The College, the Market, and the Court
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Title: The College, the Market, and the Court
Author: Caroline Wells Healey Dall
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLEGE, THE MARKET, AND THE COURT ***
THE COLLEGE, THE MARKET,
AND
THE COURT;
OR,
WOMAN'S RELATION TO EDUCATION, LABOR,
AND LAW.
BY CAROLINE H. DALL,
AUTHOR OF "HISTORICAL SKETCHES," "SUNSHINE," "THE LIFE OF
DR. ZAKRZEWSKA," ETC.
"Let this be copied out,
And keep it safe for our remembrance.
Return the precedent to these lords again."--KING JOHN.
"How canst thou make me thy friend who in nothing am like thee?
Thy life and dwelling are under the waters; but my way of living
Is to eat all that man does!"--BATRACHOMYOMACHIA.
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1867.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by
LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON.
TO
LUCRETIA MOTT,
FOR MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS A PREACHER AND REFORMER; SPOTLESS
ALIKE IN ALL PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RELATIONS; WHOSE
CHILDREN'S GRANDCHILDREN RISE UP TO
CALL HER BLESSED;
This Book is Dedicated,
SINCE SHE IS THE BEST EXAMPLE THAT I KNOW OF WHAT ALL WOMEN
MAY AND SHOULD BECOME.
"A woman
Leading with sober pace an armed man,
All bossed in gold, and thus the superscription:
'I, Justice, bring this injured exile back
To claim his portion in his father's hall.'"
SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.
A PREFACE
TO BE READ AFTER THE BOOK.
When, some years ago, I delivered nine lectures upon the Condition of
Woman, I had no intention of printing them until time had matured my
judgments and justified my conclusions. Peculiar circumstances
afterwards induced me to modify this decision. The first course of
lectures, now printed as "The College," had proved unexpectedly popular,
and was many times repeated. At its close, I announced the second course
upon Labor, involving the subject of Prostitution as the result of Low
Wages; and a very unexpected opposition ensued. My files can still show
the large number of letters I received, beseeching me not to touch this
subject; and private intercession followed, on the part of those I hold
wisest and most dear, to the same effect. Why I did not yield to all the
clamor, I cannot tell,--except that I was not working for myself nor
_of_ myself.
I thought it, however, necessary to take unusual precautions to prevent
these lectures from being misunderstood. I wrote private notes,
enclosing tickets, to almost all the leading clergymen, asking that
they would attend them as a personal favor to myself. I believe I did
not allude to the efforts which had been made to silence me, except when
I wrote to those who had joined in the outcry. In that case, I demanded
the attendance as an act of justice. These notes were kindly responded
to; and grateful tears started to my eyes, when I found on the seats
before me white-haired men, who set aside their prejudices for my sake.
Whatever might have been thought before, the delivery of the lectures
silenced all objections. They were fully attended and frequently
repeated; and I followed the delivery by the printing of this particular
course, in order that misunderstandings should not have time to
establish themselves. The book was well received, both at home and
abroad. Letters came to me from the far shores of India and Africa,
thanking me for its publication. The first edition was sold at once; and
I should have reprinted the book, but that I did not wish to re-issue
these lectures in an isolated form. I wanted them reprinted, if at all,
in their proper place, subordinated to my main thought.
I smile a little as I look back. The remonstrances upon my file, dated
less than ten years ago, would now be earnestly repudiated by the dear
friends who wrote them.
After the delivery of the third course, upon Law, local reasons decided
the publication of that book. Many efforts were being made in the
different States to change laws; and it was thought that the lectures
would give necessary information.
Of the first course, nothing has ever been printed in this country. The
second lecture was printed, by a sympathizing friend in England, as a
tract, and widely circulated. Part of it was reprinted with approbation
in the "Englishwoman's Journal." The whole of this course is now given
to American readers in its proper connection, in which it is hoped, that
its bearing upon the later lectures will be seen, and a new significance
given to its suggestions. The history of these volumes seems to make it
necessary to reprint the original Prefaces in connection with the
lectures on Labor and Law.
* * * * *
In 1856, I conceived the thought of twelve lectures, to be written
concerning Woman; to embrace, in four series of three each, all that I
felt moved to say in relation to her interests. No one knew better than
myself that they would be only "twelve baskets of fragments gathered
up;" but I could not distrust the Divine Love which still feeds the
multitudes, who wander in the desert, with "five loaves and two small
fishes."
In the first three of these lectures, I stated woman's claim to a civil
position, and asked that power should be given her, under a professedly
republican government, to protect herself. In them I thus stated the
argument on which I should proceed: "The right to education--that is,
the right to the education or drawing-out of all the faculties God has
given--_involves_ the right to a choice of vocation; that is, the right
to a choice of the end to which those faculties shall be trained. The
choice of vocation necessarily _involves_ the protection of that
vocation,--the right to decide how far legislative action shall control
it; in one word, the right to the elective franchise."
Proceeding upon this formula, I delivered, in 1858, a course of lectures
stating "Woman's Claim to Education;" and this season I have condensed
my thoughts upon the freedom of vocations into the three following
lectures. There are still to be completed three lectures on "Woman's
Civil Disabilities." I should prefer to unite the twelve lectures in a
single publication; but reasons of imperative force have induced me to
hurry the printing of these "Essays on Labor." Neither Education nor
Civil Disability can dispute the public interest with this subject. No
one can know better than myself upon what wide information, what
thorough mental discipline, all considerations in regard to it should be
based. I have tried to keep my work within the compass of my ability,
and, without seeking rigid exactness of detail, to apply common sense
and right reason to problems which beset every woman's path. At the very
threshold of my work, I confronted a painful task. Before I could press
the necessity of exertion, before I could plead that labor might be
honored in the public eye, I felt that I must show some cause for the
terrible earnestness with which I was moved; and I could only do it by
facing boldly the question of "Death or Dishonor?"
"Why not leave it to be understood?" some persons may object. "Why not
leave such work to man?" the public may continue.
In answer to the first question, I would say, that very few women have
much knowledge of this "perishing class," except those actually engaged
in ministering to its despair; and that the information I have given is
drawn from wholly reliable sources, as the reader may see, but can be
obtained only by hours--nay, days and weeks--of painful and exhausting
study. Very gladly have I saved my audience that necessity: greatly have
I abbreviated whatever I have quoted. But I _meant_ to drive home the
reality of that wretchedness: I _wanted_ the women to whom I spoke to
feel for those "in bonds as bound with them;" and to understand, that to
save their own children, male and female, they must be willing to save
the children of others. It will be observed, that I have said very
little in regard to this class in the city of Boston; very little, also,
that was definite in regard to our slop-shops. The deficiency is
intentional. I would not have one woman feel that I had betrayed her
confidence, nor one employer that I had singled him out as a victim; and
it is almost impossible to speak on such subjects without finding the
application made to one's hand. I may say, in general, that a very wide
local experience sustains the arguments which I have based on published
statistics.
It was also my earnest desire to prepare one article on this subject
that might be put into the hands of both sexes; that might be opened to
the young, and read in the family circle, without thrilling the reader
with any emotion less sacred than religious pity. This cannot be true of
the reports of any Moral Reform Society; for in them it is needful to
print details so gross in character as to be fit reading for none but
well-principled persons of mature age. It is not true of such a work as
Dr. Sanger's; for his historical retrospect furnishes every possible
excuse to the vices of youth, and is open to question on every page.
From the highest sources in this community--from the lips of
distinguished clergymen, scholars, and men of the world--I have had
every private assurance, that, in this respect, I have not failed.
It would be unjust not to state, that two powerful causes co-operate, in
the city of Boston, with low wages, to cause the ruin of women; I mean
the love of dress, and a morbid disgust at labor.
The love of dress was a motive which obviously had no natural relation
to my subject. A disinclination to work, my readers may think, it was
proper I should have treated; but it is the natural reflection of a
state of things, in the upper classes, which would be a much fitter
subject of rebuke.
So long as a lady will allow her guest to stand exposed to snow and
rain, rather than turn the handle of the door which she happens to be
passing; so long as neither bread nor water can be passed at table,
except at the omnipresent waiter's convenience,--servants will naturally
think that there is something degrading and repulsive in work. This
reform must begin in the higher classes.
But, if this subject must be treated at all, why should it not be left
to men? Can women deal with it abstractly and fairly? The answer is
simple. In physics, no scientific observations are reliable, so long as
they proceed from one quarter alone; many observers must report, and
their observations must be compared, before we can have a trustworthy
result. So it is in social science. Men have been dealing with this
great evil, unassisted, for thousands of years. By their own confession,
it is as unapproachable and obstinate as ever. Conquered by its
perpetual re-appearance, they have come to treat it as an "institution"
to be "managed;" not an evil to be abolished, or a blasphemy to be
hushed. But these lectures are not written for atheists. The speculative
sceptic has retreated before the broad sunlight of modern civilization:
only two classes of atheists remain,--men of science, who fancy that
they have lost sight of the Creator in his works, and talk of the human
soul as the most noble result of material forces; and people of fashion,
who live "without God in the world." Why man should ever investigate the
material universe without a tender and reverent, nay, a growing
dependence on "the dear heart of God," we will not pause to inquire. The
child does not let go his father's hand when he first comprehends the
abundance of his resources. Neither the fountains of God's beauty, nor
the perplexities of his nicely ordered law, loosen man's loving grasp.
He clings all the closer in his joy, because he knows Him better. But
why should not the denizens of the fashionable world be atheists? When I
go among them, and listen to their heartless fooleries; when I see them
absorbed by the vain nothings of their coterie, rapt in endless
consultations about times and seasons, devoid of any real enjoyment,
hopeless of noble occupation, with the days all empty and the nights all
dark,--then I, too, shiver with doubt, and am ready to say in my heart,
"There is no God." We can never believe in any spiritual reality of
which our own souls do not receive some faint reflex. These people must
do the will of the Father, before they can believe in his love. I do not
write for them, but for thoughtful men and women, who rejoice in God's
presence, deny the permanence of evil institutions, and are anxious to
share with others the inheritance that belongs to the "child of the
kingdom,"--for those who have faith to remove mountains, and courage to
confess the faith. For them I shall not have spoken too plainly.
Shortly after these essays were written,--in June, 1859,--I received
from London Mrs. Jameson's "Letter to Lord John Russell;" and I cannot
refrain from expressing the deep emotion with which I read what she had
written to him upon the same subject. Well may she wear the silver hairs
of her sixty years like a crown, if, only through their sanction, she
may speak such noble words. But--
"Earnest purposes do age us fast;"
and many a true-hearted woman, far younger in years, would gladly bear
witness with her.
I would not write, if I could, an "exhaustive" treatise. All I ask for
my work is, that it should be "suggestive." With that purpose, I have
worked out my schemes, in the last lecture, far enough to provoke
objection, to stimulate the spirit of adventure, to show how easily the
"work" may wait upon the "will." May the "Opening of the Gates" be near
at hand!
It remains only to acknowledge my indebtedness to some English and
American friends: and first to the "Englishwoman's Journal;" not merely
for its own excellent articles, but for references and suggestions, most
valuable when followed out. The story of the young straw-braider was
drawn from its pages; and, disappointed in the arrival of original
material from Paris, long expected, I have been compelled to depend upon
it largely for my sketch of Félicie de Fauveau. To one of its editors,
Miss B.R. Parkes, and to Madame Bodichon in London, as well as to the
Rev. Mr. Higginson, I am under pleasant private obligations. I must rest
content to seem largely indebted to the "Edinburgh Review," of April
1859, for condensing the results of the census. My materials were
collected and arranged, when the article on "Female Industry" reached
me; and the differences in treatment were so few, that I at once drew my
pen through whatever was not sanctioned by its authority. The ladies who
first directed my attention to the Waltham watch-factory, and to the
inventors of artificial marble in France, will see from these few words
that I am not forgetful.
BOSTON, November, 1859.
* * * * *
There seems, at first sight, a certain presumption in offering to an
American public, at this moment, any book which does not treat of the
great interests which convulse and perplex the United States. But
experience has shown, that neither the individual nor the national mind
can remain continually upon the rack; and both author and publisher have
thought that a book upon a serious subject, popular in form and low in
price, would find perhaps a more hearty welcome, under present
circumstances, than in those prosperous days, when romances and poems,
travels and biographies, were scattered over every table by the score.
"Woman's Right to Labor" owed its warm welcome, not to any power or
skill in its author, but to the impatient interest of philanthropists in
every thing relating to that subject. It remains to be seen, whether as
large a portion of the public and the press are prepared to treat with
candid consideration the subject of Law.
Both these volumes have been given to the world in their detached form,
that they might receive the benefit of general criticism; that errors,
inaccuracies, or misapprehensions, might be perceived and rectified
before they took a permanent position as part of a larger work. All
criticism, therefore, which is _honestly intended_, will be received
with patience and gratitude; but a great deal falls to the lot of the
author which cannot come under this head.
If we are told that a "wider acquaintance with the history" of a certain
era will modify our views, it is natural to expect that an honest critic
will show _where_ the acquaintance fails, and how the views should be
modified. When we are told that certain scientific illustrations,
"though true in the main, are not accurate in detail," we may reasonably
hope to see at least _one_ error pointed out. When neither of these
things is done, we sweep such remarks aside, as alike unprofitable to us
and our readers.
A wide and generous sympathy in my aims has given me, thus far, all that
I could desire of encouragement and appreciation; and this appreciation
has come, in several instances, from a "household of faith" far removed
from my own, and has been mingled in such cases with an outspoken
regret, that one who "wrote so well, and felt so warmly," should not
acknowledge on her pages the debt woman owes to Christianity, and unfurl
an evangelical banner above a Christ-like work. Because such friends
have spoken tenderly, I answer them respectfully; because I never saw
any church-door so narrow that I could not pass through it, nor so wide
that it would open to all God's glory, I answer them without fear.
And, first, I believe in God, as the tender Father of all; as one who
cares for the least of his children, and does not turn from the
greatest; as one whose eye marks the smallest inequalities of happiness
or condition, and holds them in a memory which does not fail. I believe
in Christ as his authorized Teacher, anointed to reveal the fulness of
God's love through his own life of practical good-will. I do not expect
him to be superseded or set aside; and I do expect, that in proportion
as men grow wiser, humbler, and sweeter, their eyes will open only the
more widely to the great miracle of his spotless life, to the heavenly
nature of his so simple teachings. And, next, I believe in my own
work,--the elevation of woman through education, which is development;
through labor, which is salvation; through legal rights, which are only
freedom to develop and save,--as part of the mission of Jesus on the
earth, authorized by him, inspired of God, and sure of fulfilment as any
portion of his law. If at any time I have lost sight of this in
expression, it is because I have thought it impossible that the purpose
and character of my work should be mistaken. I am a slow and patient
worker,--patient, because one may well be patient, if God can; and
therefore no disappointment, no lack of appreciation, could sour or
disturb me.
If I have justified the publication of this essay at the present moment,
it may be thought that I shall not be able to justify the principal
presumption; namely, that of a woman who undertakes to write upon law.
Such a treatise as this would be valueless, in my eyes, if it were
written by a man. It is a woman's judgment in matters that concern women
that the world demands, before any radical change can be made. To
understand the laws under which I must live, no recondite learning, no
broad scholarship, no professional study, can be fitly required. Common
intelligence and common sense are all that society has any right to
claim of me. Because most women shrink from criticising this law, I have
criticised it.
Very recently, the "London Quarterly" said, in speaking of the
republication of John Austin's work, that "English jurisprudence would
be indebted for one of its highest aids to the reverential affection of
a wife, and the patient industry of a refined and intelligent woman;"
and Mrs. Austin defends her undertaking on this very ground,--that, if
she had not superintended the work, _no one else would_. If John
Austin's firm and penetrating intellect could not hold a score of
persons about his lecturer's desk, and if it found its fit appreciation
only in the grave, a conscientious woman need not shrink from any branch
of his great subject, only because her audience will be small.
In one of his lectures upon Art, John Ruskin says:--
"Every leaf we have seen, connects its work with the entire and
accumulated result of the work of its predecessors. Dying, it
leaves its own small but well-labored thread; adding, if
imperceptibly, yet essentially, to the strength, from root to
crest, of the trunk on which it has lived, and fitting that trunk
for better service to the next year's foliage."
Let these words, printed on my titlepage, show the modesty of my aim,
and the conscientious steadfastness of my purpose. As the leaf is to the
tree, so is the individual to society. Tear away a single leaf from the
towering crest, and the trunk does not seem to suffer: nevertheless, one
small thread withers, one channel dries up, one source of beauty and use
fails; and, from that moment, a certain sidewise tendency marks the
growth.
To compact carefully one "well-labored thread," is all that I have
sought to do,--to write a little book, that women might be won to read,
as conscientiously as if it were a heavy tome, to be endlessly consulted
by the bench.
In writing these three lectures, I feel quite sure that I must have made
use of many significant expressions borrowed from those who have broken
the way for me. For many years an extemporaneous lecturer on this and
kindred topics, I have so wrought certain modes of expression into the
fabric of my thought, that I do not _know_ where to put my
quotation-marks. To Mrs. Hugo Reed, for instance, I know I must be
under great obligations; and I can only hope, that she will trust me
with her thoughts and words as generously as I desire to trust all my
readers with mine. It is little matter who does the work, so that it be
done; but I owe to one author, in particular, something like an
explanation.
A few days before the third of these lectures was delivered in Boston
(that is, before Jan. 23, 1861), a gentleman from Paris brought me from
Madame d'Héricourt a book called "La Femme Affranchie," an answer to
Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, and Comte, which its author kindly desired
I should translate for the American market. Unable to comply with her
request, some weeks elapsed before I opened the book. I was struck with
the energy, self-possession, and rapidity with which she seized the
various points of the subject, with the thoroughness of her assault, and
the temper of her argument. I did not sympathize in all her methods or
conclusions; but I was interested to observe, that, in what I had then
written and publicly spoken of the relations between suffrage and
humanity, I had, in several instances, used her very words, or she had
used mine. I did not alter my manuscript; but, with better times, we may
hope for a translation of her spirited volumes, and the public will then
do justice to her precedence.
I have been anxious to have positive proof of my conjecture in regard to
the authorship of the "Lawe's Resolution of the Rights of Women;" but
persevering endeavors in England, in several directions, have only left
the matter as it stands in the text. It would be very interesting to
know something of the private history of the man who wrote that book.
In the first of the following lectures, I have ventured a rhetorical
allusion to the blue-laws of Connecticut. Since it went to press, I have
seen it stated, on high authority, that any American writer who should
"profess to believe in the existence of the blue-laws of New Haven would
simply proclaim himself a dunce;" and the "Saturday Review" has been
handled without gloves for taking this existence for granted.
I never supposed that the term "blue" applied to the color of the paper
on which such laws were printed, any more than I supposed "blue
Presbyterianism" referred to the color of the presbyters' gowns. I
supposed it was the outgrowth of a popular sarcasm, descriptive, not of
a "veritable code," nor of a "practical code unpublished," but of such
portions of the general code as were repugnant to common sense, and the
genial nature of man. This I still think will be found to be the case;
and it is certainly to Connecticut divines and Connecticut newspapers
that we owe the popular impression.
It was in the forty-sixth year of the independence of the United States
that S. Andrus & Co., of Hartford, published a volume purporting to be a
compendium of early judicial proceedings in Connecticut, and especially
of that portion of the proceedings of the Colony of New Haven commonly
called the "blue-laws." Charles A. Ingersoll, Esq., testified to the
correctness of these copies of the ancient record.
As I quote this title wholly from memory, I am unable to say whether the
colony ever fined a bishop for kissing his own wife on Sunday; but I
have read more than once of such fines; and, if no laws remain
unrepealed on the Connecticut statute-book quite as absurd in their
spirit and general tendency, there are many on those of Massachusetts
and New Hampshire: so I shall let my rhetorical flourish stand.
