference in state institutions. A lady appointed expressly by
the guardians themselves could scarcely provoke jealousy, and her
representations, based on thorough knowledge of the matter in hand, and
modified by sympathy with the difficulties and scruples of authorities,
as well as with the claims of the suffering, would be comparatively
exempt from the charge of officiousness. That she would naturally
gather round her such helpers as she might need in an unofficial
capacity is an obvious advantage. The same observations would seem to
be applicable to hospitals and prisons, and all public institutions
where women are employed in a subordinate capacity. That the presence
and the active influence of a lady, by whatever name she might be
called, would be a valuable element, wherever the sick in mind or body
are congregated together, is generally admitted, though the theory has
not in England been acted upon to any considerable extent.

Next in our enumeration comes the business of farming. The social
prejudice against useful occupations of any sort, as distinguished
from those which are supposed to be ornamental, has here been actively
at work. The superintendence of farming operations is still, however,
largely shared by women, especially in the north of England. In
commercial dealings there is a good deal of work to be done which could
not, at any rate in our present very imperfect state of civilisation,
be properly undertaken by women. There are, however, branches of
mercantile and quasi-mercantile business, including that profession
of modern growth which has been called ‘management,’--in which wise
arrangements, carefully made, are all that is required to make them
suitable. In almost every kind of business, wholesale and retail, the
book-keeping and the correspondence might be very fitly carried on by
competent women.

With regard to the manufactures which now form so vast a portion of our
national industry, a great revolution has taken place, and it is here,
above all, that a re-adjustment of social and domestic arrangements,
involving some innovation on conventional ideas and usages, seems to
be imperatively needed. Down to a comparatively recent period, every
household was a workshop. It is within the present generation that
the sewing-machine has laid hold of the last remaining implement of
domestic manufacture. The home is no longer a manufactory. Spinning,
weaving, knitting, sewing, all are gone, or going. What has become
of the busy hands and brains? The hands are gone into factories, the
brains are idle. We cannot call back the hands, and again set them to
work in the domestic manufactory. Might it not be possible to bring
them again under womanly influence, and at the same time find fit
work for the brains, by introducing women of the employing class into
factories? Might we not restore the old order of things, under which
the payers of wages and the receivers of wages worked together, to
the mutual advantage of both--by replacing women in the position of
directors and overlookers of female labour? It is vain to say that a
factory is not a fit place for a lady. If it is not, it ought to be
made so. If the moral atmosphere of a workshop is necessarily debasing,
no human being ought to be exposed to its influence. But is it
_necessarily_ debasing? Are machines in themselves demoralising? What
is the moral difference between a spinning-jenny and a distaff? Are
knitting-needles refined, and knitting-machines coarse? Is there any
reason, in the nature of things, why the moral tone of a factory should
be less pure and elevating than that of the home? Is it not rather
that we want, in our modern workshops, the influence conveyed by
daily intercourse between women to whom wealth has given the means of
culture and refinement, and the labourers whom poverty obliges to work
with their hands, but who need not therefore part with any essential
feminine attribute? If, in all the works where women are employed in
the inferior departments, the daughters of the masters were instructed
in the business, made so thoroughly conversant with it as to be able to
take a real part in its direction, two advantages would be gained. The
higher class of workers would acquire larger sympathies, more living
interests, increased aptitude for affairs, and an exhilarating sense
of usefulness--of having a place in the world from which they would
be missed if they were withdrawn from it. The lower class would, on
their part, be elevated by the contact with a genuine refinement, not
too ‘fine’ to be useful. They would see that a lady is a lady, not in
virtue of her costly dress and luxurious habits, but in the gentleness,
the truthfulness, and the sensitive sympathy, which are among the most
precious fruits of high culture. And it can scarcely be doubted that
such an example, such an ideal, brought within the immediate and daily
contemplation of women and girls of the labouring class, would be more
effectual in rectifying their standard of morals and refinement than
any philanthropic agency, however well-intentioned and judicious,
which could be brought to bear from without. In some cases there might
be difficulties in the way of teaching women the practical parts of a
manufacture, but there can be few businesses in which some place might
not be found for them. Even where female labourers are not employed in
the lower departments--though there the case is the strongest--women
might often take part in the direction, with great advantage to
themselves, and at least without injury to any one else.

It appears, then, that a transference of the scene of action, and an
accommodation of old principles and practices to new circumstances, is
the task of the present generation, and the true answer to the appeal
of women for something to do. The change proposed, so far from being
a departure from the old ways, is, in fact, a recurrence to them. The
advocates of things as they are, are the innovators. Those who sigh
after things as they might be, are the old-fashioned people, eager to
retain, with only such modifications as advancing civilisation has made
indispensable, all that is best in things as they were.


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER V.

PROFESSIONAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE.


An obvious rejoinder to the foregoing suggestions will at once present
itself. It will be said that professions and business may be all very
well--may indeed be best--for single women, but that sooner or later
the great majority marry, and any plan of life which fails to recognise
this contingency is unpractical and absurd. This is most true. We have
to deal with facts; and it is a most important, though not the sole
question, How would a higher education and professional training act
upon family life? Home duties fall to the lot of almost every woman,
and nothing which tends to incapacitate for the performance of them
ought to be encouraged. Let us ask, then, what are the home duties
of women as such, and what are the qualifications required for their
discharge? And here we must remember that the claims involved in the
conjugal and parental and filial relations are not special to women.
They are not, indeed, to be disregarded in considering the bearing of a
scheme of education; but in the discussion of the home duties of women
_as such_, it is convenient to treat separately those which are not
shared by men.

If we bring before our mind’s eye the picture of an English home,
we see that the household work is divided between the mistress and
the servants. Where there are grown-up daughters, they sometimes
help the mistress in her work, or the servants in theirs, but they
have no distinct functions of their own. It appears, then, that in
an inquiry relating to the upper and middle classes, the only home
duties special to women which can come under review, are those of the
mistress of the household. What are her functions? Those of government
and administration. All housekeepers will agree that this is the work
they have to do, though they may not be accustomed to call it by these
names. The inexperienced mistress complains, not that she does not know
how to cook, or to sew, or to keep the furniture in order--these arts,
if she wants them, can be quickly acquired; her perplexity is how to
manage the servants. To draw the line between necessary subordination
and vexatious interference--to apportion to each a fair share of work,
and to see that the work is done--to be liberal and considerate without
over-indulgence,--these are duties requiring judgment, moderation,
method, decision, often no small share of moral courage; in other
words, precisely the same qualities which are wanted in governing
bodies of workpeople. In administration also, it is obvious that,
though on a different scale, the same sagacity, prudence, and foresight
which would make a woman successful in business, would conduce to the
economical management of domestic concerns.