To my English friends, to Mr. Herndon of Illinois, Mr. Higginson, and
Samuel F. Haven, Esq., of Worcester, I owe my usual acknowledgments for
books lent, and service proffered, with a generosity and graceful
readiness cheering to remember.
Nor will I omit, in what may be a last opportunity, to bear faithful
testimony to the assistance rendered, in all my studies of this sort, by
my friend, Mr. John Patton, of Montreal. No single person has helped me
so much, so wisely, or so well.
In order to secure technical accuracy, my manuscript and proofs have
been subjected to the revision of my friend, the Hon. Samuel E. Sewall.
The principal alteration which Mr. Sewall has made, has been the
substitution of the word "suffrage" for that of "franchise;" which
latter I used in the Continental fashion. I prefer it to "suffrage,"
because it seems to have a broader signification; but I yield it to his
suggestion.
I would gladly have dedicated this volume to the memory of the late John
W. Browne, whose pure purpose and eminent gifts made me rejoice, while
he was living, to call him friend. As, however, he never read the whole
of the manuscript, I have given it a dedication "to the friends of
forsaken women," which no one, who knew him well, will fail to perceive
includes him.
BOSTON, Sept. 1, 1861.
CAROLINE H. DALL
70, WARREN AVENUE,
BOSTON, January, 1867.
CONTENTS.
THE COLLEGE.
I.
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND THE PUBLIC OPINION.
Original Proposition. Objections to Republicanism. No Retrograde
Steps Possible. The Educational Rights of Women. A Share of
Opportunities the only Effectual Way. Both Sexes need the Oversight
of Women. Men need the Needle. Sydney Smith to Lady Holland. The
Education not Won till its Privileges are attained. Kapnist and the
Normal School. Low Wages. An Illustration. The Social Position of
the Teacher. The Spirit of Caste. Increase of Salaries. Is it Real
or Nominal? What is the Standard of Education? Niebuhr to Madame
Hensler. Cousin and Madame de Sablé. Examples of To-day do not
Cheer. Opinion of the Druses. Charles Lamb on Letitia Landon.
Coventry Patmore. Mrs. Jameson on the English Deficiency. Standard
of Italy. 500,000 Women in England. Dr. Gooch's Appeal. Opposition
to first School of Design. Note on Miss Garrett. B.L. Bodichon on
Jessie Meriton White and Medical Colleges. Need of a Medical
Society. John Adams on his Wife. Why has not the Standard advanced?
Alice Holliday in Egypt. Hekekyan Effendi speaking for the
Massachusetts Board of Education. Madame Luce in Algiers. Her
Workshop Discontinued. The Advance shown in such Lives.
Mrs. Griffith. Janet Taylor. Miss Martineau. "Aurora Leigh."
Maria Mitchell. Oread Institute. New-York Schools. Vassar College.
Michigan University. Duty of Literary Men and Women to invigorate
Public Opinion. What _is_ Public Opinion? Mary Patton. pp. 1-48.
II.
HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE.
Existing Opinion. Proverbs. The Novel kept Faith with the Classics.
Social Customs. Newspapers. All form this Opinion. Individual
Influence must stem the United Current. The Classics. Aristophanes.
Iscomachus. Euripides. College Slang. St. John. Margaret Fuller on
her "Beloved Greeks." Buckle. From Greece to Rome. Ovid. No Need to
end Classical Study. Rather sanctify it. Perversions of History in
the Classical Spirit. Hypatia. Aspasia. Society in the Time of
Louis XIV. and Charles II. Lady Morgan on Alfred de Vigny.
Rousseau. Dr. Day, Dr. Gregory, and Dr. Fordyce. Margaret Fuller.
Association of Ideas. Fanny Wright. Captain Wallis and the Queen of
Otaheite. Peru and the Formosa Isles. African Customs. Mrs.
Kirkland on the Strong Box. Sir John Bowring on Marriage. Mrs.
Barbauld. The Newspapers. Impure Habits. pp. 49-82.
III.
THE MEANING OF THE LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION.
Mary Wollstonecraft and the Literature of the Eighteenth Century.
"Rights of Woman." "Not Empire, but Equality." Dr. Channing on Mrs.
Wollstonecraft. Her Unhappy Home. Fanny Blood. Breaks up her School.
Saves the French Crew. Provides for her Brothers and Sisters.
Translations. Answer to Burke. Fuseli. Paris. Imlay. Helen Maria
Williams. Happiness. Deserted in Eighteen Months. Attempted
Suicide. Goes to Norway. Final Separation. Marries Godwin. Birth of
Mrs. Shelley. Death of Mary. Her Husband's Testimony. No Fair
Statement recorded. Strength of Prejudice against her. A Republican
and a Unitarian. The Judgment of her own Time upon her. The Right of
Society to pass Judgment. Mr. Day and Maria Edgeworth. Lady Morgan.
Always True to Freedom. Harriet Martineau. Thorough Work. Mrs.
Jameson. Her Bravery and Truth. Woman's Rights Testimony. Mrs.
Gaskell. Fredrika Bremer. The Brownings. "Aurora Leigh." Charlotte
Bronté. "I Care for Myself." Our Abdiel. Margaret Fuller as a
Person. "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." "Truth-teller and
Truth-compeller." Rebuke to Harriet Martineau. Emerson's
Misapprehension. Florence Nightingale. Santa Paula. Mary Patton.
Miss Muloch libels Women. The Popular Idea of Love. Woman's Entire
Self-possession. Carlyle and Count Zinzendorf. Who refuses Strength
must miss Beauty. The Best Brains make the Best Housekeepers. The
Affections of the Woman prompt and dignify the Labors of the
Scholar. pp. 83-130.
THE MARKET.
I.
DEATH OR DISHONOR.
The Attar of Cashmere. Moral Force must change the Results of
History. Statement of Subject. Death or Dishonor the Practical
Question. An Honorable Independence the Way of Safety. The Forcing
Pump and Siphon. Women must Work for Pay. Success the Best Argument.
Competition in Rural Districts. Duchâtelet. Miss Craig. "Edinburgh
Review." Dressmakers and Sir James Clarke. Lace-makers. Manchester
Mantle-maker. 7,850 Ruined Women in New York. Society Responsible
for this Evil. Governesses. Mr. Mayhew to the "Morning Chronicle."
The Minister's Daughter. The Power of a Divine Love. Noble Natures
among the Fallen. The Glasgow Case. 1,680 Reformed French Women. The
Straw-braider. Have Women Strength to Labor? Marie de Lamourous. The
Young Laborer to be Protected by Social Influences. Women Hard
Workers from the Beginning. China. Hindostan. Bombay Ghauts.
Australia. Africa. Greece. Bertha of the Transjurane. Tyrolese
Escort of Women. Germany. Montenegro. Holland. France. Widow Brulow.
Nelly Giles. Ignacia Riso. Factory Labor in France. Sale of Wives at
Derby and Dudley. Women in the Coal-mines. Pinmakers. Anna Gurney.
Honduras. American Indians. Santa Cruz. Ohio and Pennsylvania. New
York. Women of Lawrence. Ship "Grotto." Thomas Garratt concerning
Sarah Ann Scofield. That all Men support all Women, an Absurd
Fiction. pp. 131-177.
II.
VERIFY YOUR CREDENTIALS.
Want of Employment lowers the Whole Moral Tone. Vigorous Women do
not Ask what they shall Do. Idleness the Curse of Heaven. Organized
Opposition on Man's Part. Mr. Bennett and the Watch-makers. Ribbon
Looms at Coventry. The School at Marlborough House. Miss Spencer.
Painting Crockery. Printing in America. Pennsylvania Medical
Society, 1859. Want of Respect for Labor. Census of the United
Kingdom. Agriculture. Mining. Fishing. Servants, &c. Reporters.
Bright Festival. Metal Workers. Gillott's Pens. Jewelry.
Screw-making. Button-making. Paper and Card Making. Engravers,
Printers, &c., &c. The Lower Classes need the Brains of the Upper.
Labor in the United States. Nantucket. Pennsylvania. Dr. Franklin's
Sister-in-law. Mrs. Hillman. Mrs. Johnson. Martha B. Curtis. Ann
Bent. Scientific Pursuits not Open. Clerks under Government.
Census. Waltham Watch Factory. Dentists. School Committees.
Postmistresses. Olive Rose. Semi-professions and Artists.
Shoe-making in Lynn. Condition of the Poor dependent on the Action
of the Rich. Happy Homes the Growth of Active Lives. The Pine and
Ænemone. Emily Plater. "Verify your Credentials." Encouragement from
Men; Faithfulness from Women. The Sorbonne. Madame Sirault. That
Career fated which Woman may not share. Influence of the Sexes on
each other. Baron Toermer and Félicie de Fauveau. pp. 178-220.
III.
"THE OPENING OF THE GATES."
The Drowning of Daughters. Teachers of Elocution and the Languages.
Inspectors. Physicians. Dr. Heidenreich. Wood Carving. Properzia
dei Rossi. Swiss Work. Elizabetta Sirani. Engravers. Barbers.
Candied Fruit for Christmas. Pickles. Fruit Sauces. Dishmops.
Gymnastics. Female Assistants in Jails, Prisons, Workhouses, not to
be had till Public Opinion honors Labor. Florence Nightingale an
Example. Parish Ministers. Deaconesses. Marian of the Seven Dials.
Reading Aloud to the Perishing Classes. St. Pancras. Mrs. Wightman.
A Training School. A Public Laundry and Bleaching Ground.
Ready-made Clothing. An Assistance to our Practical Charity.
Knitting Factory. Ornamental Work to be Avoided. Occupation for the
Young Ladies at the West End. Mrs. Ellen Woodlock and her
Industrial Schools. She takes Eighty Paupers out of the Poorhouse.
Mr. Buckle's Position to be Questioned. Mistaken Moral Effort a
Harm to Society. Want of Connection between the Employer and the
Employed. People who want "a Chance Lift." Defects in our Present
Intelligence-Offices. A Labor Exchange. The Argument Restated. Will
you tread out the Nettles? The Drosera. Purposes the Blossoms of
the Human Heart. pp. 221-261.
THE COURT.
I.
THE ORIENTAL ESTIMATE AND THE FRENCH LAW.
The Seat of the Law the Bosom of God? Of what Law? Legal
Restrictions constantly Outgrown. The Laws which relate to Woman.
Vishnu Sarma: the Hindoo Wife must use the Dialect of the Slave.
Ancient Chinese Writer. Köhl on Turkish Husbands. Convent to lock
up Ladies. The Island of Coelebes. The Garrows in the North-east
of India. The Muhar. Military Tribe of Nairs in Malabar. Later
Proverbs; used by the Satirists. The Four Points to Consider.
Discussion of Marriage and Divorce to be Deferred. The Public
Opinion which has educated Woman, and her Approximation to it.
Woman under Roman Law. Absence of well-tested Cotemporaneous
Evidence. Theodora. French Law. Bonaparte's Opinion. The Estimate
of a Double Character. Condition of the Peasant-woman. Need of Love
in the Upper Classes. Business-freedom. George Sand. Rosa Bonheur,
and the Claimants for Civil Rights. The Dotal founded on Roman Law;
the Communal founded on German. Dotal Law rejected throughout
Europe. Protection means Subordination. As a "Public Merchant,"
Woman becomes a French Citizen. Position contradictory: not allowed
to rule the Household, which is called her Sphere. Civil Position.
No Right of Promotion. Laws of Louisiana. Estimate of Woman under
the "Code Napoléon:" tends to lower her Wages. List of Employments.
The Needle-women of Paris. pp. 263-286.
II.
THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW.
It contains All to which we have any Need to Object. Literature.
"The Lawe's Resolution of Woman's Rights." Inquiries as to its
Author. Probability points to Sir John Doderidge. The Law, for
Single Women, of Inheritance. Offices Open. Right to Vote, and Lady
Packington. Sheriff of Westmoreland. Lady Rous. Henry VIII. and
Lady Anne Berkeley. As Constable, and Overseer of the Poor. Female
Voter in Nova Scotia. Law relating to Seduction: its Profanity. The
French Law, as summed up by Legouvé. Woman's Opinion of this Law.
Objections. Laws concerning Married Women. Impossibility of
Divorce, from Hopeless Insanity. Instances where _Men_ have taken
the Law into their own Hands. Impossibility of Woman's ever doing
this. Marriage of a Minor. A Wife loses _all_ her Rights. Satire in
a London Court. Truth of this. Consequent Unwillingness of the
Honest Poor to Marry, and of Single Women of Rank to relinquish
Power. Freedwomen at the South. The Descendant of Morgan the
Buccaneer. Need of Equity. May make a Will by Permission. Nutriment
of Infants. The Law resists Maternal Influence, and denies Natural
Authority. Word not binding. Gifts Illegal. Indictments in the
Husband's Name. Divorces: only Three ever granted to Women. The
Widow recovers her Clothes and Jewels, but need not bury her
Husband. Christian on Suffrage. Moderate Correction. Property-laws.
The Hon. Mrs. Norton. Hungarian Freedom. Right to Vote. Experience
in America. Parisian Milliner. "Union is Robbery." The Heiress.
Longevity of the Wife. Woman discouraged from Labor by the
Influence of the Laws of Property. Sexual Legislation thoroughly
Immoral. Man's Adultery even a more Serious Evil than Woman's, so
far as State Morals and Interests are concerned. Canton Glarus.
"Courts have never gone that Length." Debate on the New Divorce
Bill. Man's Fidelity considered an Imbecility. The Compliments of
the Law. The Husband's Vigilance. Duplicity the Natural Result of
Slavery. The Right of Suffrage. Objections Answered. The Abstract
Right and the Practical Question. Suffrage to be limited by
Education, not Money nor Sex. The "Sad Sisterhood." Woman has never
had a Representative. Her Suffrage would put an End to Three
Classes of Laws. Harris _vs._ Butler. Delicate Matters to be
Discussed. The Duke of York's Trial. John Stuart Mill's Opinion.
Dedication of his Essay on Liberty. Women of Upsal. On Juries. Miss
Shedden. Russell on Female Evidence. Fate of the "Bulwarks of the
English Constitution." Power of Women not Disputed while it was
dependent on Property. It should depend on Humanity. Louis XIV. and
the Fish-women. Pauline Roland and Madame Moniot. Men borrow the
Suffrages of Women. Saxon Witas. Abbess Hilda. Council at
Benconceld. King Edgar's Charter. Abbesses in Parliament. Peeresses
in Parliament. East-India Stockholders. Stockholders in Banks.
Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Mrs. Mill's
Article. Florence Nightingale's Evidence. Petition to Parliament,
and its Signers. The New Divorce Bill. Buckle's Lecture. Canadian
Changes. Inconsistencies. Canadian Women as Voters. Pitcairn's
Island. pp. 287-341.
III.
THE UNITED-STATES LAW, AND SOME THOUGHTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS.
Condition of Women in Republics. Helvetia. Kent on the Law's
Estimate. "The Man's Notion." Property-laws, and Natural Obligations
of Husband and Wife. The Law's Indulgence. Marriage and Divorce in
the Different States. Variety of the Laws. "Cruelty." What have the
Woman's-Rights Party done?--changed the Law in nineteen States. The
Law of Illinois. Rhode Island on Property. Vermont. Connecticut. New
Hampshire. Massachusetts, and what remains to be done. Maine. Ohio.
Judge Graham's Decision. Mrs. Dorr's Claim. New-York Property-bill
of 1860, and its Supplement. Relief to 5,000 Women. Mrs. Stanton
before the Legislature. The Right of Suffrage in New Jersey.
Wisconsin. Michigan. Ohio. Kansas. Connecticut. Kentucky in
Reference to Suffrage. A Woman's Right to Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness. Mrs. John Adams and Hannah Corbin understood
its Worthlessness. Richard Henry Lee on a Woman's Security. "Woman's
Rights,"--a Phrase we all Hate: identical with "Human Rights,"--a
Phrase we all Honor. Reception of Woman in the Lyceum. Labor to be
honored through Woman. Trade to become a _Fine Art_.
Property-holders must have Political Power. Mr. Phillips on
Suffrage. The Lowell Mill. Dr. Hunt's Protests. Mean Men. Woman's
Duty to the State a Moral Duty. Woman's Right to _Man_ as Counsellor
and Friend. The Constitution of the Family. The Historical
Development of the Question. Mary Astell in the Seventeenth Century.
Mary Wollstonecraft in the Eighteenth, and the Customs of Australia.
Responses to her Appeal. Margaret Fuller in the Nineteenth. The
great Lawsuit in 1844. Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. National
Association in 1850. Profane Inanity. Chinese Women. Does Power
belong to Humanity or to Property? Mahomet, and the Right to Rule.
Wendell Phillips and the Venetian Catechism. pp. 342-374.
* * * * *
TEN YEARS.
EDUCATION.--Absence of Discussion Wise. American Association for the
Promotion of Social Science. Lectures from the Lowell Institute.
Ripley College. Howard University. Professor Baldwin at Berea. St.
Lawrence University, N.Y. Lombard University, Ill. Oberlin. List of
Colleges it has Organized. Lane Seminary. President Finney. Ladies'
Library. Ladies' Hall. Miss Fanny Jackson. A Confession. Antioch.
Way thither. Yellow Springs. The Glen. Matins. Necessities. Changes
in Buildings, Books, &c. Missionary Work. The Professors. The
Brigadier-General. Literary Societies. A Southern Refugee. Vassar
College. Lawrence University, Kansas. Letter from Miss Chapin. A
Professor Elected. Michigan University. Miss Nightingale's
Training-School for Nurses, Liverpool. Schools in Calcutta.
Deaconesses. Kaiserworth. Strasburg. Basle. St. Loup. Geneva.
Faubourg St. Antoine. Passevant Hospital. Bishop Kerfoot's Schools.
pp. 377-429.
MEDICAL EDUCATION.--New-York Medical Society. Medical Society in
London. Hospital of the Maternity in Paris. Miss Garrett and
Apothecaries' Hall. Dr. Zakrzewska and the Medical Society. Medical
Lectures at Harvard. Women and the Cossacks. Women and the
Algerines. Women in India. Cause of Cholera. Success of Female
Physicians. Dr. Ross. A Medical College Needed. New-England
Hospital. pp. 429-434.
PULPIT.--Amélie von Braum. Mamsell Berg. Rev. Olympia Brown. Mrs.
Jenkins. Mrs. Booth. Mrs. Timmins. Ann Rexford. Nancy Gove Cram.
Abigail H. Roberts. Mrs. Hedges. The Church at Amsterdam, and its
Deaconesses. Resolution at Syracuse. Delegates to Local Conferences.
Mrs. Dall. Counsel to Women who desire to preach. pp. 434-447.
ART SCHOOLS.--Lowell Institute. Cooper Institute. Miss Roundtree and
Miss Curtis. Coloring Photographs. Mrs. Elizabeth Murray and the
London Society of Female Artists. pp. 447-449.
LABOR.--Statistics of Eight-hour Movement. Factory Labor in England.
Foreign Society for Employment of Women. Mending Schools. A Barber.
Public Clerks. Fanny Paine. Musical Careers. Charlotte Hill.
Williston Button-factory. Madam Clarke. A Capitalist. Mr. Thayer's
Lodging-house for Girls. Young Women's Christian Association.
Lodging-house in New York. Miss Hill's Ruskin Lodging-houses in
London. Female Printers. A Notary Public. pp. 450-468.
LAW.--Married Women in New York. Right of an Ordained Woman to Marry
in Massachusetts. School Committees. Richmond. Are a Woman's Clothes
her own? State of Missouri. College. Where shall a Woman's Children
go to Church? Francis Jackson's Will. Conference at Leipsic.