The head of a household wants an ideal to work up to, and the governing
and administrative power which will enable her to carry out her idea.
Here, as elsewhere, motive is the primary requisite. A woman to whom
huggermugger is intolerable will find means of escaping from it--if
necessary, by the labour of her own hands--more often, perhaps, by
the skilful direction of the labour of others. But one who has no
inner sense of the beauty of order, to whom the rhythmic flow of a
well-governed household is an unmeaning conception, or who lacks the
gift of mastery over details, may be cooking and sewing and looking
after things from morning till night; she may be anxiously obedient
to conventional regulations, rigid in the observance of ceremonies
unmeaning in themselves or unsuited to her position; with all her
striving, she will never realise the vision of an ideal English home.

It appears, then, that first, imagination, combined with a certain
sensitiveness of refinement, and secondly, the faculty of government
and administration, are the qualifications chiefly necessary for
the performance of home duties. No education can be relied upon as
infallibly securing these rare gifts; but it may be assumed that
extensive reading of the best books tends to cultivate imagination and
refinement, and that a life of active exertion tends to bring out the
qualities which go to make up the governing and administrative faculty;
and if so, a liberal education and the pursuit of a profession are
perhaps, on the whole, the best training that the conditions of modern
society can supply for the special functions of the mistress of a
household.

It will, however, be pointed out by practical people, that even
supposing the training to be good as regards domestic life, parents
will not throw away their money on a costly preparation for a
profession which is most likely to be abandoned in a few years;
and again, that the contingency of marriage is likely to act as a
discouragement to girls, making them so languid in endeavour, that they
would have small chance of success in a professional career.

To the last objection experience would not lead us to attach
much weight. But supposing that, either through want of energy
or perseverance, or from any other deficiency, women should take
a low place in the professional ranks, what then? The object of
their education would have been, not to set them on a pinnacle of
distinction, but to make them useful labourers; and if this end were
attained, society, at any rate, would have no reason to complain.

It is true, however, that fathers are likely to hesitate in spending
money on what may seem a doubtful speculation as regards pecuniary
returns. And if marriage necessarily involves the complete abandonment
of a profession, the chances are somewhat against professional
education as an investment of capital, though perhaps less so than
would at first sight appear. Of course much depends on the amount of
money which it is necessary to expend. To take the medical profession,
as being, among those which women are likely to enter, the one in
which the cost of training is probably the highest--it is a liberal
computation to allow £500 as covering the cost of instruction over
and above the personal expenses, which would be going on all the
same whether a girl were being educated or not. Such a sum would, in
three or four years of successful practice, be recovered, and any
further earnings would be clear gain. No doubt, in cases of very early
marriage, a part or even the whole of the sum expended would be sunk;
and the result of giving women professions would probably be, on the
whole, to encourage comparatively early marriage, partly by bringing
persons of congenial tastes into mutual intercourse, and partly by
rendering marriages possible which would otherwise be flagrantly
imprudent. But supposing that a woman married a rich man before she
had begun to practise, the loss of the sum mentioned could easily be
spared. If she married a poor man, or a man dependent on an uncertain
income, the sacrifice might be regarded in the light of a sum paid for
insurance--the provision of a resource in case of widowhood or other
misfortune, which it is well to have in reserve, though it may be still
better never to want it.

In the meantime, however, does marriage necessarily involve giving up
a profession? On the face of it, judging by existing facts, one would
incline to the contrary view. Some of the highest names in literature
and art are those of married women; many schoolmistresses are married;
clergymen’s wives notoriously undertake a large share of extra-domestic
work; and there is no evidence that in any of these cases the husbands
are neglected, or the children worse brought up than other people’s. It
seems to be forgotten that women have always been married. Marriage is
not a modern discovery, offering a hitherto untrodden field of action
for feminine energy. The novelty is, that, as has been said already,
the old field has been invaded and taken possession of by machinery.
The married ladies of former days, instead of sitting in drawing-rooms,
eating the bread of idleness, got through a vast amount of household
business, which their successors cannot possibly do, simply because
it is not there to be done. An educated woman, of active, methodical
habits, blessed with good servants, as good mistresses generally are,
finds an hour a day amply sufficient for her housekeeping. Nothing
is gained by spreading it out over a longer time.[5] Allowing a fair
margin for what are technically called ‘social’ claims, there remains
a surplus, of course varying very considerably in extent, according
to circumstances. The question then arises, whether a married woman,
having time and energy to spare, may or may not legitimately spend it,
if she likes, either in definitely professional work, or in the unpaid
public services, which, when seriously undertaken, constitute something
nearly equivalent to a profession. Inasmuch as the adoption of such a
course would most probably effect some change in the aspect of family
life, it is reasonable to ask whether such change is likely to be for
good or for evil; and any objections which may suggest themselves ought
to be respectfully considered.

One of the most obvious is the fear that a profession might prove a
snare, leading to the neglect of humbler and more irksome duties.
And it is right to admit frankly that the apprehension may not be
altogether groundless. M. Simon, indeed, asserts, with the happy
confidence we are all so apt to display on matters of which we have
had no experience, that household drudgery, ‘though very laborious, is
agreeable to women;’ and Sydney Smith has made merry over the notion
that a mother would desert an infant for a quadratic equation. And of
course, put in that extreme way, the idea is ridiculous. But looking
at the case broadly--putting on one side the little fretting cares and
worries of domestic life, and on the other the larger and more genial
interests of professional work, it may be confessed that a temptation
might very possibly arise to shirk the less engaging task. But it does
not follow that because a temptation exists, it must be irresistible.
To construct a plan of life absolutely free from temptation is a
simple impossibility, even supposing it to be desirable. Every career
has its snares, and a life of narrow interests and responsibilities
is no exception to the rule. The true safeguard seems to consist,
not in restraints and limitations, but in a vivid sense of all that
is involved in the closer relationships, and in a steadfast habit
of submission to duty. In the present case it may be noted that,
however fascinating the temptation may be, it is at any rate open and
well understood. It is not a pitfall, which any one could walk into
unawares through ignorance of its existence. The paramount importance
of home duties is enforced by all the sanctions of an overwhelming
public opinion. Any neglect is liable to be punished, not only by the
immediate discomfort arising from it, but by universal disapproval.
An offence against which the warnings are so trumpet-tongued, and of
which the consequences are so thoroughly disagreeable, can scarcely be
very dangerously attractive.

If it is admitted that professional women are likely, or at least as
likely as others, to be both able and diligent in the discharge of
family obligations, another objection may be raised, founded on the
apprehension that a similarity of pursuits would produce an unpleasant
similarity between men and women. One of the most plausible arguments
in behalf of dissimilar education is that which rests on the general
desirableness of variety. We do not want to be all alike. The course
of civilisation tends, it is said, already too strongly towards
uniformity.

  ‘For “ground in yonder social mill,
  We rub each other’s angles down,
  And lose,” he said, “in form and gloss
  The picturesque of man and man.”’