Petition to enable Widows, Potter's County, Pa. Women as Bank
Directors. pp. 468-472.
SUFFRAGE.--Kansas. Missouri in Congress. The Speaker of the House.
Mercantile Library in Philadelphia. Voting in New Jersey. Mr. Parker
at Perth Amboy. A Petition to Kentucky. Equal-Rights Association,
Petitions, &c. George Thompson's Objections. John Stuart Mill and
the Franchise. English Petition a Model. To be sustained by Able
Men. Mrs. Bodichon's Pamphlets. Women Ejected. Austria. Swedish
Reform Bill. Italian Law. The Hungarian Diet. pp. 472-486.
CIVIL PROGRESS.--Australia. Moravia. Dublin. Aisne. Bergères. Need
of a Newspaper. pp. 486-488.
OBITUARIES, &C.--Merian. Baring. Farnham. Lemonnier. Dr. Barry. Mrs.
Severn Newton. pp. 488-491.
The Ballot will secure All Things. A Glimpse of the Wide West.
Vassar and Miss Lyman. Oberlin and Mrs. Dascomb. Dr. Glass. Female
Lecturers. Business Capacity of Women. The Ice in Fox River, Ill.
Cholera at Elgin. Quincy High School. Coloring Photographs at the
Cooper Institute. Conclusion. pp. 491-499.
THE COLLEGE;
OR,
WOMAN'S RELATION TO EDUCATION.
IN THREE LECTURES.
I.--THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND THE PUBLIC OPINION.
II.--HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE.
III.--THE MEANING OF THE LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED IT.
Now press the clarion on thy woman's lip,
(Love's holy kiss shall still keep consecrate,)
And breathe the fine, keen breath along the brass,
And blow all class-walls level as Jericho's
Past Jordan.... The world's old;
But the old world waits the hour to be renewed.
AURORA LEIGH.
_Two_ of far nobler shape, erect and tall,--
Godlike erect, with native honor clad
In naked majesty,--_seemed lords of all:_
_And worthy seemed;_ for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,--
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure;
Whence true authority in men.
MILTON.
THE COLLEGE.
I.
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND THE PUBLIC OPINION.
"Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with the choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come,
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before."
MACDONALD.
To propose an essay on education requires no little courage; for the
term has covered, with its broad mantle, every thing that is stupid,
perverse, and oppressive in literature. We will not tax ourselves,
however, to consider exact theories, or suggest formal dissertations. In
these lectures, let us take all the liberties of conversation; pass, in
brief review, a wide range of subjects; comment lightly, not thoroughly,
upon them; and trust to quick sympathies and intelligent apprehension to
follow out any really useful suggestions that may be made.
Some time since, we laid down this proposition: "A man's right to
education--that is, to the education or drawing-out of all the faculties
God has given him--involves the right to a choice of vocation; that is,
to a choice of the end to which those faculties shall be trained. The
choice of vocation involves the right and the duty of protecting that
vocation; that is, the right of deciding how far it shall be taxed, in
how many ways legislative action shall be allowed to control it; in one
word, the right to the elective franchise."
This statement we made in the broadest way; applying it to the present
condition of women, and intending to show, that, the moment society
conceded the right to education, it conceded the whole question, unless
this logic could be disputed.
Men of high standing have been found to question a position seemingly so
impregnable, but only on the ground that republicanism is itself a
failure, and that it is quite time that Massachusetts should insist upon
a property qualification for voters.
In this State, so remarkable for its intelligence and mechanical
skill,--a State which has sent regiment after regiment to the
battle-field, armed by the college, rather than the court,--in this
State, one somewhat eminent voice has been heard to whisper, that _men_
have not this right to education; that the lower classes in this country
are fatally injured by the advantages offered them; that they would be
happier, more contented, and more useful, if left to take their chance,
or compelled to pay for the reading and writing which their employers,
in some kinds, might require.
We need not be sorry that these objections are so stated. They are a
fair sample of all the objections that obtain against the legal
emancipation of _woman_, an emancipation which Christ himself intended
and prophesied,--speaking always of his kingdom as one in which no
distinctions of sex should either be needed or recognized. Push any
objector to the wall, and he will be compelled to shift his attitude. He
says nothing more about women, but shields himself under the old
autocratic pretension, that man, collectively taken, has _no_ right to
life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness; that republicanism itself is
a failure.
Our hearts need not sink in view of this assertion, apparently sustained
by a civil war that fixes the suspicious eyes of autocratic Europe in
sullen suspense. A republic, whose foundations were laid in usurpation,
could not expect to stand, till it had, with its own right arm, struck
off its "feet of clay." It is not freedom which fails, but slavery.
The course of the world is not retrograde. Massachusetts will not call a
convention to insist upon a property qualification for voters, neither
will she close her schoolhouses, nor forswear her ancient faith. The
time shall yet come when she shall free herself from reproach, and
fulfil the prophetic promise of her republicanism, by generous endowment
for her women, and the open recognition of their citizenship.
It is not our purpose, however, to dwell upon facilities of school
education. More conservative speakers will plead, eloquently as we could
wish, in that behalf; and suggestions on other topics need to be made.
We have already said, that the educational rights of women are simply
those of all human beings,--namely, "the right to be taught all common
branches of learning, a sufficient use of the needle, and any higher
branches, for which they shall evince either taste or inclination; the
right to have colleges, schools of law, theology, and medicine open to
them; the right of access to all scientific and literary collections, to
anatomical preparations, historical records, and rare manuscripts."
And we do not make this claim with any particular theory as to woman's
powers or possibilities. She may be equal to man, or inferior to him.
She may fail in rhetoric, and succeed in mathematics. She may be able to
bear fewer hours of study. She may insist on more protracted labor. What
we claim is, that no one knows, as yet, what women are, or what they can
do,--least of all, those who have been wedded for years to that low
standard of womanly achievement, which classical study tends to sustain.
Because we do not know, because experiment is necessary, we claim that
all educational institutions should be kept open for her; that she
should be encouraged to avail herself of these, according to her own
inclination; and that, so far as possible, she should pursue her
studies, and test her powers, in company with man. We do not wish her to
follow _any_ dictation; not ours, nor another's. We ask for her a
freedom she has never yet had. There is, between the sexes, a law of
incessant, reciprocal action, of which God avails himself in the
constitution of the family, when he permits brothers and sisters to
nestle about one hearth-stone. Its ministration is essential to the best
educational results. Our own educational institutions should rest upon
this divine basis. In educating the sexes together under fatherly and
motherly supervision,[1] we avail ourselves of the highest example; and
the result will be a simplicity, modesty, and purity of character, not
so easy to attain when general abstinence from each other's society
makes the occasions of re-union a period of harmful excitement. Out of
it would come a quick perception of mutual proprieties, delicate
attention to manly and womanly habits, refinement of feeling, grace of
manner, and a thoroughly symmetrical development. If the objections
which are urged against this--the divine fashion of training men and
women to the duties of life--were well founded, they would have been
felt long ago in those district schools, attended by both sexes, which
are the pride of New England. The classes recently opened by the Lowell
Institute, under the control of the Institute of Technology, are an
effort in the right direction, for which we cannot be too grateful.
Heretofore, every attempt to give advanced instruction to women has
failed. Did a woman select the most accomplished instructor of men, and
pay him the highest fee, she could not secure thorough tuition. He
taught her without conscience in the higher branches; for he took it
upon himself to assume that she would never put them to practical use.
He treated her desire for such instruction as a caprice, though she
might have shown her appreciation by the distinct bias of her life. We
claim for women a share of the opportunities offered to men, because we
believe that they will never be thoroughly taught until they are taught
at the same time and in the same classes.
The most mischievous errors are perpetuated by drawing masculine and
feminine lines in theory at the outset. The God-given impulse of sex, if
left in complete freedom, will establish, in time, certain distinctions
for itself; but these distinctions should never be pressed on any
individual soul. Whether man or woman, each should be left free to
choose its own methods of development. We pause, therefore, to show,
that, when we spoke of a certain use of the needle as a matter to be
taught to both sexes, we did so by no inadvertence. The use of the
sewing machine is even now common to both; but men, as well as women,
should be taught to use their fingers for common purposes skilfully.
Personal contact with the pauperism of large cities has sent this
conviction home to many practical minds.
The rough tippets, mittens, and socks imported into the British
Colonies, are the work of the Welsh farmers and the Shetland fishermen
during the long tempestuous winter nights. In writing to Lady Holland,
Sidney Smith pens some pleasant words on this subject.
"I wish I could sew," he says. "I believe one reason why women are so
much more cheerful than men is because they can work, and so vary their
employments. Lady ---- used to teach her boys carpet-work. All men ought
to learn to sew."
All men! and so might the cares of many women be lightened. Let us
candidly confess our own indebtedness to the needle. How many hours of
sorrow has it softened, how many bitter irritations calmed, how many
confused thoughts reduced to order, how many life-plans sketched in
purple!
Let us pass over that portion of our statement which hints at vocation,
and confine ourselves, for the present, to that part of it which looks
to an unrestricted mental culture. Nowhere is this systematically denied
to women. It is quite common to hear people say, "There is no need to
press that subject. Education in New England is free to women. In
Bangor, Portsmouth, Newburyport, and Boston, they are better Latin
scholars than the men. Nothing can set this stream back: turn and labor
elsewhere."
We have shown to how very small an extent this statement is true. If it
were true of the mere means of education, education itself is not won
for woman, till it brings to her precisely the same blessings that it
bears to the feet of man; till it gives her honor, respect, and bread;
till position becomes the rightful inheritance of capacity, and social
influence follows a knowledge of mathematics and the languages. Our
deficiency in the last stages of the culture offered to our women made a
strong impression on a late Russian traveller.
"Is that the best you can do?" said Mr. Kapnist, when he came out of the
Mason-street Normal School for Girls. "It is very poor. In Russia, we
should do better. At Cambridge, you have eminent men in every
kind,--Agassiz, Gray, Peirce. Why do they not lecture to these women? In
Russia, they would go everywhere,--speak to both sexes. At a certain
age, recitation is the very poorest way of imparting knowledge."
To all adult minds, lectures convey instruction more happily than
recitation; and, when men and women are taught together, the lecture
system is valuable, because it permits the mind to appropriate its own
nutriment, and does not oppress the faculties with uncongenial food.
To those who are familiar with the whole question, no theme is more
painful than that of the inadequate compensation and depressed position
of the female teacher. There is no need to harp on this discordant
string. Let us strike its key-note in a single story.
A year ago, in one of the most beautiful towns of this neighborhood,
separated by a grassy common, shaded with drooping elms, rose two ample
buildings, dedicated to the same purpose. They were the High Schools for
the two sexes.
They were taught by two persons, admirably fitted for their work. The
man, uncommonly happy in imparting instruction, was yet deficient in
mathematics, and considered by competent judges inferior to the woman.
_She_ was an orphan, with a young sister dependent upon her for
instruction and support. She had been graduated with the highest honors
at one of the State Normal Schools. She was delicate and beautiful; not
in the least "strong-minded." Neither spectacles upon her nose, nor
wooden soles to her boots, appealed to the popular indignation. All who
knew her loved her; and the man whom we have named was not ashamed to
receive instruction from her in geometry and algebra. The two schools
were equal in numbers. The man was a bachelor, subject to no claim
beyond his own necessity. What did common sense and right reason demand,
but that these two persons should be treated alike by society,
prudential committees, and so on? You shall hear what was the fact. The
man was engaged at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. The wealthiest
class in the community intrusted its sons to his charge without
question. Single, he was made much of in society, invited to parties,
and had his own corner at many a tea-table, which he brightened with his
pleasant jokes. He soon came to be a person in the town,--had his vote,
was valued accordingly; went to church, was put upon committees, had a
great deal to do with calling the new minister, and so, out of school,
had pleasant and varied occupation, which saved his soul from racking to
death over the ruts of the Latin grammar. Would we have it otherwise?
Was it not all right? Certainly it was, and our friend deserved it;
deserved, too, that when the second year was half over, and there were
rumors that a distant city had secured his services, the committee
should raise his salary two hundred and fifty dollars, and so keep him
for themselves. But let us look at the reverse of the picture. The
woman, burdened with the care of a younger sister, greatly this man's
superior in mathematics and possibly in other things, was engaged at six
hundred dollars. It was not customary for the wealthy families in that
neighborhood to trust their girls to the tender mercies of a public
school; so she had a class of pupils less elegant in manner, of more
ordinary mental training, and every way more difficult to control. Still
they were disciplined, and learned to love their teacher. A few of the
parents called upon her, and she was occasionally invited to their
homes. But these homes were not congenial to her tastes or habits. There
was no intellectual stimulus derived from them to brighten her life.
They offered neither pictures, statues, books, nor the results of
travel, to her delicate and yearning appreciation. She talked, for the
most part, of her pupils and their work; and the strain of her vocation,
always heavier on woman than on man, wore more and more upon her soul.
Society, as such, offered her no welcome.[2]
_She_ was nothing to the town. She hired her seat, and went to church.
She had no vote, was never on a parish committee, had only one chance to
change her position. That was to remove to a more congenial
neighborhood, at a lower salary; but she thought of her young sister,
and refused. If the committee heard of it, they did not offer to
increase her salary. They were men incapable of appreciating her rare
and modest culture. There was a tendency to consumption in her frame.
Had she been happy, she might have resisted it for years, perhaps for
ever; but with the restless pining at her heart, that mental and moral
marasmus, the physical disease soon showed itself. In the commencement
of the third year of her teaching, she began to cough; and, in less than
three months from the day when she heard her last class, she lay in an
early but not unhonored grave. The deep affection of her classmates in
the Normal School had always followed her; and one who chanced to hear
of her illness brightened its rapid decline. This woman, herself
prematurely old, in consequence of twelve years of labor on the Red
River of Louisiana, the only place open to her, where her abilities were
appreciated to the extent of twelve hundred dollars a year, and would
enable her to support a widowed mother,--this woman, with her now-scanty
purse, supplied the invalid with fresh flowers and sweet pictures; and,
when her heavy eye grew weary of gazing, gently closed it in the sleep
of death, scattered rare and fragrant blossoms over her unconscious
form, and followed it to the grave. Those flowers! brought daily to her
teacher's-desk by a friendly or loving hand, they might have fed a
craving heart, and saved a precious life.
It is no new story. You have heard it many times. Do not reply in the
stale maxims of political economy. Do not say that woman's labor is
cheaper than man's, because it is more abundant. Unskilled labor, we
will grant you, is more abundant; but such labor as is here offered must
always be rare and valuable. To the applicants who came to fill her
vacant place the committee said, "We do not expect to find another
capable as she was. We have only to select one that _will do_." Yet they
had not been ashamed to use that capacity without paying for it! Only
ignorance and prejudice and custom stood in the way of its appreciation;
only the want of that respect which a citizen can always command was at
the bottom of her social isolation. She never complained; but we
complain for her, sadly conscious, that, until men themselves perceive
what is fit, the remonstrances of women will be fruitless. One such word
as that spoken by the Hon. Joseph White at Framingham, in July, 1864, is
worth more than all that women can say. Nevertheless, we women have our
duty. It is to convince and stimulate men. Be on the watch, then, for
such women; and claim for them their place and remuneration. Help
society to understand its duty, to be frank and honorable. And if
certain services are worth, as in this case, seventeen hundred and fifty
dollars a year, pay for equal services, _by whomsoever rendered_, an
equal sum.
Since I first began to speak upon this subject, a very great change has
taken place: women are put in places which require higher culture and
greater administrative capacity. They are also paid better wages: these
wages are not yet in fair proportion to what are paid to men for the
same work; and the shameful argument is still used, that we employ
women, chiefly because men will not work for the same price. The Roxbury
High School, the Shurtleff Grammar School in Chelsea, the Normal School
at St. Louis, and the Normal School at Framingham, are now under the
charge of women. In the list of teachers from the Oswego School, we find
four who are paid one thousand dollars a year, and eleven who are paid
seven hundred dollars. Our daily press is very well satisfied with this;
but, since 1860, what portion of a decent living will seven hundred
dollars provide to a cultivated woman? When the salaries of the St.
Louis teachers were raised in 1866, the principal was obliged to express
her indignation before her salary was raised to its present sum of two
thousand dollars. Had she been a man, she would certainly have had as
much as the principal of the High School; namely, twenty-seven hundred
and fifty dollars. A graduate of Antioch College, assisting in the High
School at St. Louis, has twelve hundred dollars, where a man would have
seventeen hundred dollars. Miss Brackett's own assistants in the Normal
School have eleven hundred dollars.
The appointment of Miss Johnson to the head of the Normal School at
Framingham will open the way to a similar change in many quarters, if
what Governor Bullock has not disdained to call the "policy of
Massachusetts" is consistently carried out. I do not know what salary is
offered to Miss Johnson; but, if it were equal to that of the man who
preceded her, would not the newspapers have told us? The comparative
value of these salaries is not shown by the figures. It depends on the
prices of gold, and of food and provisions, each year. It cannot be half
as great as an inexperienced person would think.
There is a great want of female teachers of Latin and French. School
committees assure me, that proficients in language would be certain of
good pay in our high schools. For the most part, women prefer to devote
themselves to mathematics. I used to say, with a smile, in the Western
States, that all the women could read the "Mécanique Céleste;" but they
found Cæsar and Télémaque equally uninteresting. Later, Colonel
Higginson bears witness to the impossibility of getting good classical
teachers.
It is a common idea, that the standard of education is higher now than
it was thirty years ago. It may be doubted. More things are taught in
schools,--ologies, isms, and the like; but the most thorough teachers
are not the most popular, and it may be questioned, whether in the best
minds on the Continent, in England, or this country, so great progress
has been made as has been generally claimed. There is much more
liberality in regard to the general question, but no more in regard to
the ideal standard.
In one of Niebuhr's letters to Madame Hensler, he says, in speaking of
Klopstock: "The character of the women is a remarkable feature of the
time of Klopstock's youth. The cultivation of the mind was carried
incomparably farther with them than with nearly all the young women of
our days; and this we should scarcely have expected to find in the
cotemporaries of our grandmothers. It was not, therefore, the influence
of our native literature; for that first rose into being along with, and
under the influence of, the love inspired by these charming maidens. For
some time after the Thirty Years' War, the ladies of Germany,
particularly those of the middle classes, were excessively coarse and
uneducated. This wonderful alteration must have taken place, therefore,
during eighty years,--between 1660 and 1740; though we are quite
ignorant how and when it began."