And if it could be shown that the isolation of the sexes produces
variety of the best kind, and to the greatest possible extent, it would
no doubt be a strong argument in its favour. But it is questionable
whether this is the best means of obtaining variety. As there can be
no unanimity on matters of which one party is ignorant, so also, in
the same sense, there can be no diversity. We do not obtain two views
of a subject by incapacitating one of the parties from taking any view
at all. If the differences between men and women are such that they
are predisposed to treat whatever comes before them in a somewhat
different manner, we shall get greater variety by presenting to both
the most important subjects of thought, than by sorting out subjects
into classes and submitting each to a kind of class treatment. And so
also as to methods of training. It seems likely that a more healthily
diversified type of character will be obtained by cultivating the
common human element, and leaving individual differences free to
develop themselves, than by dividing mankind into two great sections
and forcing each into a mould. You may indeed obtain diversity by
mutilation or distortion. You may make a girl unlike a boy by shutting
her up, giving her insufficient air and exercise, and teaching her that
grace and refinement are synonymous with affectation and feebleness.
You may make a boy unlike a girl by teaching him to care for nothing
but out-of-door sports, and by making him believe that he is showing
spirit when he is rude and selfish. But this is not the kind of variety
that any one seriously wishes to cultivate.

It may here perhaps be argued on the other hand, that to give wives
professions would tend to separate them from their husbands by throwing
them into a society of their own, and leading them to set up a distinct
set of independent interests,--that whereas a wife now throws herself
into her husband’s concerns, losing sight of herself in her sympathy
with him, she would, if she had a pursuit of her own, be led astray
by ambition, occupied with her own aims, absorbed in a current of
life apart from his. Here again it may be admitted that the danger
might, in very rare cases, possibly exist. But, on the whole, the risk
seems to be much more than counterbalanced by a very strong tendency
in an exactly opposite direction. In many cases, the profession of
both would be the same, judging by present experience. Artists marry
artists, clergymen’s daughters marry clergymen, literary women often,
though not always, marry literary men, medical women would probably
marry medical men, and so on. It is likely that a man who chose to
marry a professional woman at all would marry in his own profession.
But supposing it were otherwise, a woman who had work similar, though
not in all respects identical with that of her husband, would be more
able than one whose occupation was of an entirely alien character,
to sympathise with him in his difficulties and in his successes. She
would understand them and enter into them with a first-hand kind of
interest, fuller and more intelligent, if not more genuine, than a
merely reflected interest could be. On the other hand, it would be at
least as easy for a husband to enter into interests somewhat akin to
his own, as into the small domestic worries which fill so large a space
in the thoughts and imaginations of women who have nothing else to
occupy them. There are many wives who really have very little to talk
to their husbands about, except the virtues or the crimes of servants,
and the little gossip of the neighbourhood. If their husbands will not
listen to what they have to say on these subjects, they are obliged to
take refuge in silence.

The enormous loss to general culture entailed by the solitude of
the male intellect is very little thought of. Yet it would seem
obvious enough that children brought up in a home where the everyday
conversation is of a somewhat thoughtful and literary cast, have an
immense start as compared with those who learn nothing unconsciously,
and are obliged to gather all their knowledge laboriously from books.
Social and domestic intercourse is an educational instrument largely
used in cultivated circles. In the great mass of English society it
is scarcely used at all, for this obvious reason, that education is in
great part onesided, and the easy interchange of thought is therefore
impossible. A slight infusion of an intellectual element would go far
to expel the gossip and the microscopic criticism of one’s neighbours,
which forms so large and so degrading a part in the domestic talk
of the middle classes. The mental effort need not be a severe one.
Talk may be very small, and yet have a certain dignity, if it touches
even but lightly on elevating subjects. It is the effort to draw up
conversation from empty wells that wearies the spirit, and drives even
goodnatured people into scandal and slander. Contrast the forced
and insipid small talk of ordinary society, resorted to by way of
recreation, but in the last degree unrefreshing in its nature, with the
spontaneous overflowings of a cultivated mind.

  ‘She spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them--
  She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch,
  Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,
  In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.
  In her utmost lightness there is truth--and often she speaks lightly,
  Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve;
  For the root of some grave earnest thought is under-struck so rightly,
  As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.’

It is in fact as a means of bringing men and women together, and
bridging over the intellectual gulf between them, that a more liberal
education and a larger scope for women are chiefly to be desired. It
has been pointed out by a well-known essayist, that ‘the purpose of
education is not always to foster natural gifts, but sometimes to bring
out faculties that might otherwise remain dormant; and especially so
far as to make the persons educated cognisant of excellence in those
faculties in others.’ And even supposing it could be proved that
the separate systems are eminently successful in developing certain
peculiarly masculine or feminine gifts, the result would be dearly
purchased by the sacrifice of mutual understanding and appreciation.

Oddly enough, it is often assumed that the only way of getting
husbands and wives to agree is to keep them well apart. Common ground,
it is taken for granted, must of course be a battle ground. If the
theory of the peculiarly receptive character of the female intellect
has any truth in it, it might be expected to be rather the other way,
and that wives would, as a rule, be only too ready to adopt their
husbands’ opinions. In any case, contact has an undoubted tendency
to produce unanimity, and the chances are therefore in favour of
agreement. And that there should be intelligent agreement, a community
of thought and feeling, on all matters of importance, is surely the
first necessity for the healthy and harmonious development of family
life. M. Simon has drawn a vivid picture of the influence on children
of discordance between fathers and mothers, even when there is nothing
like an open rupture.

‘Cette femme qu’une religieuse a formée et cet homme nourri des
doctrines de tolérance, peut-être d’indifférence, mariés ensemble,
sont un vivant anachronisme. La femme est du dix-septième siècle
et l’homme de la fin du dix-huitième. Admettons qu’ils vivent en
bonne intelligence, elle le croyant damné, lui la jugeant fanatique.
Qu’arrivera-t-il, quand à leur tour, ils enseigneront? Et ils
enseigneront; être père, être mère, c’est enseigner. La mère répétera
sa doctrine, puisée au couvent; le père, par prudence, se taira. Se
taira-t-il? Si même il prend cela sur lui, son silence sera commenté
par ses actes. Et que pensera l’enfant de cette contradiction,
aussitôt qu’il pensera? Il condamnera l’un ou l’autre, peut-être
l’un et l’autre. Plus il aura l’esprit puissant, plus vite il perdra
respect.... Il semble à des esprits sans portée que l’indifférence et
la foi vivront bien ensemble, parce que l’une exige et l’autre céde;
mais céder à une croyance sans l’accepter, c’est ne pas être. La paix
entre deux âmes est possible quand elle est fondée sur l’identité de
foi; elle est encore possible quand elle est fondée sur le respect
réciproque d’une foi diverse et sincère; mais appeler paix cette
absence de lutte qui naît de l’indifférence, c’est confondre la paix
avec la défaite et la vie avec le néant.’