Passing over to France, we encounter the reputation of Madame de Sablé;
a woman, let me remark, for the benefit of those who are afraid that the
march of education will deprive them of their dinners, as celebrated for
her exquisite cooking and delicate confections as she was for her
literary ability. In speaking of her, Cousin says: "All the literature
of maxims and thoughts, including those of La Rochefoucauld, grew up in
the _salon_ of a lovely woman withdrawn into a convent. Having no
earthly pleasure but that of reliving her life, she knew how to impart
her own taste to society, in which she met by chance an accomplished
wit, whom she contrived to turn into a great writer." He is speaking of
the early part of the seventeenth century; and, in spite of the
notorious dissipation of the period, many gifted and many virtuous women
crowded her _salon_,--the Princess Palatine, the Princesses of Condé, de
Conti, de Longueville, and Schomberg, Anna de Rohan, and Mademoiselle
herself. There the gentlemen carried the pages they wrote at home, and
not only bore with, but accepted, the criticisms of the women. They had
no compensation but their praises, unless, like La Rochefoucauld, they
were cunning enough to demand a carrot pottage or some preserved plums
in exchange for a page of literature. In England, it is not necessary to
avail ourselves of an exceptional education, like that of Lady Jane
Grey. Remembering the noble culture of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart,
of the sturdy women of the Commonwealth, we might surely expect a
greater progress in the national idea. But, if its average could be
found, neither the wife of John Hampden nor Lady Russell would accept
it. It would seem that our standard advances, if at all, by a series of
Hugh Miller's parabolic curves. What we find, depends upon the point at
which we happen to test the eccentric arc; and, when we enter the
nineteenth century, we are forced to take refuge in analogy, and ask,
"If the ancient Egyptians _ever_ mastered the Copernican idea, why
should Galileo be imprisoned to-day for insisting that the sun does not
move round the earth?" The stimulating examples of noble and educated
women, which now present themselves, do not cheer us as they should,
while they remain exceptions. In making what Dickens would call an
"indiscriminate and incontinent" excursion, into the regions of female
thought and literature, we find its atmosphere in a somewhat
unventilated condition, and are reminded of an opinion of the Druses
which does not seem to have been wholly impertinent, that "literature is
a mean and contemptible occupation, _fit only for women_." Twenty years
ago, when ties of an almost filial tenderness linked us to the household
of the late Judge Cranch, we have often followed him, unrecognized, of a
Saturday afternoon, when, returning from the bench, he climbed Capitol
Hill, one hand grasping the handle of some colored washerwoman's basket,
or slinging her heavy bundle over his shoulder on a stick. The dear
remembrance, sustained by all the sweet and delicate courtesies of his
private life, has always lain side by side in our mind with that
exquisite Essay of Elia to which he first directed our attention, in
which a noble reverence to woman is inculcated, and we are taught to
judge every man's respect for the sex by his demeanor towards its
humblest representative. Yet, if Judge Cranch never swerved from his
gracious dignity, Charles Lamb did. Woman had not gained, in his
lifetime, such a hold upon her intellectual rights, that a dinner
company dared chide him, when he said of Letitia Landon, "If she
belonged to me, I would lock her up, and feed her on bread and water,
till she gave up writing poetry. A female poet, or female author of any
kind, ranks below an actress, _I_ think."
We do not quote these words so much against Lamb himself,--for the lips
of Mary Lamb's brother must have been thick with wine, when, with
"stammering, insufficient sound," he included her in so sweeping a
reprobation,--but to indicate the nature of that public opinion which is
even now dwarfing the ideals of the best men; to show how little
reliance is to be placed on the standard of the most generous, when a
remark like this, uttered in a large literary circle, passes without
criticism, and is recorded without conscious mortification,--recorded,
too, by the father of that Coventry Patmore, who has known how to offer
us, in later times, sugar-plums of his own _coloring_--let us add of his
own _poisoning_ also--under the alluring names of "betrothals" and
"espousals." How far the _facts_ are from the ideal standard, Mrs.
Jameson, in a lecture lately delivered, will help us to show.
"With all our schools," she says, "of all denominations, it remains an
astounding fact, that _one-half_ of the women who annually become
_wives_, in this England of ours, cannot sign their names in the parish
register; and that this amount of ignorance in the lower classes is
accompanied with an amount of ill-health, despondency, inaptitude, and
uselessness in the so-called educated classes, which, taken together,
prove that our boasted appliances are to a great extent failures."
The ancient standard of Italy was very high, even in the fifteenth
century, if we consider only the literary skill or mathematical culture
frequently desired and attained; but Anna Maria Mozzoni may congratulate
herself on having given a moral and social impetus to it, which it has
never before received. Her wise, considerate, philosophical suggestions
will meet the cordial welcome of all right-minded women. If followed
out, they will create nobler women than Tambroni or Laura Veratti.[3]
There was no institution in England for the proper training of sick
nurses, when Florence Nightingale went to Kaiserworth, a small town near
Düsseldorf, on the Rhine, to prepare herself to take charge of the
Female Sanitorium. In Great Britain, at this moment, the excess of the
female population over the male amounts to five hundred thousand souls;
and from all directions we hear the cry, that _men_ need educated
assistants. What is the country doing to answer this cry, to educate her
five hundred thousand women? In 1825 Dr. Gooch made a noble appeal to
the English public, in behalf of educating women to be nurses; but there
was no response. When the first school of design was started, a petition
was drawn up and _signed_, praying that women might not be taught, at
the expense of the Government, arts which would interfere with the
employment of men, and "take the bread out of _their_ mouths"!
Here was an absurd interference with the right of _feeding_, on the
part of these petitioners! As if women did not want bread as well as
men; and being, according to authority, the less intelligent and weaker
sex, one would suppose that to help them to find it might be a part of
that protection to which the Government stands pledged, and for which
their property is taxed.
"But," says Mrs. Jameson, "if a petition were drawn up, and handed to
medical men, praying that women should not be trained as nurses, nor
taught the laws of health, I am afraid there are well-intentioned men,
who would, at the time, be induced to sign it; but I believe that
twenty, nay, even ten years hence, they would look back upon their
signatures with as much disgust and amazement as is now excited by the
attempt to explode and sneer down the school at Marlborough House."
Another noble English woman, Mrs. Barbara Leigh Bodichon, in a recent
pamphlet called "Woman and Work," gives us the correspondence between
Jessie Meriton White and the various medical schools to which she
applied for admission. This lady had for several years had charge of two
little lame children, one of them her own nephew. The latter, on account
of some structural defect, had broken his leg sixteen times. Once, when
suitable attendance was not to be had, his aunt set and splintered it
herself. The physician who examined it advised her to apply for
instruction. She applied to fourteen medical institutions in the city
of London, asking sometimes for _private_ anatomical instruction. The
correspondence with four colleges in the year 1856 is given,--from the
St. George's, the Royal College of Surgeons, St. Bartholomew's Hospital,
and the University of London. It amply bears out her assertion, that she
was nowhere met with solid objections, or with sensible and logical
replies. Sometimes she was told of the _indelicacy_ of her request! The
University of London, which was legally bound by its charter to receive
her, treated her as coolly as the rest; and in no case was any
individual regret expressed for the official decision.
Indelicacy, forsooth! Where can we find it, if not in the impure nature
which raises the objection, and the low manner of thinking in general
society which consents to receive it? May not the mother, who receives
her naked new-born child from the hand of God, fitly ask to understand
the liabilities of its little frame? May not the wife, called in seasons
of sickness to the most delicate and trying duties, modestly ask for
that thorough culture which alone can make those duties easy? And who
make this objection? Men who go shuddering and half-drunken into the
dissecting room, to scatter vile jests above that prostrate temple of
the Holy Ghost! Men who see nothing in the exquisite development of
God's creation, but the reflection of their own obscene lives! Students
who know no better way to steel their courage to the use of the scalpel
than to play at foot-ball on the college green with a human skull,
holding its dignity to the level of their own honor![4]
The best hope that Jessie Meriton White has for England is, that some of
the most distinguished professors shall consent in time to take classes
of female students.
The office of the physician is as holy as that of the priest: formerly
they were one; now, at least, the physician should be priest-like.
Irreverence and impurity should be banished from medical ranks. The
science of medicine stands in great need of the intuitive genius of
woman. In pursuing it, she will need the steady caution of man. In this
country and in France, earnest and devoted students of both sexes have
stood in the dissecting room to the benefit of both. So let them
continue to stand, till the spirit is known by its fruits. An impure man
is no better than an impure woman; but impurity among men may be
concealed. Let it come between the two sexes, and it will be brought at
once into antagonism with society, and will meet its true desert. The
objection reveals the secrets of the medical college, and is the
strongest argument ever offered for the medical education of women.
If women are to practise as physicians, some means should be taken to
protect society against those who are imperfectly educated. _What a
degree means_ will always be doubtful, until men and women receive
their degrees in the same way and from the same hands. America stands
greatly in need of this protection. Crowds of unauthorized,
half-educated women, some of whom have not been ashamed to cross the
Atlantic, and have attracted such sympathy abroad as only a different
class of students deserve, are thronging the valley of the Mississippi,
as well as haunting with their empirical pretensions the purlieus of the
seaboard cities. If men had received properly trained women into their
colleges and medical societies, this would not have happened. Cannot
such physicians as Dr. Zakrzewska, Dr. Blackwell, Dr. Sewall, Dr. Tyng,
and Dr. Ross of Milwaukie, unite to organize a Woman's Medical Society,
with an examining board whose diploma shall attest the character of the
member? Dr. Storer's admirable pamphlet entitled "Why not?" points out
an evil, which will never be remedied by thrusting empirical women into
the positions now held by unscrupulous men.[5]
And what have we to say of our own country? Has the American standard
reached a safe altitude, or must we admit that it has the same
limitations? A popular width of view we have certainly gained in the
last half-century; but have we made secure progress in the right
direction? Some eighty years ago, John Adams wrote of his wife, "This
lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a brighter genius, more
information, and more refined taste, and was at least her equal in
virtues of the heart, in fortitude and firmness of character, in
resignation to the will of Heaven, and in all the virtues and graces of
the Christian life. Like Lady Russell, she never discouraged her husband
from running all hazards for the salvation of his country's liberties;
she was willing to share with me, and that her children should share
with us both, in all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."
Will America ever offer to the world a nobler picture? Is it at this
moment above or below our average ideal? "With such a mother," said John
Quincy Adams, in Boston, less than twenty years ago, "with such a
mother, it has been the perpetual instruction of my life to love and
reverence the female sex; but I have been taught also--and the lesson is
still more deeply impressed--I have been taught _not_ to flatter them."
Noble words! Gentlemen to whom it falls to deliver annually
Normal-school addresses would do well to take a lesson from them. They
would wince a little, could they hear the criticisms of the indignant
girls upon their actual advice and praise. How would these men have
liked it, if at fifteen they had been addressed as fathers of an unborn
generation, whose especial duty it was to adapt themselves to this
sphere? And why should men complain, that women look to marriage, and
marriage only, as salvation, if the whole tenor of their own influence
is used to emphasize it as woman's "manifest destiny"? "Are there not
_two_ married, and where is the one?" What propriety is there in
assuming, in advance, that the sphere which married life opens has a
stronger hold on one sex than the other?
We have said enough to show, that in Germany, France, England, and
America, the ideal standard of education was sufficiently high over a
century ago. Why has not such actual progress been made as might have
been expected?
Because _public opinion_ has constantly thwarted the ideal growth.
Educated women have, for the most part, wanted courage to do what is
right, unless sustained by men. In education, for the duties of which
they are acknowledged to be superior, they have never insisted on the
changes they knew to be necessary, but have uniformly succumbed to the
masculine idea. Shall we blame them? Is a conflict in the heart of a
family a pleasant thing? Certainly, the hand which the magnanimous
sympathy of men has set free cannot cast the first stone. The slowness
and faithlessness of men too often paralyzes the best efforts of women.
The faith which Isabella showed Columbus, would be, at this moment, a
grateful return from them. Charles Lamb has shown us how valueless to
the working woman the support of delicate sentiment may be. The ringing
of the glasses round a table dulled his exquisite ear to the fine
spheral harmonies it had once caught. He broke, in an after-dinner tilt,
the very lance with which he had pierced to the heart of the enemy's
shield. If the ideal standard makes no headway against public opinion,
what encouragement to our hopes does common life offer?
As exquisite beauty of water, hill, and dale lies hidden in many a
country hamlet, unheeded by the guidebook, unsuspected by the traveller
on the turnpike road; so, in society, self-sacrifice, noble daring, and
saintly perseverance, nestle behind the prominent failure. We find them
everywhere, except where we should most naturally look for them.
There is in England a Society for the Promotion of Female Education in
the East. It undertakes to do _abroad_ precisely the work that its
individual members refuse to assist the community to do at home.
Consequently, their printed schemes read like satires on their
individual convictions. In the year 1835, Miss Alice Holliday called the
attention of this society to the condition of women in Egypt and
Abyssinia. She asked their sanction to her attempt to educate the women
of Egypt, with an ultimate view to those of Abyssinia, whose condition
chiefly interested her. She had pursued a severe course of study,
unfriended and alone, before she asked this help. She had studied the
severe sciences, the antiquities and customs of the countries
themselves, and the Arabic and Coptic languages. She was fortunate also
in stirring the enthusiasm of a certain Miss Rogers, who, unable to
teach, was yet willing to accompany her friend, and devote her fortune
to their mutual support. As these ladies wanted no money from the
society they consulted, they were received as agents without difficulty,
and reached Alexandria in the autumn of 1836. At this time Miss Holliday
wrote: "The condition of the Coptic women is truly lamentable. Their
abodes are like the filthiest holes in London; yet their persons are
decked out in the most costly apparel. I have seen ladies sitting at
their latticed windows, their heads and necks adorned with pearls and
diamonds of the highest value, their bodies covered with the richest
silks and velvets, while the room they occupied was the most disgusting
scene you can imagine. Smoking and sleeping occupy their time. Female
schools have never had an existence, and the prejudice against them is
very strong."
We can recall the argument used in those Eastern lands, and the answer
which civilization offered. "I am afraid to teach my women," said the
Turk: "they are already crafty and impure. To gather them into public
places is to offer a premium on immodesty, and a temptation to
misconduct." The Christian answered proudly, "We can trust our women;
yes, even in Paris and London."
Soon after their arrival, Miss Rogers died; but her friend was not
discouraged. In the following March, an officer of state, Hekekyan
Effendi, came to inquire whether she would take charge of the royal
women, one hundred in number, and the nearest relatives of the
sovereign. Much depended, it was thought, upon the co-operation of the
oldest daughter, Nas-lee Hanoom; and it was His Highness's desire that
the heads of the family should be formed into a committee to extend
female schools. See how this Mohammedan officer writes to Miss Holliday.
"You have no doubt read much about hareems," he says, "yet little, I
fear, that resembles the truth. We pay great respect to women and aged
persons, whatever may be our own rank. Our children, however, are
uneducated, in the European sense of the term. Besides being illiterate,
they know nothing of domestic economy; and, in the middling and lower
classes of the community, this ignorance is so profound as to endanger,
by its dire consequences, domestic health, peace, and prosperity. This
want is the first cause of slavery and its concomitant vices. In
seconding the illustrious efforts of Mehemet Ali, I have been able to
trace our debasement as a nation to _no other cause_ than the want of a
useful and efficient moral education for our women. In giving to them
enlightened education, we shall be striking at the root of the evils
that afflict us; we shall diminish the dangers and misfortunes which
proceed from ignorance and idleness. Habits of industry, cleanliness,
order, and economy, by increasing happiness, make us morally better, and
will secure that moral training to our children which no subsequent
effort is sufficient to replace."
So true is it that the value of words is comparative, that all this
might have been written by some Secretary of the Board of Education in
Massachusetts. The arguments of the Turk and Effendi are very familiar
to us. Modern civilized society shuts women out of schools to protect
their modesty. Modern professors tell us how much they respect women,
and value material training, at the very moment when they bar the gates
of life against her. On the 27th of March, 1838, Miss Holliday went in
state to the hareem. She was preceded by the two janissaries attached to
the English Consulate, bearing their silver wands of office, and
accompanied by the wife of Hekekyan. In the ante-room they were regaled
with coffee out of golden cups set with diamonds. Young Georgian girls
of great beauty brought sherbet and massive pipes with amber
mouth-pieces. They were then introduced to the Princess Nas-lee, a
little woman about forty, simply dressed; and, before the interview
ended, Alice had promised to spend four hours of every day in the
hareem. She began with instruction that tended to civilize daily life;
and boxes of embroidery and baby-clothes, made for patterns in England,
excited the first lively interest. She declined all invitations to take
up her abode in the hareem, although promised entire liberty. She was
_humble_, and, as a consequence, _wise_. She did not expect great
results, or look for much enthusiasm, in the hareem.
In August, she writes: "My visits have been attended with the most
cheering success. I am received and honored with every possible
distinction; but, added to my school, it is a great fatigue." Her
character in every way sustained the effect of her teaching. She was
offered thirty pounds a month for her attendance at the hareem, but
thought ten pounds sufficient, and would accept no more. In October, a
box of presents was received from England. When Hekekyan was invited to
look into this box, he seized upon some scientific plates sent to the
young princess. "Ah!" said he, "these are the things we need." The Pacha
was captivated, in his turn, by an orrery, and a model of the Thames
Tunnel. The hareem sent back a similar box, and Nas-lee herself worked a
scarf for the queen. Miss Holliday was soon ordered to translate some of
her books into Turkish; and her princesses wrote touching letters to
their English friends. Soon after, we find this indefatigable woman
teaching English, French, drawing, and writing, in the hareem of a late
Governor of Cairo. Education must begin with languages; for Egypt has no
literature to offer to her children. In 1840 Victoria sent to the hareem
a portrait of herself, which was carried in procession and hung with
proper honors by the side of that of the pacha. Very soon came an
Egyptian Society for the Promotion of Female Education. Scientific
instruments and books were ordered. An infant school began with one
hundred and fifty children. The hareem demanded another teacher, and
Mrs. Lieder was sent out. In 1844 a male school was formed, and European
teachers imported. The young girls, who had begun with needle-work eight
years before, were now studying Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, geography,
arithmetic, and drawing. "What a change," writes Alice in 1846,--"what a
change within the last ten years! When I came to Egypt, there was not a
woman who could read; and now some hundreds have not only the power, but
the best books. Year after year, I have been permitted to see the growth
of a new civilization. What a change has come over the royal family
since I first entered it! The desire for trifles is preparing the way
for our noblest gifts; and a fatal blow has been struck at the whole
system of hareems." It would be pleasant to trace this devoted woman
farther, to know whether she still lives, and if she has reached the
Abyssinian plains. In this humble way began the great educational
movement in Egypt, which gave strength and vitality to Mehemet Ali's
best-considered plans, which has sent scores of young princes to Paris,
and will eventually change the face of the whole land.
Alice Holliday succeeded, because the "sinews of war"--namely, the
"purse-strings"--were in her own hands. Very similar in spirit was the
enterprise of Madame Luce in Algiers, of which Madame Bodichon has given
an interesting account. Madame Luce went to Algiers, soon after the
conquest, about 1834, and was probably a teacher in the family of one of
the resident functionaries. In 1845, nearly nine years after Alice had
begun her Egyptian labors, Madame Luce was a widow, with very little
money to devote to the work on which she had set her heart; namely, a
school to civilize the women of Algiers. Government was already
beginning to instruct the men; but the Mohammedan dread of proselytism
stood in their way. The women were in the worst state,--closely veiled,
taught no manual arts, having no skill in housekeeping even,--for the
simple life of a warm climate, the scanty furniture, give no scope for
such skill. To wash their linen, to clamber over the roofs to make
calls, to offer coffee and receive it, to dress very splendidly at
times, very untidily always, was the synopsis of their lives. They did
not know their own ages, yet were liable to be sold in marriage at the
age of ten. Upon such material, and at such a time,--when the value of a
Moorish woman was estimated, like that of a cow, _by her
weight_,--Madame Luce undertook to work. She had a Christian courage in
her heart, which might put many a man to shame.
While laying her plans, she had perfected herself in the native tongue,
and now commenced a campaign among the families of her acquaintance,
coaxing them to trust their little girls to her for three or four hours
a day, that they might be taught to read and write French, and also to
sew neatly. Her presents, her philanthropic tact, her solemn promise not
to interfere in matters of religion, won for her, at length, four little
girls, whom she took to her own hired house without a moment's delay. As
the rumor of her success spread, one child after another dropped in,
till she had more than thirty. Finding the experiment answer beyond her
hopes, she was compelled to demand assistance of the local government.
Men have no faith in quixotic undertakings. As might have been expected,
they complimented Madame Luce upon her energy, saw no use in educating
Moorish women, and declined to assist her. She waited, in breathless
suspense, till the day on which the Council were to meet, bribing the
parents, clothing the children, and pursuing her noble work. "Surely,"
she thought, "they _will_ devise some plan;" but the twilight of the
30th of December closed in, and they had not even alluded to her school.