The author of ‘Vincenzo’ has given in that remarkable story a view too
painfully lifelike to be disbelieved, of the conjugal misery resulting
from a profound dissonance between a husband and wife on religious and
political questions, and asserts that the wreck of domestic happiness
so graphically pictured represents a reality far from uncommon. ‘Would
to God,’ he exclaims, ‘that the case were an isolated one! But no;
there is scarcely any corner in Italy, scarcely any corner in Europe,
that does not exhibit plenty of such and worse.’ Such a state of things
could scarcely exist in England. The counteracting influences are too
many and too strong. But it cannot be said that we are exempt from
danger. In how many English families wives and sisters are clinging
blindly to traditional beliefs and observances, from which husbands and
brothers are turning away with indifference or dislike. How natural
the transition from the theory which assigns ‘to the one the supremacy
of the head, to the other that of the heart’--to that further division
which attributes to the one Reason, to the other Faith. Heartless
Rationalism and imbecile credulity! Is it in the union of these feeble
and jarring tones that we shall find the full chord of family harmony?
Ought we not rather to turn with suspicion from these artificial
attempts to apportion attributes and duties? May we not welcome, as
at least a step in the right direction, a change in our conventional
habits, which may extend, though in ever so small a degree, the region
of common thoughts and aims, common hopes and disappointments, common
joys and common sorrows?


FOOTNOTES:

[5] On the occasion of a recent vacancy in the secretaryship of a
benevolent society several of the candidates were married women. One
gave, as her reasons for applying, ‘loneliness and want of employment.’
In another case, the application was made by a husband on behalf of his
wife.


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER VI.

SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS.


If it be admitted that the law of human duty is the same for both
sexes, and if the specific functions belonging to each demand
substantially the same qualities for their performance, it appears to
follow that the education required is likely to be, in its broader and
more essential features, the same. What that education ought to be
has lately been much discussed, but at present without much sign of
approaching unanimity. That there should be great difference of opinion
is natural, inasmuch as almost every one is inclined to recommend for
universal adoption just what he happens to like best himself; while, on
the other hand, a few people of a different turn of mind are disposed
to undervalue what they possess themselves, and to give extra credit to
subjects or methods, the insufficiency of which has not been brought
home to them by personal experience. In the education of girls the
selection of subjects seems to be directed by no principle whatever.
Strong protests are raised against assimilating it to that of boys;
but very little is said as to the particulars in which it ought to
differ. The present distribution is, indeed, somewhat whimsical.
Inasmuch as young men go into offices where they have to conduct
foreign correspondence, and, as they travel about all over the world,
they are taught the dead languages. As woman’s place is the domestic
hearth, and as middle class women rarely see a foreigner, they are
taught modern languages with a special view to facility in speaking.
As men are supposed to work with their heads all day, and have nothing
in the world to do when they are indisposed for reading but to smoke
or to go to sleep, they are taught neither music nor drawing. As women
have always the resource of needlework, they learn music and drawing
besides. As women are not expected to take part in political affairs,
they are taught history. As men do, boys learn mathematics instead.
In physical science, astronomy and botany are considered the ladies’
department. Chemistry and mechanics being the branches most directly
applicable to domestic uses, are reserved for boys.

These distinctions ought rather, however, to be spoken of as a thing of
the past. The educators of boys and girls respectively are learning and
borrowing from each other.[6] An approximation is already in progress,
in which the encroachment, if it be an encroachment, is chiefly from
the side of boys; for while Latin and mathematics are slowly making
their way into girls’ schools, we find that in the University local
examinations, music, drawing, and modern languages have from the
beginning been recognised as desirable for boys. It is, like most
other things, very much a question of degree. The system of mutual
isolation has never been thoroughly carried out. Even those who hold
most strongly that classics and mathematics are proper for boys, and
modern languages and the fine arts for girls, leave as common ground
the wide field of English literature, in itself almost an education.
To a large extent men and women read the same books, magazines, and
newspapers; and though in the highest class of literature, written
by scholars for scholars, and, therefore, full of classical and
scientific allusions, there is much that women only half understand,
the deficiency under which they labour is shared by many male readers.

Probably, after all, it matters less what is nominally taught, than
that, whatever it is, it should be taught in the best way. Any subject
may be made flat and unprofitable if unintelligently taught; and, on
the other hand, there is scarcely anything which may not be made an
instrument of intellectual discipline, if wisely used. Then, again, all
branches of knowledge are so closely connected and mutually dependent,
that it is scarcely possible to learn anything which will not be
found more or less useful hereafter in learning something else. Even
the much despised and denounced ‘smattering of many things,’ has its
merits in this way, as well as in giving a certain breadth of vision,
by opening vistas into innumerable fields of knowledge, never to be
explored by any single human being. The degree in which the study of
certain subjects cultivates certain faculties is a matter on which we
are far from agreeing. Nor is it decided--in fact we have scarcely
begun to discuss--what faculties most need cultivation. In the middle
classes the imagination seems to be the one in which the deficiency
is most marked. Every now and then some one recommends mathematics
for girls as a curb to the imagination. It might be as well first
to ascertain whether the imaginations of commonplace girls want to
be curbed; whether, on the contrary, they do not want rather to be
awakened and set to work, with something to work upon. The business of
the imagination is not merely to build castles in the air, though that
is, no doubt, a useful and commendable exercise; it has other and most
important duties to perform. For, manifestly, an unimaginative person
is destitute of one of the main elements of sympathy. Probably, if the
truth were known, it would be found that injustice and unkindness are
comparatively seldom caused by harshness of disposition. They are the
result of an incapacity for imagining ourselves to be somebody else.
Any one who has tried it must be aware of the enormous difficulty
of conceiving the state of mind of a pauper or a thief. The same
difficulty is experienced in a degree by any one in easy circumstances
in realising the condition and looking from the point of view of a very
poor, or comparatively poor person. It is probably equally difficult
to ordinary minds to imagine the condition of always having more money
than you quite know what to do with. The absence of sympathy between
youth and age is traceable to the same want. Old people have either
forgotten their own youth, or they remember it too well, and fall
into the not less fatal mistake of supposing that the new youth is
like their own. Young people, on their part, are equally at a loss to
understand what it is to be old. In all the relations of life, the want
of imagination produces defective sympathy, and defective sympathy
brings in its train all sorts of vague and intolerable evils. In every
branch of study a vivid imagination is a most powerful agent, aiding
the memory, and bringing clearly before the mind the materials on which
a judgment has to be formed.

This, however, is not the place to discuss the comparative importance
of the mental faculties. Without going into the details of what, or how
to teach, it will be more to the purpose to inquire whether there are
any general measures, the working of which is likely to be beneficial,
let the subjects and the methods of instruction be what they may.

Among the most necessary, and the most easily and immediately
applicable, is the extension to women of such examinations as demand
a high standard of attainment. The test of a searching examination is
indispensable as a guarantee for the qualifications of teachers; it is
wanted as a stimulus by young women studying with no immediate object
in view, and no incentive to exertion other than the high, but dim and
distant, purpose of self-culture. This purpose, regarded in its bearing
on the general welfare, is indeed honourable and animating, and every
other must be subordinate to it. But we must not forget that we have
to deal with human and very imperfect beings; and it is not difficult
to believe that young women of only average energy and perseverance,
while working in the main towards the higher end, may yet need an
occasionally recurring stage within sight, as an allurement to draw
them on, and to help them in their struggle with the temptations to
indolence which lie thick about their path. The fact of having an
examination to work for, would not only be a stimulus to themselves,
it would also serve as a defence against idle companions, whose
solicitations it is hard to refuse on the mere ground of an abstract
love of learning.

The want of examinations for women is not a new discovery. So long
ago as 1841, Dr Arnold wrote to Mr Justice Coleridge:--‘I feel quite
as strongly as you do the extreme difficulty of giving to girls what
really deserves the name of education intellectually. When ---- was
young, I used to teach her some Latin with her brothers, and that has
been, I think, of real use to her, and she feels it now in reading
and translating German, of which she does a great deal. But there is
nothing for girls like the Degree examination, which concentrates
one’s reading so beautifully, and makes one master a certain number
of books perfectly. And unless we had a domestic examination for
young ladies, to be passed before they come out, and another, like
the great go, before they come of age, I do not see how the thing can
ever be effected. Seriously, I do not see how we can supply sufficient
encouragement for systematic and laborious reading, or how we can
insure many things being retained at once fully in the mind, when we
are wholly without the machinery which we have for our boys.’

In another letter, speaking of the need of continual questioning in
the case of a boy, he says, ‘He wants this, and he wants it daily,
not only to interest and excite him, but to dispel what is very apt
to grow around a lonely reader not constantly questioned--a haze of
indistinctness as to a consciousness of his own knowledge or ignorance;
he takes a vague impression for a definite one, an imperfect notion
for one that is full and complete, and in this way he is continually
deceiving himself.’

This is an exact description of the state of the young female mind,
even where there has been considerable cultivation. Women have ‘general
ideas,’ which interest and occupy their minds, but produce little
fruit, owing to their incompleteness and uncertainty. Of course, it
would be absurd to recommend examinations as an infallible cure for
this or any other mental defect. The familiar objections, that there
are many things which no examination can test; that they sometimes
encourage cram and check originality; and that, when abused, they
foster ambition, and cause overexcitement and overwork--no doubt
have some truth in them. But the question is whether, on the whole,
examinations work for good or for evil; and the testimony of long
experience seems to be strongly in their favour. To refuse to test
knowledge, because you cannot by the same process judge of moral
excellence, is about as wise as to say that a man ought not to eat,
because, unless he also takes exercise, he will not be in good
health. Cram is no doubt a very bad thing, but it is not a necessary
antecedent of examinations; and, after all, there are alternatives
worse than cramming. It may be better even to cram than to leave
the mind quite empty; and though the word has become, by perpetual
reiteration, closely associated with the idea of examinations, it is
as well to remember that it is quite possible for knowledge to be
equally undigested, whether it has been got up for an examination or
not. As to fostering ambition, the question seems to be, whether it is
possible, or even desirable, entirely to eradicate it, and whether to
direct it towards a respectable object, the pursuit of which at least
implies some good moral qualities, may not be useful as diverting it
from that meanest of aims--the only one held up indiscriminately to
women of every grade--that of shining in society. The danger of injury
to health, through excitement and overwork, is within the control of
parents and teachers. As regards girls, the experience of the Cambridge
local examinations has proved beyond a doubt that, where ordinary
common sense is practised, there is no risk whatever of this sort.

There are at present no examinations open to women of such standing as
to constitute a fitting test of advanced scholarship. The examinations
of the Society of Arts, being primarily intended for artisans, are
manifestly inadequate; and the University local examinations are
limited to students under eighteen. The University of London, having
adopted the principle of making its examinations simply a test and
standard of acquirement, without enforcing upon students that their
knowledge should have been acquired by attendance at college lectures,
or under any particular system, is in a peculiarly favourable position
for giving assistance in this matter. The extension of the London
examinations to women need present no greater difficulties than those
which have been already overcome in throwing open the Cambridge local
examinations to girls, and would go far towards supplying a want which
every day becomes more pressing.

The access to progressive examinations, of such a character as to
test and attest advanced attainments, would, there is every reason to
believe, at once begin to work in lengthening the period of study. It
would probably tell first upon the ladies’ colleges; but its influence
would not be limited to college students. Where circumstances make it
inconvenient for a girl to attend classes, it may still be practicable
for her to pursue her studies at home, so long as there is some
definite and intelligible object in view. An essential requisite is
the use of a room where she can be secure from trivial interruptions.
This might seem obvious enough; but those who know anything of family
life in the middle class are aware that it is a privilege rarely
accorded to young women. The best teaching within reach would,
of course, be a great assistance, but would not be in all cases
indispensable.

An increase in the number of colleges and a higher standard of
efficiency would be the natural result of retaining the students under
instruction for a longer time, and this again would improve the quality
of teachers. Probably something more would still be required in the way
of training for teachers. It seems to be the opinion of the persons
best qualified to judge, that some technical instruction is required as
a preparation for teaching, and that such instruction might be obtained
by taking a short course at a training-college at the end of a general
education.

The ladies’ colleges may fairly be expected to supply ‘the education
of a lady.’ The special training for any particular profession must
be obtained in distinct schools. This, of course, applies to every
branch of art. It applies also to the study of medicine. There is
at present no medical school for women; and individual students are
therefore obliged to obtain the necessary instruction privately. It is
to be wished that one of the London hospitals, not connected with any
existing medical school, should be reserved for female students and
classes formed in connexion with it. If this were done, as it probably
would be on the application of a sufficient number of students, the
education of medical women would be provided for.

The preparation for business is, in most cases, simply a matter of
arrangement, requiring nothing but the good will and hearty concurrence
of the masters. The easiest thing would be for fathers to bring up
their daughters to their own business; and, no doubt, this would often
be done, if custom permitted. It is the fear of public opinion--of
exciting astonishment and remark--that, probably more than any other
cause, imposes upon parents what they feel to be a sort of moral and
social obligation to keep their daughters idle.

In addition to other hindrances in the way of giving a thorough
education to girls, there is one which presses heavily on persons of
narrow incomes--namely, its costliness as compared with that of boys.
This is a fact, notwithstanding the other fact, that the teachers of
girls are, as a rule, much worse paid than the teachers of boys. It is
traceable to two causes--the absence of endowments, and the smallness
of girls’ schools. Both these causes are removable.