On the 1st of January, 1846, it was closed. Nine hundred miles from
Paris, without the modern conveniences of transport, what do you suppose
this woman did? Could she give up? She scorned an offer of personal
remuneration made by a few gentlemen, and told them that what she wanted
was adequate support for a national work. She pawned her plate, her
jewels, even a gold thimble, and set off for Paris, where she arrived
early in February, and sent in her report to the Minister of War. She
went in person from deputy to deputy, detailing her plans. Poor Madame
Luce! her success was not quite so speedy as Alice Holliday's, whose
schools had doubtless stimulated her efforts. Everywhere she had to
combat the scepticism, the indifference, the inertia, of worldly men.
There was no Miss Rogers, with a kind heart and a long purse, to help
her on her way. Nor did Madame Luce desire that there should be. She
knew that individual efforts of such a kind can never last long; and she
was determined to make the government adopt and become responsible for
her work. Then it would outlive her. Then it might redeem the nation. At
last, daylight began to dawn. The government gave her three thousand
francs for her journey, and eleven hundred more on account of some claim
of her deceased husband. They urged her return to Algiers, and promised
still farther support. So perseveringly had she wrought, that, early in
June, she was able to re-open her school, amid the rejoicings of parents
and children. It was seven months before the government contrived to put
the school on a better foundation. During this time, her pupils
constantly increased, and she was put to the greatest straits to keep it
together. The Curé of Algiers gave her a little money and a great deal
of sympathy. The Count Guyot, high in office, helped her from his own
purse. When she was entirely destitute, she would send one of her
negresses to him, and he would send her enough for the day. On one
occasion, he sent a small bag of money, left by the Duc de Nemours for
the benefit of a journal which had ceased to exist. She found in this
two hundred francs, which she received as a direct gift from Heaven.
Thus she got along from hand to mouth. She engaged an Arab mistress, who
was remarkably cultivated, to assist her, and to train the children in
her own faith. Pledged as she was not to instruct them in Christianity,
she had the sense to see, what few would have admitted, that such
instruction was not only necessary, but desirable. It gave them the
knowledge of one God, and made clear distinctions between right and
wrong. At last, in January, 1847, the school was formally adopted, and
received its first visit of inspection. The gentlemen were received by
thirty-two pupils, and the Arab mistress _unveiled_; a great triumph of
common sense, if we consider how short a time the school had been
opened. Since that time, the work has steadily prospered. In 1858 it
numbered one hundred and twenty pupils, between the ages of four and
eighteen. The practical wisdom of Madame Luce led her to establish a
workshop, where the older pupils learned the value of their labor, and
earned a good deal of money. They had always a week's work in advance,
when the wise, slow government put an end to it, whether to save the
thirty-five pounds a year, which the salary of its superintendent cost,
or to prevent competition with the nunneries, Madame Luce has never
known. _She_ thought it the best part of her plan,--far better than
teaching the girls to turn a French phrase neatly for the satisfaction
of inspectors. The government are now beginning to understand her value.
They have established a second school in Algiers, and several in the
provinces. The results are not miraculous, but they plant new germs of
moral power and thought in every family circle which they touch. Such
names as those of Alice Holliday and Madame Luce have a great value.
These women and their labors are permeated by the Christian idea of
self-surrender. The preponderance of this idea in these examples
distinguishes them above women of the past, whether German _exaltadas_,
brilliant adventurers amid the perils of the Froude, or witty loiterers
in the _salon_ of Madame de Sablé.
La Rochefoucauld, who was proud of Mademoiselle and her princesses,
would only have sneered at Madame Luce; nor would Lady Russell, nor Mrs.
John Adams, have followed Alice to Egypt cheerfully. Nor do these two
women belong to the army of saints and martyrs. A religious devotee has
in her a mistaken enthusiasm, and goes _away from_ the world. These
women are doing the work of saints and martyrs with a far higher
appreciation of God's providence, of the uses of this world, and with
all the hindrances that fall to the lot of simple human beings. It is
not our intention to multiply such instances here: they belong, rather,
to the illustrations of individual power. We must not forget, however,
the existence, in England, of that circle of women, of whom Mrs.
Bodichon, Mrs. Hugo Reid, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Jameson, and
Bessie Raynor Parkes, are honorable examples. We have such lives as
those of Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Evans; the scientific reputation not
alone of Mrs. Somerville, but of Mrs. Griffith, to whose masculine power
of research English marine botany may be said to owe its existence, and
who still survives, at an advanced age, to see that knowledge becomes
popular, in her cheerful and honored decline, which she pursued, for
many a year, unassisted and alone. We have Mrs. Janet Taylor, one of the
best and most popular teachers of navigation and nautical mathematics in
all England. Her classes have been celebrated and numerously attended by
men who have been long at sea, as well as by youths preparing for the
merchant service; and, still farther, we have in cultivated circles, to
balance the old prejudice, an encouraging liberality. A review,
published in the Westminster, after the issue of Miss Martineau's
pamphlet on the future government of India, shows conclusively that any
woman who will do _good_ work may feel sure of honest appreciation. If
she does poor work, she will only the more provoke the enemy. Nothing
could have been more ambitious than Miss Martineau's theme; but, when
she showed herself well qualified to handle it, no one had any
disposition to consider the choice unwomanly. Such criticisms are the
exponents of the century's experience. They betray the unconscious
drift of the public mind. A book is modest by the side of a pamphlet.
The former may wait its day: the latter aspires to immediate influence,
if it does any thing,--must mould the hour. It was once the chosen
weapon of Milton and Bolingbroke, later of Ward and Brougham. Is it
nothing, that a woman of advanced years, writing from an invalid's
chamber, feels herself competent to wield it? Was it nothing, when, by
her tracts on political economy, she gave an impulse to the middle
classes of her native land, for which busy political men could not find
time?
Is it not Godwin who says that "human nature is better read in romance
than history"? Every actual life falls short of its ideal; but a poem
dares demand some approximation to its standard from the whole world. In
this way, "Aurora Leigh," into which Mrs. Browning confesses she has
thrown her whole heart, is a wonderful indication of human thought and
feeling. In this country, there are many significant signs of progress.
The name of Maria Mitchell in astronomy; of the women engaged in the
Coast Survey; of the professors at Antioch, Vassar, and Oberlin,--are
familiarly known, and have their own power. Only lately, a Nashua
factory-girl takes the highest honors at the Oread Institute; and its
principal is willing to put her and two other graduates into competition
with any three college graduates in New England for examination
according to the curriculum. When she finished the education she had
first earned the money to procure, she left her Worcester home, and,
with quiet right-mindedness, went back to Nashua to labor for an
indigent family. As she tends her loom on the Jackson Corporation, she
will have leisure to investigate her _right_ to these acquisitions.
In support of this "exception," the superintendent of the New-York City
Schools, long ago, reported, that its female schools, whether by merit
of teachers or pupils or both, are of a much higher grade than the male
schools. Eighteen girls'-schools are superior, in average attainment, to
the very best boys'-school. He goes on to speak of the rapidity with
which women acquire knowledge, in terms which remind us of Margaret
Fuller, when she remarks of Dr. Channing, that it was not very pleasant
to read to him; "for," said she, "he takes in subjects more deliberately
than is conceivable to us feminine people, with our habits of ducking,
diving, or flying for truth." In speaking of her classes at Vassar
College, Miss Mitchell says (1865): "I have a class of seventeen pupils,
between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. They come to me for fifty
minutes every day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am
puzzled by them daily. They show more mathematical ability, and more
originality of thought, than I had expected. I doubt whether young men
would show as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard
College who take mathematical astronomy, do you think?"
At the session of the Michigan Legislature, held in 1857-8, petitions
were received, asking that women might be permitted to enjoy all the
advantages of the State University. The committee to whom the subject
was referred, took counsel with the older colleges at the East, whose
whole spirit and method is as much opposed to such an idea as that of
Oxford. The result was, that they reported against any change for the
present,--a report the more to be regretted, as Ann Arbor has a broader
University foundation than any institution within the limits of the
United States. The University has lately petitioned for a larger
endowment, and again an effort has been made to secure its advantages
for women; Theodore Tilton pleading before the committee in their
behalf, in February, 1867. We know of twenty-seven colleges in the
United States, open to men and women, of which Oberlin was the noble
pioneer.[6]
The highest culture has been claimed for women: it has been shown, that,
for two centuries, the ideal of such a culture has existed, but has been
depressed by an erroneous public opinion. There has, however, been a
steady growth in the right direction, which entitles us to ask for a
"revised and corrected" public opinion. The influence of mental culture
is a small thing by the side of that insinuating atmospheric power and
the customs of society which it controls. All educated men and women,
all liberal souls, therefore, should do their utmost to invigorate
public opinion. To allow no weakness to escape us, to challenge every
falsehood as it passes, to brave every insinuation and sneer, is what
duty demands. Can you not bear to be called "women's-rights women"? To
whom has the name ever been agreeable? Society gives the lie to your
purest instincts, and you bear it. It calls the truths you accept hard
names, and you are dumb. It throws stones, and you shrink behind some
ragged social fence, leaving a few weak women to stand the assault
alone.
What influence has the highest literary character of America, at this
moment, on the popular idea of women? "How much is there that we may not
say _aloud_," wrote Niebuhr to Savigny, "for fear of being stoned by the
stupid _good_ people!" and upon this principle the thinkers of our
society act; not a word escaping from their guarded homes to cheer the
more exposed workers.
Prescott stabbed Philip II. to the heart without a qualm. Ticknor could
give a life to the romance of old Spain. Froude has defended Henry VIII.
Our best poets sing verses that enslave, since the song of beauty echoes
always among tropical delights. "Barbara Frietchie" alone has been
written for us. When George Curtis blows his clarion, a courtly throng
come at the call. We yield with the rest to the charm of the lips on
which Attic bees once clustered. What honor do we pay the fair
proportions of the simple truth?
How can we settle questions of right and wrong for remote periods,
without knowing the faces of either in the street to-day? How shall any
one honor Margaret of Parma, and pity poor crazy Joan in Spain, and have
no heart for the heroism of Mary Patton? How unravel with patient study
the _tracasseries_ of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, yet ignore the
complications of the life he himself lives?
When Mary Patton had carried her ship round Cape Horn,--standing in a
parlor where the air was close, though the breezes that entered at its
open casement swept the Common as they came, a woman told, with newly
kindled enthusiasm, the story of that wonderful voyage. She gave her, in
warm words, her wifely and womanly due. "She saved the ship, God bless
her!" she said as she concluded; and another voice, that once was sweet,
responded, "More shame to her!"
"'More shame to her!'" repeated the first speaker, as if she had been
struck a sudden blow; and turning quickly towards the girl, beautiful,
well educated, carefully reared, who, in the fulness of her twenty
summers, found time for church-going, for clothing the poor, for elegant
study, for every thing but sympathy,--"More shame!" she repeated: "What!
for saving life and property?"--"Better that they should all have gone
to the bottom," returned her friend, "than that one woman should step
out of her sphere!" Ah! the Infinite Father knows how to educate the
public opinion that we need. Now and then he lifts a woman, as he did
Mary Patton, against her will out of her ordinary routine; and, while
all the world gaze at her with tender sympathy, they half accept the
coming future.
Does it sadden you, that we should repeat such words? They did not shock
the ears on which they fell; they met no farther rebuke than one
astonished question. Yet what did they represent? Not the public opinion
of Mary Patton. The New-York underwriters, when they voted her a
thousand dollars, were a fit gauge of that. It was the public opinion of
the "right of vocation" that the young girl unconsciously betrayed.
Harsh words die on our lips, as we think, "This girl's life is aimless.
_She_ would gladly do some noble work, but society does not help her.
She lacks courage to stand alone, and envies the very woman she
decries."
"Public opinion is of slow growth," you retort: "do not charge its
corruptions on the people of to-day."
The people of to-day are responsible for any corruptions which they do
not reject.
We have seen that the standard of womanly education does not lead where
it should, because controlled by a public opinion which demands too
little. It becomes us here to investigate the origin of that public
opinion, and to ask the meaning of the lives which have been lived in
its despite.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This does not mean the supervision of father and mother, but that
into colleges, universities, medical schools, and whatever educational
institutions may be named, the controlling and protecting influence of
both sexes should be carried. I believe that every university should
have a cultivated and elegant woman (not necessarily the _wife_ of any
of its officers), whose duty it should be to preside over its social
life, and offer such allurements to virtuous pleasure that
gambling-houses and worse shall lose their present fascinations. If
young men could associate with virtuous and lovely women, under
suitable sanction, in their college life, they would not, in general,
go out of it in search of the vicious and unlovely. No one who lives
within three miles of a large university need doubt the meaning of
this paragraph. An age and a religious faith which discards the
cloister, should discard a cloisteral fashion, wherever it exists.
[2] "Society offered her no welcome." I am very well aware that this
statement, taken with what I shall elsewhere indicate, will be
considered an exaggeration; but, with a somewhat wide and varied
experience of the United States and of Canada, I maintain it to be
true. I am not to say what is true in the eyes of others, but what is
true in my own. "What!" some one will exclaim, "education not a
passport to social honor! Where was there ever a country where the
teacher was respected as she is in New England?" Theoretically, this
is true; and I have known a few instances in New England, in which
teachers of private schools, of good family, successful in acquiring
wealth (not necessarily through their schools), kept an eminent social
position. Men generally keep a fair position; women, rarely. To test
the truth of this, let me press the question. To whom do we all, to
whom does the Commonwealth, owe a sacred debt, if not to the teachers
of the primary and the grammar schools? Among these women, I have
found some of the most delicate, high-bred, and cultivated women whom
I have ever known of the same age. Let any one who sees them collected
on public occasions glance at them, and judge; but, in cities at
least, these women are never in society. Their meagre salaries prevent
them from dressing as ladies must be dressed for a large company. For
the same reason, their boarding-places are obscure and lonely. The
middle class of artisans, &c., who send their children to the public
schools, seek no intercourse with those whose refinement seems to
isolate them; the upper class look down upon them very kindly, but
never think of inviting them to meet distinguished people, of showing
them rare books or pictures, of stimulating their worn-out faculties
in any way. Why do we not make these teachers our first care? Should
we not be more than repaid--if pay we must have--by the cheer and
comfort added to the schoolroom in which our children are to be
taught? I have tried the experiment of bringing these tired souls into
contact with those who ought to refresh them. It does marvellously
well, until the crucial question is asked, "Who is she?" If I answer,
"The teacher of a primary school," what a change of countenance, what
a fading of the cordial smile, what passive indifference! and this, in
cases where, in refinement and delicacy of manner, the young lady
might pass unchallenged anywhere. But let the subject of my experiment
be a girl of genius; with such cultivation only as a Normal School
could add to the education of a country home; deficient still in the
minor graces of deportment; too energetic and adventurous, perhaps, to
be elegant; and who will take a motherly interest in her, draw her
within the charmed circle where she shall learn to carry herself with
reserve and dignity, and to veil her flashing powers, that they may
warm where they have hitherto consumed?
No: I do not exaggerate. I believe we are all concerned to know in
what sort of homes, under what influences, with what helps to health
and happiness, these lonely and isolated girls pass the hours when
they are not engaged in teaching. It concerns us, in the first place,
of course, because theirs are the direct influences which mould our
children; but I scorn that argument. It concerns us far more because
they are the children of the same Father, engaged in the most trying
of human vocations, and entitled as women, especially as unprotected
women, to the sympathy of all mothers.
Some years ago, a lady not yet out of her teens, and suddenly reduced
in fortune, went to Virginia to teach. She had letters from persons of
distinction, who had known her in her early home. The letters were
delivered; but there the matter ended. But she was one of those
persons who make a place for themselves; and, after the neighborhood
grew proud of her, she was called down one day to meet the wife of a
lieutenant in the navy, to whom one of her letters had been addressed.
"I am sorry I have not called before," apologized the visitor; "but
there are so many of _these teachers_!" She had no time to say more:
the young girl's cheek kindled. "Madam," said she, springing to her
feet, "I desire no attention from you which would not under any
circumstances be accorded to your daughter's teacher;" and she left
the room. It is a matter of small importance, that, in this case, the
young teacher was soon placed in a position in which her good-will
became important to the lieutenant's wife.
"This," you will say, "was at the South. It grew out of that spirit of
'caste' which died with slavery." Is it indeed dead? Is there no
spirit of caste in Massachusetts?
[3] Un Passo Avanti nella Cultura Femminile Fesi e Progetto di Anna
Maria Mozzoni Mitano. 1866.
[4] I would gladly expunge the bitter reproof of these lines; but they
record a fact which occurred at a medical school, where such an
application was made, and must stand as history.
[5] The three parts of this book have been made to conform to the
census and statistics of the year 1850. To bring them up to the year
1860 would require a repetition of all the labor originally devoted to
the question. That would be unwise if it were possible, for it could
not alter the bearing of any statements; and it is not possible,
because we have now no certain values in America. I had from the first
intended to indicate in notes any important changes that had taken
place in this decade. I had earnestly hoped to be able to contradict
here the statements in the text in regard to medical opportunities for
women, and the proper training of sick nurses, in England. But my
English correspondents assure me that I have no occasion to change any
thing; that the facts remain substantially what they were when my
manuscript was written.
"But," says some watchful woman, "has not Miss Garrett taken her
degree from Apothecaries' Hall? and have not a few women at least been
trained as sick nurses?"
There is still no _institution_ for the training of sick nurses, as
the text asserts. Some few have been trained in hospitals and the
like, on conditions of service, or to supply the need of such
institutions themselves. How does the matter stand with Miss Garrett?
The press has made the most of her success: it lies with us to exhibit
the naked truth. After applying in vain to the various medical
colleges, Miss Garrett went to Apothecaries' Hall. Here they refused
her; but she looked up their charter. She found the word indicating to
whom degrees should be granted indeterminate, with no character of sex
attached to it. Lawyers told her the hall must grant her a degree, or
surrender its charter. She was wealthy, and in earnest. She pushed her
advantage. "The Apothecaries' Hall" prescribed certain courses of
instruction to be pursued and certified before the degree could be
granted. These she pursued in private, paying the most exorbitant
rates for her instruction. In one instance, for a course of lectures,
to which a man's fee would have been _five_ guineas, she paid _fifty_;
and I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory
steps must have amounted to two thousand pounds. All honor to Miss
Garrett! Should her genius as a physician equal her energy and her
wealth, she may gain something for the cause she has espoused, by the
honor and consideration she will win for her sex. Apart from this, it
will be seen, she has gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to
ordinary mortals; and the conditions of the degree, in the present
state of public feeling, would make it wholly impracticable.
The case, as it has been stated to us, is an exemplification, on a
gigantic scale, of all that we complain of; and proves our statement,
that women have not won an education for themselves, till they win
with it its legitimate results. For their opportunities as things now
stand, all over the world, women pay a premium on the terms offered to
men. Let them take these opportunities as tools, and try to win their
bread with them, and the wages offered are, as a rule, a large
discount on those offered to men. Political economy has nothing to do
with the exceptional cases in which this is most evident,--only the
common, habitual idea, that the wages of women must be kept down; and
that, to do it, the value of superior labor must not be recognized, as
in the case of the female teacher quoted in the text.
In the Report of St. Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children, in
Marylebone, I find Miss Elizabeth Garrett mentioned as the General
Medical Attendant. The Devonshire-square Nursing Institute,
established, I think, by Mrs. Fry, twenty years ago, sends out nurses
on the request of clergymen. Several sisters give their whole time to
it.
King's College pays one thousand pounds annually for nurses to St.
John's Home.
St. Thomas's Hospital, where nurses are being trained by the
Nightingale fund, rejected fifty applications in six months.
The excitement in England has had a wholesome effect upon colonial
action. The East-Indian Government has lately given Lady Canning
twenty thousand rupees, to assist in building a home for the Calcutta
Nurses' Institute; and a movement is making in India to educate native
women as physicians. See, in the Appendix, the account of Miss
Nightingale's School for Nurses in Liverpool.