With regard to endowments, there is reason to believe that a large
proportion of those which are now appropriated to the use of boys were
originally intended for both sexes. The founders do not seem to have
known anything about the modern theories of separate education, and,
when they established a school, had no idea of excluding any of ‘the
children’ of the parish or kin which it was designed to benefit. It is
noticeable that, in cases where girls happen to be expressly mentioned
in the foundation deeds, Latin and accounts are almost invariably
named in the course of instruction laid down. There is much difference
of opinion as to the permanent usefulness of endowments. Some people
think they do more harm than good, and would like to get rid of them
altogether. This seems a somewhat extreme view; and, at any rate, as
the endowments exist, something must be done with them. If it is for
the general good that education should be much more expensive, and,
therefore, much more difficult to get, for a girl than for a boy; or
if the balance is redressed by greater willingness on the part of
parents to make sacrifices in behalf of their daughters, it may be
well to let the present distribution stand. But it appears rather that
the education of women is at present exactly at the stage at which
artificial support is wanted. There are many ways in which it might
be applied. Probably the most useful at the present juncture would be
the foundation of exhibitions and scholarships, awarded under such
varying conditions as to give them the widest possible range. Taking
the middle classes generally, there seems to be no reason why they
should not pay for the education of their children at cost price; but
there are many exceptions, and the legitimate use of all eleemosynary
aid seems to be to meet special cases of misfortune. For this reason
it is desirable that, besides exhibitions and scholarships awarded
after a competitive examination--which would act as an encouragement
to industry and ability--there should be in the hands of governors
and trustees a power of conferring free or assisted education without
competition. Scholarships might be tenable at elementary schools, at a
college, at a medical school, or at schools of art; or there might be
exhibitions available for apprenticeship to any profession or trade
whatsoever, at the discretion of the trustees.

In the meantime, without any aid from public sources, a good deal might
be done by a more judicious use of existing means. The present mode
of carrying on girls’ schools involves an enormous waste of teaching
power. Fifteen or twenty girls absorb a staff amply sufficient for
three or four times the number. This is inevitable in small schools;
and the consequence follows, that in many boardingschools for girls
the terms are considerably higher than at Rugby or Harrow. It is
doubtful whether very large boardingschools would work well; but
the difficulty may be got over in another way, by establishing a
thoroughly good day-school, and clustering round it boardinghouses
of moderate size, according to the demand. In places like Blackheath,
Clapham, St John’s Wood, or in any locality where girls’ schools
congregate, this plan might be adopted, and would combine many of the
respective advantages of large and small schools. The facilities for
classification, companionship in study, healthy public spirit, and a
general kind of open-airiness which go with large numbers, would be
found in the school. The boardinghouses would have the quietness and
something of the domestic character which it is difficult to get in
a household conducted on a very large scale. The popularity of small
boardingschools is probably chiefly owing to their fancied resemblance
to a home circle. There is an impression that a group of girls,
all about the same age, and without father or brothers, constitute
something like a family. It is really much more like a nunnery; and
there is reason to believe that, in a less degree, just those evils
which are said to attach to conventual life are rife in boardingschools.

A sense of these evils leads some people to prefer the system of
private governesses. This no doubt has recommendation; it certainly
has serious drawbacks. Among those which are inevitable is the effect
of a lonely life on the governess. Without going into sentimental
wailings over her unhappy lot, it must be confessed that her position
is peculiarly isolated. She spends the greater part of her time in
intercourse with young and immature minds, only varied by unequal
association with the parents or grown-up brothers and sisters of her
pupils. The society of her equals in age and position is entirely
wanting, and the natural tendency of such mental solitude is to produce
childishness, angularity, and narrow-mindedness. It must be a very
strong character indeed which can do without the wholesome trituration
and the expansive influence of equal companionship, and this is just
what a governess cannot have. A great effort may be made to treat her
as one of the family, but she does not really belong to the people,
or even to their class. She is always a bird of passage, and in this
respect her position is worse than that of a servant, who, besides
having the companionship of fellowservants, may look forward to
remaining in one family for life. A governess must always be prepared
to leave when the term of temporary service expires, and this is in
itself an obstacle to the formation of strong attachments. And if it
is true that the conditions of governess life have a deteriorating
effect on character, it follows that the pupils will in a degree more
or less be losers. Whether there may be advantages or conveniences
which more than compensate for what is lost, is a question which must
be affected by considerations varying in individual cases. Similarly,
with regard to boardingschools, a first-rate mistress may be able to
offer certain advantages attainable in no other way. The conclusion
arrived at goes no farther than this, that, other things being equal, a
large day-school attended by scholars living either at home or in small
boardinghouses, has a clear advantage, both as regards economy and
mental and moral training, over the rival systems of boardingschools
and private governesses. It follows that in any direct efforts which
may be made for the improvement of elementary education, the foundation
or strengthening of well conducted day-schools is the wisest course to
adopt.

The foregoing suggestions must of course be subject to all sorts of
modifications, according to temporary and local necessities. Specific
schemes, adapted to circumstances, will be devised as occasions
arise. In the meantime, any kind of recognition of the fact that the
education of women is a matter worth thinking about, is of the utmost
practical value. In this point of view, as indicating and expressing
a growing sense of the importance of the subject, the extension to
girls of the local examinations of the Universities of Cambridge and
Edinburgh, and the steps taken by the Schools Inquiry Commission in
their pending investigations, have an indirect influence quite out of
proportion to the immediate and calculable results obtained, affording
a moral support and encouragement the effect of which it is not easy to
estimate.


FOOTNOTES:

[6] With equal need, if what Lord Russell says is true:--‘As it is at
present, there is no doubt that women of the higher ranks have much
more knowledge and information when their education is finished than
men have. But I cannot see any reason why our young men should not,
while they have the advantage of public schools, at the same time be
able to do a sum in the rule of three, and make themselves masters of
the fact that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth.’

In another place he says:--‘It is to a dogged application to the Latin
grammar perhaps that the precision of men, when compared to women, in
this country is in great part to be attributed.’--_Earl Russell on the
English Government and Constitution_, pp. 210, 208.


                            [Illustration]




CHAPTER VII.

CONCLUSION.


To guard against misconception on so obscure and so complex a subject
as that of the present inquiry is a somewhat hopeless endeavour. But it
may, perhaps, be worth while to say once more, what has so often been
said already, that those who ask for a fuller and freer life for women
have no desire to interfere with distinctions of sex. The question
under debate is not whether, as a matter of fact, there is such a thing
as distinctive manhood and womanhood; for that no one denies. The
dispute is rather as to the degree in which certain qualities, commonly
regarded as respectively masculine and feminine characteristics, are
such intrinsically, or only conventionally; and further, as to the
degree of prominence which it is desirable to give to the specific
differences in determining social arrangements. It is not against the
recognition of real distinctions, but against arbitrary judgments, not
based upon reason, that the protest is raised. If, in the exigencies of
controversy, expressions may sometimes be used which seem to involve
a denial of differences in the respective natures of women and of
men, it must be regarded as a misfortune for which the advocates of
restriction and suppression are responsible. When broad assertions are
made as to natural fitness and unfitness, and a course of action is
founded upon them, it becomes necessary, at least, to ask for proof.
When proof is wanting, it is not unnatural to fall back upon feeling;
and prejudices, dignified by the name of instincts, are appealed to as
decisive when rational argument fails. The whole question is clouded
over by this confusing procedure. The instincts, to which so much
importance is attached, differ in the most bewildering manner. What
one person’s instinct pronounces lawful and becoming, another finds
revolting. Assumptions are made, and a fabric of argument is built up
upon data which are unverified, and which it is at present impossible
either to verify or absolutely to contradict. For, until artificial
appliances are removed, we cannot know anything certainly about the
native distinctions. As to the future, who can say? It may be that,