Since the above was written, in January, 1867, three ladies have taken
their degrees at Apothecaries' Hall, having passed a good examination,
in Euclid, arithmetic, English history, and Latin. The _cost_ of these
degrees has not transpired.
[6] See Appendix.
II.
HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE.
"A governed thought, thinking no thought but good,
Makes crowded houses, holy solitude."
_Sanscrit Book of Good Counsels._
The existing public opinion with regard to woman has been formed by the
influence of heathen ages and institutions, kept up by a mistaken study
of the classics,--a study so pursued, that Athens and Rome, Aristophanes
and Juvenal, are more responsible for the popular views of woman, and
for the popular mistakes in regard to man's position toward her, than
any thing that has been written later.
This influence pervades all history; and so the study of history
becomes, in its turn, the source of still greater and more specious
error, except to a few rare and original minds, whose eccentricities
have been pardoned to their genius, but who have never influenced the
world to the extent that they have been influenced by it.
The adages or proverbs of all nations are the outgrowths of their first
attempts at civilization. They began at a time which knew neither
letter-paper nor the printing-press; and they perpetuate the rudest
ideas, such as are every way degrading to womanly virtue. The influence
of general literature is impelled by the mingled current. For many
centuries, it was the outgrowth of male minds only, of such as had been
drilled for seven years at least into all the heathenisms of which we
speak.
Women, when they first began to work, followed the masculine idea,
shared the masculine culture. As a portion of general literature, the
novel, as the most popular, exerts the widest sway. No educational
influence in this country compares with it; even that of the pulpit
looks trivial beside it. There are thousands whom that influence never
reaches; hardly one who cannot beg or buy a newspaper, with its story by
some "Sylvanus Cobb."
From the first splash of the Atlantic on a Massachusetts beach to the
farthest cañon which the weary footsteps of the Mormon women at this
moment press; from the shell-bound coast of Florida, hung with garlands
of orange and lime, to the cold, green waters of Lake Superior, in their
fretted chalice of copper and gold,--the novel holds its way. On the
railroad, at the depot, in the Irish hut, in the Indian lodge, on the
steamer and the canal-boat, in the Fifth-avenue palace, and the
Five-Points den of infamy, its shabby livery betrays the work that it is
doing.
Until very lately, it has kept faith with history and the classics; but
it is passing more and more into the hands of women,--of late into the
hands of noble and independent women; and there are signs which indicate
that it may soon become a potent influence of redemption. It has thus
far done infinite harm, by drawing false distinctions between the
masculine and feminine elements of human nature, and perpetuating,
through the influence of genius often _intensifying_, the educational
power of a false theory of love.
Social customs follow in the train of literature; and sometimes in
keeping with popular errors, but oftener in stern opposition to them,
are the lives and labors of remarkable individuals of both sexes,--lives
that show, if they show nothing else, how much the resolute endeavor of
one noble heart may do towards making real and popular its own
convictions.
The influence of newspapers sustains, of course, the general current
derived from all these sources.
Public opinion, then, flows out of these streams,--out of classical
literature, history, general reading, and the proverbial wisdom of all
lands; out of social conventions, and customs and newspapers. These
streams set one way. Only individual influences remain, to stem their
united force.
We must treat of them more at length, and first of the classics. Until
very lately, there were no proper helps to the study of Egyptian, Greek,
or Roman mythology. It was studied by the letter, and made to have more
or less meaning, according to the teacher who interpreted it. Lemprière
had no room for moral deductions or symbolic indications; his columns
read like a criminal report in the "New-York Herald." The Egyptian
mythology was, doubtless, an older off-shoot from the same stem. Many of
its ceremonies, its symbols, and its idols, must be confused by the
uninstructed mind with realities of the very lowest, perhaps we should
not be far wrong if we said, of the most revolting stamp. The Greek
classics, so far as I know them, present a singular mixture of
influences; but, where woman is concerned, the lowest certainly
preponderate. We should be sorry to lose Homer and Æschylus, Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Xenophon, from our library; but of how many poets and
dramatists, from the few fragments of Pindar and Anacreon down through
the tragic poets,--down, very far down, indeed, to Aristophanes,--can we
say as much?
There need be no doubt about Aristophanes. The world would be the purer,
and all women grateful, if every copy of his works, and every coarse
inference from them, could be swept out of existence to-morrow. When we
find a _noble picture_ in Xenophon, it had a noble original, like
Panthea in Persia, as old perhaps as that fine saying in the Heetopades
which all the younger Veds disown. When we find an _ignoble thought_, it
seems to have been born out of his Greek experience. Transported by a
fair ideal, Plato asks, in his "Republic," "Should not this sex, which
we condemn to obscure duties, be destined to functions the most noble
and elevated?" But it was only to take back the words in his "Timæus,"
and in the midst of a society that refused to let the wife sit at table
with the husband, and whose young wives were not "tame" enough to speak
to their husbands, if we may believe the words of Xenophon, until after
months of marriage. When Iscomachus, the model of an Athenian husband,
and the friend of Socrates, asked his wife if she knew whether he had
married her for love, "I know nothing," she replied, "but to be faithful
to you, and to learn what you teach." He responded by an exhortation on
"_staying at home_," which has come down to posterity, and left her,
with a kiss, for the saloon of Aspasia! Pindar and Anacreon, even when
they find no better representatives than Dr. Wolcott and Tom Moore,
still continue to crown the wine-cup, and impart a certain grace to
unmanly orgies. A late French writer goes so far as to call Euripides "a
woman-hater, who could not pardon Zeus for having made woman an
indispensable agent in the preservation of the species." In his
portraits of Iphigenia and Macaria, Euripides follows his conception of
_heroic_, not human nature. They are demi-goddesses; yet how are their
white robes stained!
Iphigenia says,--
"More than a thousand women is one man
Worthy to see the light of day;"
a sentiment which has prevailed ever since.
"Silence and a chaste reserve
Is woman's genuine praise, and to remain
Quiet within the house,"
proceeds Macaria, and still farther:--
"Of prosperous future could I form
One cheerful hope?
A poor forsaken virgin who would deign
To take in marriage? Who would wish for sons
From one so wretched? Better, then, to die
Than bear such undeservèd miseries!"
Here is the popular idea which curses society to-day,--no vocation
possible to woman, if she may not be a wife, and bear children: and
these are favorable specimens; they show the practical tendencies of the
very best of Euripides. The heroic portions are like Miriam's song, and
have nothing to do with us and our experiences.
In speaking of Aristophanes, I do not speak ignorantly. I know how much
students consider themselves indebted to him for details of manners and
customs, for political and social hints, for a sort of Dutch school of
pen-painting.
But if a nation's life be so very vile, if crimes that we cannot name
and do not understand be among its amusements, why permit the record to
taint the mind and inflame the imagination of youth? Why put it with our
own hands into the desks of those in no way prepared to use it? Would
you have wit and humor? Sit down with Douglas Jerrold, or to the genial
table spread by our Boston Autocrat, and you will have no relish left
for the coarse fare of the Athenian. One of the most vulgar assaults
ever made upon the movement to elevate woman in this country was made in
a respectable quarterly by a Greek scholar. It was sustained by
quotations from Aristophanes, and concluded by copious translations from
one of his liveliest plays, offered as a specimen of the "riot and
misrule" that we ambitious women were ready to inaugurate. Coarser words
still our Greek scholar might have taken from the same source to
illustrate his theory. He knew very well that the nineteenth century
would bear hints, insinuations, sneers, any thing but plain speaking. We
have limits: he observed them, and forbore. Women sometimes talk of
Aristophanes as if they had read his plays with pleasure; a thing for
which we can only account by supposing that they do not take the whole
significance of what they read,--and this is often the case with men.
But a college furnishes helps. The mysteries of the well-thumbed English
key are translated afresh into what we may call "college slang,"
illustrated oftentimes by clever if vulgar caricatures, where a few
significant lines tell in a moment what a pure mind would have pondered
years without perceiving; and if, perchance, some modest woman finds her
friend or lover at this work, society says only: "You should not have
touched the young man's book. What harm for him to amuse himself?--only
women should never find it out! Keep them pure, no matter what becomes
of men. What business had you to know the meaning of those pencil
marks?"
Even St. John does not hesitate to condemn Aristophanes.[7] "With an art
in which Shakespeare was no mean proficient," he begins, "he opens up a
more culpable source of interest in the frequent satire of vices
condemned as commonly as they are practised. He unveils the mysteries of
iniquity with a fearless and by no means an unreluctant hand. He
ventures fearlessly on themes which few before or since have touched,
despising the stern condemnation of posterity. He evidently shared in
the worst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists,
availed himself joyfully of the mask of satire to entertain his own
imagination with his own descriptions. No one, with the least
clear-sightedness or candor, can fail to perceive the depraved moral
character of Aristophanes. Only less filthy than Rabelais, his fancy
runs riot among the moral jakes and common sewers of the world, over
which, by consummate art and the matchless magic of his style, he
contrives unhappily to breathe a fragrance which should never be found
save where virtue is."
When I first took up my pen, knowing well that I should speak of
Margaret Fuller's beloved Greeks in a tone somewhat different from hers,
I did not know that I should have the sympathy of a single eminent
scholar.
It was with no common pleasure, therefore, that, opening her Life at
random, one day, I chanced upon these words from her own pen. She is
speaking of a class of private pupils:--
"I have always thought all that was said about the anti-religious
tendency of a classical education to be 'auld wives' tales.' But the
puzzles (of my pupils) about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and
his gracefully described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my
opinions; and I suspect, from reminiscences of my own mental history,
that, if all teachers do not think the same, it is from the want of an
intimate knowledge of their pupils' minds. I really find it difficult to
keep their _morale_ steady, and am inclined to think many of my own
sceptical sufferings are traceable to this source. I well remember what
reflections arose in my childish mind from a comparison of the Hebrew
history, where every moral obliquity is shown out with such _naïveté_,
and the Greek history, full of sparkling deeds and brilliant sayings,
and their gods and goddesses, the types of beauty and power, with the
dazzling veil of flowery language and poetical imagery cast over their
vices and failings."[8]
We may be permitted also to quote, from the competent pen of Buckle, the
following words:--
"We have only to open the Greek literature," he says, in his lecture on
"The Condition of Women," "to see with what airs of superiority, with
what serene and lofty contempt, with what mocking and biting scorn,
women were treated by that lively and ingenious people, who looked upon
them _merely as toys_."
Alas! we need no prophet to show that what pollutes the mind of youth
and lover, by polluting the ideal of society, must soon pollute the mind
of maiden and mistress. Is that a Christian country which permits this
style of thinking? and how many men of the world accept the stainless
virginity of Christ as the world's pattern of highest manliness?
Passing from Greece to Rome, you will see that even as we owe to Roman
law, before the time of Justinian, almost all that is obnoxious in the
English, retaining still the strange old Latin terms which were applied
to our relations in a very barbarous state of society; so we owe to the
time of Augustus, to the influence of satirists like Horace and Juvenal,
almost all the wide-spread heresies in regard to human nature: if we had
but time to look at it, we might say Calvinism among the rest.
The views of women are still lower. Cæsar and Cicero may be abstract
nullities to our young student; but what can he learn from Ovid? It is
not delicate to name the "Art of Love." In simple, honest truth, it is
the same to read the Metamorphoses. You cannot ventilate a gross man's
atmosphere; all the Betsy Trotwoods must toss their cushions on the lawn
when he leaves the room. It is the old difference between "Don Juan" and
"Childe Harold," only less. In the first, the unvarnished play of
passion may disgust you until it instructs; in the second, you have the
despairing misanthropy, the false philosophy, the devil in Gabriel's own
garment, which is always fascinating to the young, morbid with the
stimulus of growth, and which you might mistake for piety if you did not
know it was born of the lassitude left by excess.
Latin mythology was but the corruption of the older types. What was
beauty once became here undisguised coarseness or worse. The gods who
once endured sin now patronized and made money by it. These things are
not without their influence. Above all, low images, witty slang, and
sharp satire, have force beyond their own, when slowly studied out by
the help of the lexicon. The women to whom I speak know this very well.
They know that the Molière, the Dante, the Schiller, studied at school,
are never forgotten. They smile to hear men call them hard to read: for
them they glow with clear and significant meaning. Striking passages are
indelibly impressed by associations of time or place or page, which can
never be forgotten. _I would not put an end to classical study; I would
only direct attention, through such remarks, to the dangers attendant on
the present manner of study. Classical teachers should not be chosen for
their learning alone. No Lord Chesterfield should teach manners, but
some one whose daily "good morning" is precious. So no coarse,
low-minded man should interpret Greek or Roman, but some noble soul, not
indifferent to social progress, capable of discriminating, and of
letting in a little Christian light upon those pagan times._ Where men
and women are taught together, this thing settles itself; and this is a
very strong argument for institutions like Antioch and Oberlin.
Then might the period passed at the Latin school and the college become
of the greatest moral and intellectual use. Then would no graduating
students run the risk of hearing from their favorite doctor of
divinity, instead of sound scriptural exhortation, some doctrine whisked
out of Epicurus, by a clever but unconscious _leger-de-plume_.
Do not tell us, O excellent man! that you have gone through all this
training, and come out with your soul unstained. We look at you, and see
a temperament cold as ice, passions and imagination that were never at a
blood-heat since you were born, that never translated the cold paper
image into the warm deed of your conscious mental life; and you shall
not answer for us, nor for our children.
In leaving this branch of our subject to be more fitly pursued by
others, we ought to add that mental purity is not enough insisted upon
for either sex. It is only by the greatest faithfulness from the
beginning in this respect that we become capable of "touching pitch" at
a mature age, in a way to benefit either ourselves or the community. How
desirable it is to keep the young eye steadily gazing at the light till
it feels all that is lost in darkness, to keep the atmosphere serene and
holy till the necessary conflicts of life begin! For such a dayspring to
existence no price could be too high; and, if _desirable_ to all, it is
_essential_ to those who inherit degrading tendencies.
We must speak now of history. For the most part, it has been written by
men devoid of intentional injustice to the sex; but, when a man sits in
a certain light, he is penetrated by its color, as the false shades in
our omnibuses strike the fairest bloom black and blue. If the positive
knowledge and Christian candor of the nineteenth century cannot compel
Macaulay to confess that he has libelled the name of William Penn, what
may be expected of the mistakes occasioned by the ignorance, the
inadvertence, or the false theories of the past? Clearly that they also
will remain uncorrected.
If men start with the idea that woman is an inferior being, incapable of
wide interests, and created for their pleasure alone; if they enact laws
and establish customs to sustain these views; if, for the most part,
they shut her into hareems, consider her so dangerous that she may not
walk the streets without a veil,--they will write history in accordance
with such views, and, whatever may be the facts, they will be
interpreted to suit them. They will dwell upon the lives which their
theories explain: they will touch lightly or ignore those that puzzle
them. We shall hear a great deal of Cleopatra and Messalina, of the
mother of Nero and of Lucretia Borgia, of Catharine de Medicis and Marie
Stuart, of the beautiful Gabrielle and Ninon de L'Enclos. They will tell
us of bloody Mary, and that royal coquette, Elizabeth; and possibly of
some saints and martyrs, not too grand in stature to wear the
strait-jacket of their theories.
If they think that purity is required of woman alone, and all license
permitted to man, they will value female chastity for the service it
does poetry and the state, but never maidenhood devoted to noble uses
and conscious of an immortal destiny.
Hypatia of Alexandria, noble and queenly, so queenly that those who did
not understand, dared not libel her,--Hypatia, a woman of intellect so
keen and grasping, that she would have been eminent in the nineteenth
century, and may be met in the circles of some future sphere, erect and
calm, by the side of our own Margaret Fuller,--she, who died a stainless
virgin, torn in pieces by dogs, because she tried to shelter some
wretched Jews from Christian wrath, and could even hold her
Neo-Platonism a holier thing than that disgraced Christianity,--what do
we know of her? Only the little which the letters of Synesius preserve,
only the testimony borne by a few Christians, fathers of the Church
_now_, but outlawed _then_ by the popular grossness! Yet, a pure and
fragrant waif from the dark ocean of that past, her name was permitted
to float down to us, till Kingsley caught it, and, with the
unscrupulousness of the advocate, _stained_ it to serve his purpose.[9]
It would have been no matter, had not genius set its seal on the work,
and so made it doubtful whether history has any Hypatia left. We must
not fail to utter constant protest against such unfairness; and to
assert again and again, that not a single weakness or folly attributed
to Hypatia by the novelist--neither the worship of Venus Anadyomene nor
the prospective marriage with the Roman governor, neither the
superstitious fears, the ominous self-conceit, nor the half conscious
personal ambition--is in the least sustained by the facts of history.
She was pure and stainless: let us see to it that such memories are
rescued.
And there is still another name, deeply wronged by the prejudice and
party spirit of the past, which it is quite possible to redeem: I mean
that of Aspasia. For many centuries, the very sound of it suggested an
image of all womanly grace and genius, devoid of womanly virtue; the
insight of a seer, the eloquence of an orator, but the voluptuousness of
a courtesan. Very lately, the manly justice of Thirlwall and Grote, and
the exquisite taste and imagination of Walter Savage Landor, have
striven to repair the wrong. Her reputation fell a victim to the gross
puns of Aristophanes, himself the hired mouth-piece of a political party
that hated her, and whose misrepresentations were so contemptible in the
eyes of Pericles, that he would not interfere to prevent them.
Would you have the history of that immortal marriage written truly?
Imagine the Greek ruler married, for some years, to a woman of the
noblest Athenian blood, already the mother of two children, but one who,
if irreproachable in conduct, was utterly incapable of taking in the
scope of his plans, or sharing his lofty, adventurous thought. After
years of weariness passed in her society, with no rest for his heart and
no inspiration for his genius, there came to Athens a woman and a
foreigner, in whom he found his peer,--a woman who gathered round her
in a moment all that there was of free and noble in that world of
poetry, statesmanship, and art. She was from the islands of the
Archipelago, and, like the women of her country, walked the streets with
her face unveiled.
Hardly had she come, before Socrates and Plato, and Anaxagoras the pure
old man, became her frequent guests, and honored her with the name of
friend. In such a society, Pericles saw that his own soul would grow; so
sustained, he should be more for Athens and himself. He was no Christian
to deny himself for the sake of that unhappy wife and children,--a wife
whose discontent had already infected the state. The gods he knew--Zeus
and Eros--smiled on the step he took. What if the laws of Athens forbade
a legal marriage with a foreigner? Pericles was Athens; and what he
respected, all men must honor. Aspasia had, so far as we know, a free
maiden heart; and Pericles shows us in what light he regarded her, by
divorcing his wife to consolidate their union, and subsequently forcing
the courts to legitimate her child. Had he omitted these proofs of his
own sincerity and her honor, not a voice would have been raised against
either. What need to take these steps, if she were the woman
Aristophanes would have us see?
This divorce created or strengthened the political opposition to
Pericles. This opposition was headed by his two sons and their forsaken
mother, joined by the pure Athenian blood to which theirs was akin, and
gained all its strength and popularity from the wit and falsehood of
Aristophanes and the players.
Follow the story as it goes, and see Aspasia, at last, summoned before
the Areopagus. What are the charges against her? The very same that were
preferred against her friends, Socrates and Anaxagoras. "She walks the
streets unveiled, she sits at the table with men, she does not believe
in the Greek gods, she talks about one sole Creator, she has original
ideas about the motions of the sun and moon; _therefore_ her society
corrupts youth." Not a word about vice of any sort. Is it for abandoned
women that the best men of any age are willing to entreat before a
senate? The tears which Pericles shed then for Aspasia glitter like gems
on the historic page.