  ‘In the long years liker must they grow,
  The man be more of woman, she of man;
  He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
  Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
  She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care;
  More as the double-natured poet each:’

or it may be that, when ‘full-summed in all their powers,’ new shades
of unlikeness--refinements of diversity hitherto unimagined--may
appear. It is neither necessary nor expedient to prejudge the question;
and those whose faith in the reality and permanence of the native
distinctions is the strongest are the least tempted to make rash
assertions on either side. The excessive apprehensiveness shown by
some people on this point seems to indicate a deeprooted distrust in
the strength of their position. The fear betrays a doubt. No one urges
that girls should be denied the use of cold water, or fresh air, or
light, or animal food, lest they should grow into boys. Yet that these
conditions tend to produce masculine vigour cannot be denied. Those
who are afraid that a free range of thought and action would injure
the delicacy of the female mind, ought, in consistency, to carry their
precautions a little farther. The atmosphere of a hothouse, judiciously
darkened, abstinence from exercise, and a vegetarian diet would have an
evident tendency to produce a sickly delicacy of complexion, to give
languor to the limbs, and feebleness to the voice, and in every way to
make girls much more unlike their brothers than they were by nature.
And if this is the object of education, the appropriate means ought to
be used.

In the meantime, a great part of the difficulties which beset every
question concerning women would be at once removed by a frank
recognition of the fact, that there is between the sexes a deep
and broad basis of likeness. The hypothesis that men and women are
essentially and radically different, embarrasses every discussion.
When facts are proved and admitted, scarcely any progress has been
made, because it is assumed that their action is modified by their
application to the feminine nature. Conditions which would certainly
make a man happy or miserable, as the case might be, are supposed to
have a different, if not an exactly opposite, effect upon a woman.
The theory has been asserted and reasserted so incessantly, that
even women themselves have been partly persuaded to believe it.
And it is, no doubt, so far true, that while the education and the
circumstances of women are widely different from those of men, every
agency brought to bear upon either must act somewhat differently.
But to create facts, and then to argue from them as if they were the
result of an unalterable destiny, is a method which convinces only so
long as it is enforced by prejudice. ‘Chacun selon sa capacité’--‘à
chaque producteur l’ouvrage auquel il est propre’--these are maxims of
unquestioned validity. But who shall say for another--much more, who
shall say for half the human race--this, or this, is the measure of
your capacity; this, and no other, is the work you are qualified to
perform? ‘Women’s work,’ it is said, ‘is helping work.’ Certainly it
is. And is it men’s work to hinder? The vague information that women
are to be ministering angels is no answer to the practical questions,
Whom are they to help, and how? The easy solution, that it is their
nature to do what men cannot do, or cannot do so well, has never been
adopted in practice, inasmuch as everything in the world that there is
to do, the care of infants alone excepted, men are doing; and there is
nothing that a trained man cannot do better than an untrained woman.
Literature and art, teaching, nursing, cooking, sewing--these are the
recognised feminine occupations, and they are all shared by men. The
pursuit of them does not turn men into women, or women into men. Miss
Yonge and Mrs Oliphant ‘help’ Mr Trollope in supplying the world with
novels; and it is not thought necessary to guard either party from
writing masculine or feminine novels respectively. Schoolmasters and
schoolmistresses do not come into unseemly rivalry, although women
teach boys and men teach girls. By and by it will be found equally
superfluous to prescribe limitations in any department of thought or
industry.

It can scarcely be necessary to discuss at length the difficulty
expressed in the frequent question,--if women take to doing men’s work,
what are men to do? Will not the intrusion of women into professions
and trades already overcrowded, lower the current rate of wages, and
by thus making men less able to support their families--in the long
run, do more harm than good? As to the manner and degree in which the
labour-market might be affected by such a readjustment as is proposed,
it is difficult to predict anything with certainty. It is impossible to
tell beforehand how many women would take to what is called (by a very
conspicuous _petitio principii_) men’s work, and how large a portion
of their lives they would devote to it. If women, already destined to
work for their bread, chose to earn it in some hitherto unaccustomed
way, it is obvious that in the exact measure in which their entrance
into a new profession reduced the rate of wages in that particular
calling, it would tend to raise it in some other which they would have
otherwise pursued, and the balance would thus be redressed. If, on
the other hand, women are not supporting themselves, they are being
supported by somebody else, consuming either present earnings or
accumulated savings. To keep them from earning money does not prevent
their spending it. Let us suppose the event, not a very probable one,
that the introduction of women into the medical profession would
lower the average rate of remuneration by one-third, in which case
the professional income of an ordinary medical man would be lessened
in the same proportion. Let us suppose, also--a not at all improbable
case--that the doctor’s wife, or sister, or daughter, would earn, in
the practice of _her_ profession, a sum equivalent to the one-third
he has lost. Evidently, the doctor and his family would be where they
were, neither better nor worse off than before. In the meantime, the
public would be so much the richer by getting its medical attendance
one-third cheaper. Whatever might be the temporary effect of opening
any particular profession to women, one thing is certain, it can never
be for the interest of society, in a purely economical aspect, to keep
any class of its members in idleness. A man who should carry one of his
arms in a sling, in order to secure greater efficiency and importance
to the other, would be regarded as a lunatic. The one free member might
very probably gain a little extra dexterity, of an abnormal sort, but
that the man would be on the whole a loser, is obvious. The case of the
body politic is precisely analogous. The economical argument is all in
favour of setting everybody to work. Such difficulties as exist are
of a moral or æsthetic nature, and require for their disentanglement
considerations of a different sort from those which govern the
comparatively easy economical question.

Much misapprehension has probably arisen from a confusion between
a standard or law of life and the persons to whom it is applied. A
standard or law says nothing about the character of the persons who
are expected to conform to it. It pronounces no opinion upon their
nature beyond what is implied in assuming it to be not impossible for
them to live by it. The command, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself,’ implies that such love
is possible to men; but it may be manifested in countless ways--in
heroic conflict or in patient endurance, in passionate ardour or meek
submission. If it be true that certain gifts and graces are specially
congenial to the masculine or feminine nature, the presentation of a
common standard will draw them out according to their kind, without
the risk of seeming to dispense with the less easy virtues. Just as
when you plant two rose-trees in the same ground, you imply the belief
that certain general conditions of soil and atmosphere are good for
both, but you make no attempt to influence variations of colour or of
perfume; so the Christian theory of education implies an essential
resemblance between the sexes, without interfering in any way with
native differences. If, indeed, you adopt the analogy, not without a
certain fanciful charm, according to which men are trees and women
flowers, the separate system is right. You do wisely to plant the oak
in the forest, and to shelter the delicate geranium in the hothouse.
But this view implies that men and women are of a different genus,
which no one in his senses would maintain. The popular simile of the
oak and the ivy is equally untenable. Advocates on both sides are apt
to talk as if men and women were distinct races, handing down their
respective characteristics from generation to generation. The fact is,
as every one knows, that hereditary qualities are transmitted from
father to daughter, and from mother to son, with much impartiality. The
influences tending to create dissimilarity, which, in our day at least,
are at work, without a moment’s intermission, from the cradle to the
grave, are incessantly neutralised in each successive generation. If
it were not so, it is difficult to imagine what the human race would
become. One thing is certain, it would very soon cease to be human.

Writers on this subject commonly adopt somewhat of a threatening tone
in reference to any proposed change. They warn women that if the oak
and ivy theory is given up, what is called the old chivalry will die
out, and they must no longer expect to be protected. And it is further
urged that men would suffer, no less than women, from the absence of
any demand upon their protective instincts. We are indebted to Mr
Kingsley for a very clear and moderate statement of this view in a
chapter of ‘The Roman and the Teuton’ on the Lombard Laws.

‘It is to be remarked,’ he says, ‘that no free woman can live in
Lombardy, or, I believe, in any Teutonic state, save under the
“mundium” of some one. You should understand this word “mund.” Among
most of the Teutonic races, women, slaves and youths, at least not
of age to carry arms, were under the mund of some one. Of course,
primarily the father, head of the family, and if he died, an uncle,
elder brother, &c. The married woman was, of course, under the mund of
her husband. He was answerable for the good conduct of all under his
mund; he had to pay their fines if they offended; and he was bound, on
the other hand, to protect them by all lawful means.

‘This system still lingers in the legal status of women in England, for
good and evil; the husband is more or less answerable for the wife’s
debts; the wife, till lately, was unable to gain property apart from
her husband’s control; the wife is supposed, in certain cases of law,
to act under the husband’s compulsion. All these, and many others, are
relics of the old system of mund for women; and that system has, I
verily believe, succeeded. It has called out, as no other system could
have done, chivalry in the man. It has made him feel it a duty and an
honour to protect the physically weaker sex. It has made the woman feel
that her influence, whether in the state or in the family, is to be
not physical and legal, but moral and spiritual; and that it therefore
rests on a ground really nobler and deeper than that of the man. The
modern experiments for emancipating women from all mund, and placing
them on a physical and legal equality with the man, may be right, and
may be ultimately successful. We must not hastily prejudge them. But of
this we may be almost certain, that, if they succeed, they will cause
a wide-spread revolution in society, of which the patent danger will
be, the destruction of the feeling of chivalry, and the consequent
brutalisation of the male sex.’

These are terrible warnings, and may well make any one hesitate in
lifting a finger to aid in a revolution charged with such disastrous
possibilities. But is it really true that the male sex is likely
to be brutalised by learning that a man must no longer rely upon
physical and legal influence, but must rest his claims to allegiance
on a moral and spiritual basis? Is it good for a man to feel that his
influence rests on a ground less noble and deep than that of women,
and to satisfy himself with a lower moral position? The mund system
may have succeeded,--in other words, it may have been the best thing
possible, in a rude and barbarous age, when serfdom also was in full
force and ‘succeeded’ in its way--a time when force was met by force,
and individual protection was a surer resource than that of law. But
even as applying to those days, the success of the system seems to
have been somewhat incomplete. How it worked--or failed to work--Mr
Kingsley shows in a few graphic lines, in his recent tale, ‘Hereward.’
Describing the fate of the little Torfrida, his hero’s daughter, he
tells us, that ‘she was married to Hugh of Evermue, who is not said
to have kicked her; and was, according to them of Crowland, a good
friend to their monastery, and therefore, doubtless, a good man. Once,
says wicked report, he offered to strike her, as was the fashion in
those chivalrous days. Whereon she turned upon him like a tigress,
and bidding him remember that she was the daughter of Hereward and
Torfrida, gave him such a beating, that he, not wishing to draw sword
upon her, surrendered at discretion; and they lived all their lives
afterwards as happily as most other people in those times.’

Mr Gladstone lays down, that ‘as the law of force is the law of the
brute creation, so in proportion as he is under the yoke of that law
does man approximate to the brute; and in proportion, on the other
hand, as he has escaped from its dominion, is he ascending into the
higher sphere of being and claiming relationship with Deity. But the
emancipation and due ascendancy of women are not a mere fact: they
are the emphatic assertion of a principle; and that principle is the
dethronement of the law of force, and the enthronement of other and
higher laws in its place, and in its despite.’ The advocates of the
protective theory seem scarcely to have realised that the idea of
protection implies the corresponding idea of attack. It assumes, as
part of its essence, that somebody is attacking, or what occasion would
there be for defence? Might it not be well for everybody to abandon
the attitude of attack? To assert that in a civilised country women
want such protection as any human arm can give, is a contradiction in
terms. It is supposing, either that the law permits outrages upon the
defenceless, or that it can be broken with impunity. That we in England
are as yet only partially emerged from barbarism is indeed true. The
time-honoured customs handed down from the days of Hugh of Evermue have
not yet disappeared, and cases of assault, almost invariably committed
by the natural protector, are not uncommon in English households. But
the law undertakes to interfere--and does interfere, though as yet
in a somewhat impotent manner--for the defence of hapless wives and
children. It can scarcely be the true policy of an age which professes
to be enlightened and humane, to suffer general licence to prevail, in
order that a few rare souls, able to be a law to themselves and other
people, may have the occasion for displaying exceptional heroism. If
the scheme of Divine Providence requires that there should be outlets
for the protective energies, they are likely to be found for a long
time yet, in the infirmities of age, of infancy, and of poverty,
without encouraging morbid or affected weakness in human beings
intended by nature to be healthy and strong. There is still plenty of
fighting to do, though the progress of civilisation has removed the
warfare into new fields, and demands new weapons. Evil now appears in a
subtle, intangible shape, against which physical strength is of little
avail. But the generosity and the courage which constituted the true
beauty and worth of chivalry can never become obsolete. The chivalrous
spirit now shows itself in the abandonment of unjust privileges, in
the enactment of equal laws, and in facing ridicule, opposition, and
discouragement in behalf of unpopular ideas. The great battle between
good and evil is for ever going on. The form is renewed from age to
age, but the spirit is the same. Let us take care lest, in clinging
to forms from which the spirit has departed, in shutting our eyes to
keep out the dawning day, we may be blindly fighting the battle of the
Philistines, all unwittingly ranged among the enemies of the cause we
desire to serve.


BALLANTYNE, ROBERTS, AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.




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