When the plague came, his first thought was for her safety; and, after
his death, her name shares the retirement of her widowed life. There was
a rumor that she afterward married a rich grazier, whom she raised to
eminence in the state. Not unlikely that such a rumor might grow in the
minds of those who had not forgotten the great men _she_ made, when they
saw the success of Lysicles; but other authors assert that his wife was
the Aspasia who was also known as a midwife in Athens.
It is a noble picture, it seems to me; and when we consider the
prejudice of a Christian age and country, the mob that a Bloomer skirt
will attract in our own cities, we need not wonder that slander followed
an unveiled face in Athens.
What do we know of the women of the age of Augustus?--of the galaxy that
spanned the sky of Louis XIV.?
Do you remember, as you read of those crowds of worthless women, what
sort of public opinion educated them,--what sort of public opinion such
histories tend to form? Do you ever ask any questions concerning the men
of the same eras,--how they employed their time, and what part they took
in those games of wanton folly? It is time that some one should: and I
cannot help directing your attention to the significant fact, that while
the word "mistress," applied to a woman, serves at once to mark her out
for reprobation, there is no corresponding term, which, applied to man,
produces the same effect; and this because the interests of the state
are still paramount to the interests of the soul itself.
In speaking of the court of Charles II., Dr. William Alexander says, in
1799: "Its _tone_ ruined all women: they were either adored as angels,
or degraded to brute beasts. The satirists, who immediately arose,
despised what they had themselves created, and gave the character to
every line that has since been written concerning women," down to the
verses of Churchill, and that often-quoted, well-remembered line of
Pope, with which we need not soil our lips.
We may quote here a criticism upon the "Cinq-Mars" of Alfred de Vigny,
taken from Lady Morgan's "France." You will find it especially
interesting, because it bears on what has been suggested of the
influence of history, and may be compared with a portion of one of
Margaret Fuller's letters, in which she criticises the same work, and
makes, in her own way, parallel reflections.
"I dipped also," says Lady Morgan, "into the 'Cinq-Mars' of Alfred de
Vigny, a charming production. It gives the best course of practical
politics, in its exposition of the miseries and vices incidental to the
institutions of the middle ages. Behold Richelieu and Louis XIII. in the
plenitude of their bad passions and unquestioned power, when--
'Torture interrogates and Pain replies.'
Behold, too, their victims,--Urbain, Grandier, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, and
the long, heart-rending list of worth, genius, and innocence immolated.
With such pictures in the hands of the youth of France, it is impossible
they should retrograde. How different from the works of Louis XV.'s
days, when the Marivaux, Crebillons, and Le Clos wrote for the especial
corruption of that society from whose profligacy they borrowed their
characters, incidents, and morals! Men would not now dare to name, in
the presence of virtuous women, works which were once in the hands of
every female of rank in France,--works which, like the novels of
Richardson, had the seduction of innocence for their story, and witty
libertinism and triumphant villany for their principal features.
"With such a literature, it was almost a miracle that one virtuous woman
or one honest man was left in the country to create that revolution
which was to purify its pestiferous atmosphere. Admirable for its
genius, this work is still more so for its honesty."
In the praise given to this new literature is implied the censure passed
upon the old. Of direct educational literature, we may say, that all
writers, from Rousseau to Gregory, Fordyce, and the very latest in our
own country, have exercised an enervating influence over public opinion,
and helped to form the popular estimate of female ability. Rousseau's
influence is still powerful. Let me quote from his "Emilius:"
"Researches into abstract and speculative truths, the principles and
axioms of science,--in short, every thing which tends to generalize
ideas,--is out of the province of woman. All her ideas should be
directed to the _study of men_. As to works of genius, they are beyond
her capacity. She has not precision enough to succeed in accurate
science; and physical knowledge belongs to those who are most active and
most _inquisitive_."
Alas for Mary Somerville, Janet Taylor, and Maria Mitchell, as well as
for the popular idea that women are a _curious_ sex! He goes on: "Woman
should have the skill to incline _us_ to do every thing which her sex
will not enable her to do of herself. She should learn to penetrate the
real sentiments of men, and should have the art to communicate those
which are most agreeable to them, without _seeming to intend it_."
This sounds somewhat barefaced; but it is the model of all the advice
which society is still giving. It is refreshing to catch the first gleam
of something better from the author of "Sandford and Merton." "If
women," says Mr. Day, "are in general feeble both in body and mind, it
arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious
indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy. Instead of
hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and
philosophy, we breed them to useless arts which terminate in vanity or
sensuality. They are taught nothing but idle postures and foolish
accomplishments." Dr. Gregory recommends dissimulation. Dr. Fordyce
advises women to increase their power by reserve and coldness! When we
hear of the educational restraints still exercised, of the innocent
amusements forbidden, the compositions which may be written, but not
read, lest the young girl might some time become the lecturer,--we
cannot but feel that the step is not so very long from that time and
country to this, and wonder at the folly which still refuses to trust
the laws of God to a natural development. It is mortifying, too, to
listen to the silly rhapsodies of Madame de Staël. "Though Rousseau has
endeavored," she says, "to prevent women from interfering in public
affairs, and acting a brilliant part in political life, yet, in speaking
of them, how much has he done it to _their satisfaction_! If he wished
to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for ever
asserted for them all those to which it has a claim! What signifies
it," she continues, "that his reason disputes with them for empire,
while his heart is still devotedly theirs?"
What signifies it? It signifies a great deal. It signifies all the
difference between life in a solitary seraglio, and life with God's
world for an inheritance; all the difference between being the worn-out
toy of one sensualist, and the inspiration of an unborn age; all the
difference between the butterfly and the seraph, between the imprisoned
nun and Longfellow's sweet St. Philomel. When we read these words, we
thank Margaret Fuller for the very criticism which once moved a girlish
ire. "De Staël's name," she wrote, "was not clear of offence; she could
not forget the woman in the thought. Sentimental tears often dimmed her
eagle glance." What a grateful contrast to all such sentimentalism do we
find in Margaret's own sketch of the early life of Miranda!
"This child was early led to feel herself a child of the spirit. She
took her place easily in the world of mind. A dignified sense of
self-dependence was given as all her portion, and she found it a sure
anchor. Her relations with others were fixed with equal security. With
both men and women they were noble; affectionate without passion,
intellectual without coldness. The world was free to her, and she lived
freely in it. Outward adversity came, and inward conflict; but that
self-respect had early been awakened, which must always lead at last to
an outward security and an inward peace." Here is the great difficulty
in the education of woman, to lead her to a point from which she shall
naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help. Old prejudices
extinguish her as an individual, oblige her to renounce the inspiration
in herself, and yield to all the weaknesses and wickednesses of man.
Look at Chaucer's beau-ideal of a wife in the tale of Griselda, dwindled
now into the patient Grissel of modern story. In her a woman is
represented as perfect, because she ardently and constantly loved a
monster who gained her by guile, and brutally abused her. Put the matter
into plain English, and see if you would respect such a woman now. No:
and therefore is it somewhat sad, that, in Tennyson's new Idyll, he must
recreate this ideal in the Enid of Geraint; and that, out of four
pictures of womanly love, only one seems human and natural, and that,
the guilty love of Guinevère. The recently awakened interest in the
position of woman is flooding the country with books relating to her and
her sphere. They have, their _very titles_ have, an immense educational
influence. Let me direct your attention to one published in Boston by a
leading house last winter, and entitled "Remarkable Women of Different
Ages and Nations." Let us read the names of the thirteen women with
whose lives it seeks to entertain the public:--
Beatrice Cenci, the parricide.
Charlotte Corday, the assassin.
Joanna Southcote, the English prophetess.
Jemima Wilkinson, the American prophetess.
Madame Ursinus, the poisoner.
Madame Göttfried, the poisoner.
Mademoiselle Clairon, the actress.
Harriet Mellon, the actress.
Madame Lenormand, the fortune-teller.
Angelica Kauffman, the artist.
Mary Baker, the impostor.
Pope Joan, the pontiff.
Joan of Arc, the warrior.
Look at the list! Assassins, parricides, and poisoners, fortune-tellers,
and actresses! Let us hope they will always remain _remarkable_! In this
list we have the name of one woman who never lived, and of four at least
who in this country would owe all their celebrity to the police court;
and this while history pants to be delivered of noble lives not known at
all, like the women of the House of Montefeltro, or little known, like
the pure and heroic wife of Condé, Clemence de Maillé. And by what black
art, let us ask, are such names as Beatrice, and Charlotte Corday, sweet
Joan of Arc, and dear Angelica Kauffman, a noble woman, whose happiness
was wrecked upon a fiendish jest, juggled into this list? As well might
you put Brutus who killed great Cæsar, and Lucretia of spotless fame,
and Andrea del Sarto who loved a faithless wife, into the same category.
Such association, however false, helps to educate the popular mind.
Of the power of adages, and that barbaric experience and civilization of
which they are generally the exponent, we might write volumes; but the
subject must be dismissed in this connection without a word. We must
pass on to consider the force of social instincts and prejudices which
underlie this general literature, and are as much stronger than it as
the character of a man is stronger than his intellectual quality. A
lecturer once said, "that the first prejudice which women have to
encounter is one which exists before they are born, which leads fathers
instinctively to look forward to the birth of sons, and to leave little
room in their happy or ambitious schemes for the coming of a daughter."
Not long since, a highly educated Englishman told me that this remark
smote him to the heart. "I never expected to have any thing but a son,"
he declared; "and, when my little Minnie was born, I had made no
preparation for her. I had neither a thought nor a scheme at her
service."
Fanny Wright, in some essays published thirty years ago, says, "There
are some parents who take one step in duty, and halt at the second. Our
sons," they say, "will have to exercise political rights, and fill
public offices. We must help them to whatever knowledge there is going,
and make them as sharp-witted as their neighbors. As for our daughters,
they can never be any thing; in fact, they are nothing. We give them to
their mothers, who will take them to church and dancing-school, and,
with the aid of fine clothes, fit them out for the market.
"But," she goes on to say, "let possibilities be what they will, no man
has a _right_ to calculate on them for his sons. He has only to consider
them as human beings, and insure them a full development of all the
faculties which belong to them as such. So, as respects his daughters,
he has nothing to do with the injustice of law, nor the absurdities of
society. His duty is plain,--to train them up as human beings, to seek
for them, and with them, all just knowledge. Who among _men_ contend
best with the difficulties of life and society,--the strong-minded or
the weak, the wise or the foolish? Who best control and mould opposing
circumstances,--the educated or the ignorant? What is true of them is
true of women also."
In the customs of nations, women find the most discouraging educational
influences. While with us these customs all set one way, they are easily
broken through by the untutored races, who still rely on the force of
their primal instincts. When Captain Wallis went to see the Queen of
Otaheite, a marsh which crossed the way proved a formidable obstacle to
the puny Anglo-Saxon. No sooner did the queen perceive it, than, taking
him up as if he were a meal-bag, she threw him over her shoulder, and
strode along. Nobody smiled; even Captain Wallis does not appear to have
felt mortified. These people were accustomed to the physical strength of
their queen. It would be well if civilized nations could imitate them,
far enough at least to remember, that wherever strength, whether mental
or physical, is found, _there_ it certainly belongs.
In Peru and the Formosa Isles, it is the women who choose their
husbands, and not the men who choose their wives; and, from the moment
of marriage, the man takes up his abode in his wife's family. Lord of
creation in every other respect, he still owes to her whatever social
standing and privileges he may possess. Such an exception is valueless,
save that it shows us that sex does not absolutely, of itself, determine
such customs.
The African kings are permitted to have many wives; but they respect the
chastity of women, and require it. Dr. Livingstone tells us of an
instance in which the royal succession finally lapsed upon a woman. Her
counsellors forbade her to marry a single husband, telling her that it
would create jealousies and divisions in the tribe. She must follow the
royal custom. But pure womanly nature spoke louder than the counsellors.
The poor queen renounced marriage altogether, and associated a
half-brother in the government, upon whose children she settled the
succession. Let this beautiful fact shame those coward souls who fear to
trust to the instinctive purity of the sex.
He goes on to state, in a recent letter, that he has found nothing more
remarkable, among the highly intelligent tribes of the Upper Sambesi,
than the respect universally accorded to women.
"Many of the tribes are governed by a female chief. If you demand any
thing of a man," remarks the intrepid explorer, "he replies, 'I will
talk with my wife about it.' If the woman consents, your demand is
granted. If she refuse, you will receive a negative reply. Women vote in
all the public assemblies. Among the Bushwanas and Kaffirs, the men
swear by their fathers; but among the veritable Africans, occupying the
centre of the continent, they always swear by their mother. If a young
man falls in love with a maiden of another village, he leaves his own,
and takes up his dwelling in hers. He is obliged to provide in part for
the maintenance of his mother-in-law, and to assume a respectful
attitude, a sort of semi-kneeling, in her presence. I was so much
astonished at all these marks of respect for women, that I inquired of
the Portuguese if such had always been the habit of the country. They
assured me that such had always been the case."
If women were unwise managers of money,--a statement frequently made,
but which we may safely deny,--it would be owing to the custom which
has, through long ages, put the purse in the hands of "their master;" a
custom so old, that to "husband" one's resources is a phrase which
expresses man's pecuniary responsibility, and is always equivalent to
locking one's money up. "It will be time enough," says Mrs. Kirkland,
"to expect from woman a just economy when she is permitted to
distribute a portion of the family resources. Witness those proud
subscription-lists where one reads, 'Mr. B., twenty dollars;' and, just
below, 'Mrs. B., ten dollars,'--which ten dollars Mrs. B. never saw, and
would ask for in vain to distribute for her own pleasure."
And this custom has such educational force, that very liberal men refuse
the smallest pecuniary independence to their wives to their very dying
day. "The Turk does not lock up his wife with more care than the
Christian his strong box. To that lock there is ever but one key, and
that the master carries in his pocket. The case is not altered when the
wife is about to close her weary eyes in death. She may have earned or
inherited or saved the greater part of their common property, but
without his consent she cannot bequeath a dollar." This passage reminds
us of a criticism on the marriage service attributed to Sir John
Bowring. This eccentric man considers it wicked from beginning to end.
"Look at it," he says: "'with this ring I thee wed,'--that's sorcery;
'with my body I thee worship,'--that's idolatry; 'and with all my
worldly goods I thee endow,'--that's a lie!"
It is the long customs of mankind which stand in the way of educating
women to trades and professions. These matters are mainly in woman's own
hands. One is glad to see in the English Parliament certain statements
made in this connection, and others also in a London pamphlet on the
nature of municipal government. In reply to the common argument that
women ought not to enter certain vocations, because they would
ultimately find themselves incompetent, it is stated, that, in all
delicate handicrafts, men do the same. Thus, of those who learn to make
watches and watchmakers' tools, not one-fifth continue in the trade;
and, in the decoration of that delicate ware called Bohemian glass, by
far the greater portion of apprentices give it up on account of natural
unfitness.
It is the customs of society which sustain the prejudice against
literary women. When Dr. Aikin published his "Miscellaneous Pieces," Fox
met him in the street. "I particularly admire," said the orator,
complimenting him, "your essay on Inconsistency."--"That," said
Aikin, "is my sister's."--"Ah! well, I like that on Monastic
Institutions."--"That is also hers," replied the honest man; and, in a
tumult of confusion, Fox bowed himself away. Had public feeling been
right, how gracefully he might have congratulated the brother on his
sister's ability, how gladly might that brother have seen her excel
himself! This sister was that Mrs. Barbauld who afterward did such
womanly service, that we feel tempted to forgive the early fit of
sentimentality which found vent in that rhymed nonsense, concluding,--
"Your best, your sweetest empire is to please."
The manners of men have their educational influence. The quiet
turning-aside from women when matters of business, politics, or science
are discussed; the common saying, "What have women to do with that? let
them mind their knitting, or their house affairs;" the short answer when
an interested question is asked, "You wouldn't understand it, if I told
you,"--all these depress and enervate, and, even if not _spoken_, the
spirit of them animates all social life. "Men are suspicious," wrote Dr.
Alexander in 1790, "that a rational education would open the eyes of
women, and prompt them to assert the rights of which they have always
been deprived." But education could not be withheld nor eyes closed for
ever; therefore the time has come to claim these rights. The Sorbonne is
already asked why it confers degrees upon women with one hand, while it
quietly locks Margaret Fuller out of Arago's lecture-room with the
other. Need we inquire what influence it would have upon society, if all
literature and scientific opportunities, if all societies devoted to
natural history and mathematics, if all colleges and public libraries
the world over, were thrown open to woman?
In inferior circles, where no leading minds preside, it would be as it
is now: there would be much idle prating, much foolish delay, much
inconsequent discussion; but woman is quick to recognize genius, to
listen when wisdom speaks. She chatters, to be sure, in the presence of
fools; but, when earnest men come to know the value of her enthusiasm,
they will never be willing to lose it. When the great door of the
scholarly and scientific retreat is once thrown open, you will be
surprised to see the crowd ready to enter; and, when the sexes kindle
into intellectual life together, many a woman's coals will be modestly
laid upon an honored altar, and the flames will rise all the higher
because they have been so fed.
How can we estimate sufficiently the corrupting influence of the
newspapers of the land?
We may hope your prejudices will defend woman here, and you will
acknowledge that the minds cannot be kept pure before whom their details
are set. Let us go farther, and say that they cannot be kept pure,
coming in contact as they do with minds among men that gloat over such
records. God is just, and his compensations are terrible. If you do not
spare the purity of the lowest in the land, you cannot save that of your
wife and daughter. If you will not protect the vulgar against
themselves, you cannot protect the refined against the vulgar. He is not
a pure man, who, among his fellows, thinks a thought or utters a word he
would blush to have his sister hear. She is not a pure woman, who, in
the seclusion of her chamber, or gossip with her household, omits one of
the proprieties which delicacy requires. She has no title to _our_
respect, who is not secure in _her own_. How can we reach such a
standard as this, if we invite pollution daily across our threshold, and
call it harmless because it dresses in printer's ink? It is not enough
that much of the obscenity is pure invention. The profit of the scandal
overbalances the cost of the libel. The simplest item is turned to gross
account. Even the intimation that the postmaster has placed a woman at
the ladies' window in New York has to be coupled with the insinuation
that she would have "done better at the gentlemen's." What business have
you or I with details that concern only judge and jury? What good does
it do society to quote high legal authority upon "flirtation," unless,
indeed, we learn thereby to estimate aright the corrupting power of the
first wrong step? Police reports, vulgar anecdotes, shocking accidents,
and trivial gossip a child might be ashamed to repeat, make up the mass
of our daily sheets. Happy is the editor who offers three columns of
common sense daily to his readers. When, alas! shall we have a public
willing to pay for common sense and pure reading alone?
A woman ought to turn like a flash of light from a foul page, a coarse
and vulgar word. No wit should ever tempt her to read the one, or repeat
the other; and what I say of woman, I _mean_ of man. I have not two
separate moral standards for the sexes.
Margaret Fuller speaks somewhere of certain habits of impure speech
which she had heard attributed to ladies in a New-York hotel. What
foundation that story had, we may never find; but all of us know some
women before whom we keep the coldest reserve, and with whom we would
never touch many a subject we should be willing to discuss with any
pure-minded man. Ladies! Not all the gold of Pactolus, not all the
beauty of Anadyomene, not all the wisdom of Minerva, could make such
women _ladies_! We cannot redeem the poor denizens of Five Points till
we have redeemed those of the Fifth Avenue.
Our own children must prattle oaths, if we will not hush the drunken
brawler in the streets.
NOTE.--When this lecture was first delivered, in 1858, it excited
more discussion than any "revolutionary notions" of which I have
ever been suspected. Since then, the same ideas, as applied to other
questions, have been expressed in various quarters. I think a
thorough classical education necessary to a college bred man. As far
as I have any opinions to express, they coincide with those
recently uttered by John Stuart Mill at St. Andrew's.
I wish to sustain the remarks of the text by the following
quotations:--
"Many things with the Greeks and Romans most venerable have not
merely lost their sanctity in our eyes, but present contemptible and
even ludicrous ideas to us. Hence, any allusion to them, or any
expression of the feelings connected with them, or even a reference
to the habits of thinking which those feelings have produced, must
have an operation most unpropitious."--LORD BROUGHAM.
"The fictions constituting the epic poetry of Homer, Virgil, and
their imitators, so far from being consonant with the taste and
sense of modern readers, are, on the contrary, often annoying, from
the absence of all moral or poetical justice."--"The gods who
preside in this scenic exhibition are tainted with every vice which
has since degraded their supposed subordinates of the human race.
Cruelty, revenge, deceit, hatred, unrelenting rancor, and unbridled
lust, are the qualities which call for approval in a generation
professing to feel and practise virtues of an opposite nature. An
exterminating war is undertaken for the sake of a vacillating
adulteress, and its heroes quarrel implacably about the possession
of their female slaves. Ulysses, on his return home, winds up the
'Odyssey' by a wholesale slaughter of his disorganized subjects,
hangs up a dozen censurable females in a row, and puts Melanthius to
a lingering death by gradual mutilation."--"In their social
relations, the Greeks were licentious and exquisitely depraved. In
their domestic habits, they were primitive, destitute, and
uncleanly."--DR. JACOB BIGELOW.
These words represent the re-action of Christian morality against
the abuses of classical study, to which I allude in my text. But let
the classics be taught properly, and morality will have no complaint
to make. We cannot understand the history of the world, without an
intelligent investigation of its beginnings; but we should be
carefully protected against assuming, as reasonable and proper,
either the habits and opinions or the sarcasms of an extinct
experience.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Manners and Customs of Greece, vol. i. p. 337.
[8] Memoirs of S.M. Fuller, vol. i. p. 337.
[9] I have sustained this assertion in two articles on Hypatia,
published in "Historical Sketches," 1855.
III.
THE MEANING OF THE LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION.
"Speak! or I go no further.
I need a goal, an aim. I cannot toil,
_Because the steps are here_; in their ascent,
Tell me THE END, or I sit still and weep."
_Naturliche Tochter._
We have considered the controlling influence exercised by consolidated
public opinion concerning women. We have asked from what sources this
opinion was derived. We have now to consider some individual lives which
have set it at defiance, and in that way done something towards its
reconstruction.
Mary Wollstonecraft is chiefly known in this country as the wife of
Godwin, and the author of a "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." This
book is often accused of the most irreligious and libertine tendencies;
and, for many years, her name stood in my own mind as the representative
of an unfortunate woman of genius, unbalanced in character, and only to
be remembered by the obstacles she had laid in the path of her sex. I
turned instinctively from the idea I had somehow conceived of her; nor
was it till a singular literary fact, the exponent of her individual
power, arrested my attention, that I was tempted to take up the "Rights
of Woman."
In making a rapid survey of English literature, to ascertain how many
women had made a decisive mark upon it, and how many works had been
published especially bearing upon woman's advancement, I at first
experienced a bitter disappointment. Upon approaching the year 1800,
however, I found a stream of literature rushing in, for which I could
not account. It united many rivulets of thought and life. Some volumes
were heavy and oppressive in a double sense; some were light as
pamphlets; some consisted of translations from other languages; some
were biographies; many were attempts at reconstruction on a rotten
foundation; others, an attempt at the rebuilding of society from its
very base. But these works all bore the same stamp, an impress powerful,
but healthy. It seemed as if one thought had animated all these workers
who had taken society by surprise; for the prejudice and bigotry they
must have aroused had left no corresponding trace. The prefaces
generally began, "On account of the interest lately excited," "The
public mind seeming now to be interested;" and I read very few volumes
before I discovered that the power which had aroused and interested was
no other than Mary Wollstonecraft's "Rights of Woman."
These books ranged onward from 1790, and the force of the influence was
not spent for twenty years. Among them, I recall, at this moment, Dr.
Alexander's "History of Women" in two quarto volumes; Matilda Betham's
"Biographical Dictionary," an _honest_, if not a valuable, attempt to
supply a want still felt in English literature; and Cotton's translation
of the mathematical works of Maria Agnesi. These were born of a common
mother. I read the "Vindication," therefore, with persistent care;
looking with fruitless question for the second and third volumes that
were promised. Could this be the book which had been so abused for half
a century? The American edition had been published before garbling
became the fashion; but I took pains to collate it carefully with the
English. It was all in vain. I found only a simple, determined, eloquent
plea for a proper education for women, urged on social, moral, and
religious grounds; an earnest protest against Rousseau and Dr. Gregory;
and a demand that _men_ should be subject to the same moral laws as
women. Very revolutionary this! Reprint it, under modern sponsorship,
and you would find it perhaps too heavy to read. It would only repeat
what you all know, and you would miss the fanatical spice of our later
speech. Yet this book was so much needed when it appeared, that it acted
on the under-current of English thought and life like a subsoil plough,
and brought all manner of abominations to the surface. The preface alone
contains any allusion to woman's political rights. If is dedicated to
Talleyrand, who, in publishing a pamphlet on national education, had
admitted the inconsistency of debarring women from their exercise. From
this preface, the _world_ took fright, and _we_ may judge in what manner
she intended to follow up her plea for education. Let me quote a few
passages. "I earnestly wish," she says, "to point out in what true
dignity and human happiness consist. I wish to persuade women to acquire
strength both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft
phrases, 'susceptibility of heart,' 'delicacy of sentiment,' and
'refinement of taste,' are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness,
and that those beings who are the objects of pity, and that kind of love
which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of
contempt."--"An air of fashion is but a badge of slavery."--"It
follows," she says farther on, "that women should either be shut up,
like Eastern princesses, or educated in such a manner as to think and
act for themselves."--"Suppose a woman trained to obedience, married to
a sensible man, who directs her judgment, without permitting her to feel
the servility of her position. She cannot ensure the life of her
protector. He may die, and leave her at the head of a large
family."--"It is not _empire_, but _equality_, woman should contend for.
When women are sufficiently enlightened to discover their real
interests, they will be very ready to resign all those prerogatives of
love _which are not mutual_ for the calm satisfactions of friendship and
the tender confidence of habitual esteem. Before marriage, they will not
assume any insolent airs, nor afterwards abjectly submit; but,
endeavoring to act like reasonable creatures in both relations, they
will not be tumbled from a throne to a stool."
This is the character of the whole book. It contains nothing more
subversive of morality than these words. You cannot do better than read
it, and receive, as I did, a lasting lesson on the folly of prejudice.
As a work of art, it is irregular in method, and impulsive in execution;
facts not to be wondered at, since it was written and printed in the
brief space of six weeks. Dr. Channing once wrote of her: "I have lately
read Mary Wollstonecraft's posthumous works. Her letters towards the
close of the first volume are the best I ever read. They are superior to
Sterne's. I consider her the greatest woman of the age. Her 'Rights of
Woman' is a masculine performance, and ought to be studied by her sex;
the sentiments are noble and generous."
What, then, was the character of the woman? Was it as strong and
generous as the sentiments she advocated? Her life broke down some
social barriers, and, though noble and heroic when viewed from within,
looks hampered and unsatisfactory from the common stand-point. Godwin
has erected an exquisite monument to her memory, in a sketch written
soon after her decease. Mary Wollstonecraft was born near London in the
year 1759. She came into an unhappy and uncongenial home. Her father was
a passionate tyrant; her mother, compelled to submit to his caprice,
became like every other slave, a tyrant where she had the power, and
ruled her children with a rod of iron. By defending her mother from her
husband's violence, Mary early extorted some degree of affection from
the one, and respect from the other. Her father had some property, which
he seems to have squandered by frequent changes of abode; and a day
school at Beverley, in Yorkshire, gave her her principal advantages of
education. An eccentric clergyman at Hoxton, named Clare, added some
farther instruction. Under his roof, she formed an intimacy with Frances
Blood, destined to influence her whole life. This girl was remarkably
accomplished, and, at the age of eighteen, supported her father and
mother and their family of younger children. She was delicately neat and
proper in all she did; and her influence was of the greatest benefit to
Mary, who had often desired to assist her family, but was deterred by
the helpless condition of her mother. She now went as companion to a
family at Bath, but soon relinquished the position, on account of her
mother's serious illness. Mrs. Wollstonecraft was exacting and
troublesome. Mary nursed her with devoted care, but, after her death,
bade a final farewell to her father's roof. His affairs had become
wretchedly involved; and, with Fanny Blood and her two sisters, she
proceeded to open a day school. At first, she had looked upon Fanny as
her superior, but her own force of character soon found its rightful
position. The health of her friend broke down under her unnatural
burden, and Mary's devotion to her for years was beautiful to see. Her
marriage and removal to Lisbon, in a vain search for health, soon put
this devotion to the test.
At this point, Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation was unsullied. She was
an admirable manager, an efficient and successful teacher; yet, when
Fannie became seriously ill, she did not hesitate to risk her only means
of support, the prosperity of her school, to go to her. Her friend, Dr.
Price, the Unitarian minister, and Mrs. Burgh, were annoyed at what they
considered a quixotic devotion; but they supplied her with money, and
she went. A few days closed in death an intimacy of more than ten years,
which had been, until this time, Mary's tenderest interest in life. On
her way home, her moral energy saved the lives of a French crew in a
sailing vessel which she encountered, just about to founder. Her school
had suffered by her absence; and the pressing necessities of Fanny's
family, in which she still took an interest, induced her to have
recourse to literature. The first ten pounds received from her "Thoughts
on the Education of Daughters" went to their relief. Nothing can be
sadder than to see a young girl placed as Mary Wollstonecraft now
was,--compelled to fulfil the duties of a father and mother to younger
brothers and sisters. The position is unnatural. Gratitude might be
expected, but envy is more often felt. The personal advantages sought
for their sakes, and not to be transferred except as a pecuniary profit,
she is supposed to seek for her own. Affection partly yields, and
enthusiasm does not replace it; while she is urged by necessities which
make it difficult to bear the errors and intractabilities of those she
is providing for. Still loving, and desiring to provide for her
sisters, Mary thought it better to live apart from them, and accepted a
temporary position as governess in Lord Kingsborough's family. When they
left England, she went to Bristol, and published a novel, which, founded
on her ten years of friendly devotion, took the highest rank as a work
of sentiment. The next three years were spent in her own house, in
London, in the active service of the publisher, Johnson. She translated
from French, German, and Italian, wrote several books for children, and
took a large share in the conduct of the "Analytical Review."
Her translation of Salzman's "Elements of Morality" led to an
interesting correspondence with its author, who repaid the service,
subsequently, by translating into German her "Rights of Woman." These
occupations, if they did little towards the discipline of her powers,
served to rouse her from the dejection into which the death of her
friend had plunged her. Her earnings were now devoted to her own family.
One sister she kept at Paris for two years to qualify her as a
governess; another she placed as parlor-boarder at a London school. Her
brother James she sent to Woolwich; afterward procuring for him a
position in the navy, where he soon rose to be a lieutenant. Her
favorite, Charles, she placed with a farmer for instruction; and then
fitted him out for America, where he grew wealthy on the basis she
provided. This brother must have left a large family in the State of
New York. Her brothers and sisters thus established, she attempted to
rescue a support for her father from his broken and confused fortunes.
This proving impossible, he was supported by her own labor, until his
death. The very great demands made upon her by such natural obligations
did not prevent her from assuming others. She adopted for her own the
child of a dead friend, the niece of John Hunter. Her brilliancy, her
personal beauty, her unselfish devotion, could not fail to win for her
many loving friends; and among them the French Revolution found her. The
work which first gave her her proper literary rank was her answer to
Burke's Reflections upon that movement. She wrote rapidly: her pamphlet
was the first of the many that appeared, and obtained extraordinary
success. The public applause warmed her, and her next production was her
celebrated "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The startling energy
with which she exploded the system of gallantry, a miserable relic of
the Stuart courts, roused the popular indignation. It was hard to
reconcile the vigor of her rebuke to the tender sentiment which trembled
through the book, and also to the impression produced by Mary herself,
lovely in person, and, in the most engaging sense, feminine in her
manners. Her intimacy with the historical painter, Fuseli, followed. He
was a man of powerful genius and strong prejudices. His influence upon
Mary, if it was sometimes refreshing, could not always have been
beneficial. The reader of Haydon's Autobiography will remember this
man. A wider knowledge of the world would have protected her from his
influence: as it was, she pursued the intimacy with unsuspecting
delight; for Fuseli was a contented husband, and his wife was her
friend. She was now in her thirty-second year; she had arrived at a
period when domestic happiness of some sort becomes essential to the
strongest woman. The fullest-fruited laurel then withers before her
eyes, if it has not taken root at her own hearth. At the close of the
year 1792, Mary took refuge in Paris from the chagrin and restlessness
which began to oppress her. Her years of toil had left her sad and
lonely: she needed to rest for a little while in human affection. She
could not even write to her own satisfaction; for her morbid fatigue led
her to reproduce Fuseli's cynicism, and she dared not trust herself. She
entered the best circles of Parisian society, and became intimate with
the leaders of the Revolution. In four months after her arrival occurred
the most untoward event of her life,--her marriage to a worthless
American named Gilbert Imlay; a name rescued from oblivion only by his
temporary attachment to her. I say her _marriage_, for Imlay offered
himself in marriage, and was accepted as a husband; but, taking
advantage of a custom not unusual at Paris in those disorderly times,
Mary refused to consummate the legal forms. Mr. Imlay had no property.
Mary had a large family to support; and she neither wished to become
answerable for his debts, nor to make him responsible for hers. She
took the name of Imlay; and, expecting to follow her brother to America,
she obtained from our ambassador at Paris a certificate of American
citizenship, to serve as a temporary protection. In order that you may
comprehend the precise significance which this step had in that place
and at that time, let me remind you, that Helen Maria Williams, her
personal friend, and the ward of Dr. Rees of cyclopedic memory, was
married in the same way to a Mr. Edwards, then in Paris. She was a
well-known writer of that period; and we are still indebted to her for
some of the best hymns sung in our churches,--among them, that
well-known hymn, beginning, "While thee I seek, protecting Power." But
her husband was worthy of the trust she had reposed in him, and she
never turned a ready pen against the follies of society: so _her_
character has never stood in the public stocks.
It will be impossible to consider Mary's attachment to Imlay in any
degree rational, if we look only at her _character_, and keep out of
sight her peculiar personal _history_.
The dawdling inefficiency and brutal temper of her father had disgusted
her alike with "men of spirit" and "men of straw." In her husband, she
saw, as she thought, a certain democratic manliness; and his daring
speculations seemed to be inspired by courage and genius. The affections
which had been roused by her admiring intercourse with Fuseli kindled
gladly on this new shrine, where no social duty, nor stern sense of
personal honor, contended against her warming fancy. For the first time
in her life, she found herself happy; and happiness gave her back the
beauty of early youth. She was playful, gentle, sympathetic. Her eyes
had new brightness, her cheeks new color, and the bewitching tenderness
of her smile fascinated the very women who approached her. She had been
married eighteen months, her love braving all the trials that must have
come, when Imlay left her for London. She had expected his quick return;
but delay followed delay, and Mary passed a year with a new-born child,
learning, by slow and painful degrees, that she had trusted this man
beyond his worth. At last, he sent for her to London, where his
misconduct affected her mind to such an extent, that she twice attempted
her own life, and was rescued the second time with difficulty. As soon
as she recovered from the fever which had induced delirium, her native
strength told her what she ought to do. Imlay had business in Norway,
which required a confidential and judicious agent. She determined to
take this upon herself; and hoped, by absence and success, to regain the
affection she had lost. The man was, in no sense, worthy of her. On her
return, she tried, for the sake of their child, to remain in the same
house with him. It was not possible; and, very soon, a final separation
took place. It would have taken place long before, but that Imlay was a
man who could not wholly escape from a fascination he had once felt.
After he became involved in low connections, he could never re-enter
her presence, without resuming, for the time, the sympathetic delicacy
befitting her lover. During all this time, Mary had occupied herself
with literary work. She never spoke of Imlay, and would allow no one to
blame him in her presence. Conscious of her own upright intentions, it
must have been no small mortification to find her insight and generosity
baffled. She felt that she was herself to blame for having placed an
impulsive man in a position to which he was wholly unequal. She was
everywhere received and treated as a married woman, and lost none of the
respect and affection she had well deserved. In April, 1797, she was
married to Godwin, the author of "St. Leon;" and this marriage deprived
her of two new friends, whom she held very dear. Godwin was so artless,
that he imagined his wife's social position would be improved by an
honorable marriage; but it obliged Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons to
admit that the nature of her marriage to Imlay allowed her to take her
divorce into her own hands.
Wonderful inconsistency of society, which, having interpreted truly her
upright nature through years of desertion, now condemned her,--whether
for her first wrong step, for assuming her own divorce, or for loving a
man of undoubted probity, who could tell? A short year of undisturbed
happiness followed, when the birth of their only child--the late Mrs.
Shelley--suddenly put an end to her life.
A beautiful memorial survives her, in these words of her husband. "This
light," he says, "was lent me for a very little while, and it is now
extinguished for ever. The strength of Mary's mind lay in her intuition.
In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of
witchcraft. When it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration
in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my oscillation and scepticism
were often fixed by her boldness." I am very well aware how much courage
is required of any woman who shall seem to defend Mary Godwin from the
popular conception of her. I know that the woman should herself be
spotless who would attempt to rectify that conception, yet two
circumstances seem to compel explanation. In the first place, there is
no question, that if the views of woman which are now beginning to move
society originated with her scholarly, republican friend, Mrs. Catharine
Macaulay, yet the fire and eloquence of Mary's own words were needed to
give them currency. Society has been just so far as this, that it has
identified her with the subject of "Woman's Rights;" and all of us who
are carried forward by a momentum which she imparted, must desire to
understand the nature of the impulse which controls us.
In the second place, Godwin's short Life of her has been long out of
print, and has now become very rare; and I have not been able to find a
single encyclopædia or biographical dictionary which gives the facts
correctly. Turn to them, and you will find that Mary Wollstonecraft had
a criminal but fruitless attachment for Fuseli; that she formed
another, of _the same kind_, for an American, who deserted her. I brand
these statements as malicious falsehoods, carelessly repeated now that
they have been long exploded: and, as I write these statements, the
tears rush to my eyes; for where are the descendants of the brothers and
sisters whom she reared? where are the kindred of Fannie Blood and John
Hunter, whose lives her generous efforts gladdened? Nay, might not one
man of the drowning crew she forced the captain of her ship to rescue,
speak a noble word in her behalf? I have narrated her life with some
detail, for you must understand the facts upon which you pass judgment;
and these details are many of them gathered from private sources.
To understand the strength of the prejudice against Mary Wollstonecraft,
you should see that from all the autobiographies of the period her name
is excluded; as if the friends of those who had been intimate with her
while living, would not permit the association of names after death. I
have said, that, until her marriage to Godwin, she kept her place in
English society; and women of the most sensitive propriety, such as Mrs.
Siddons and Mrs. Inchbald, admitted her to their intimacy. How, then,
did such a prejudice grow up? It was probably forming in the popular
mind while she was happy in the affection of her friends; and, the
moment they found it conventionally needful to sacrifice her, the
outbreak was unrestrained. In the first place, she was an ardent
republican; a thing no less antagonistic to English feeling in her day,
than we have seen it prove in ours. In the second, she was a Unitarian;
and Unitarians were radicals in politics as well as in religion. In the
third place, being a republican, and a resident of Paris in its troubled
times, she was supposed to share the disorder of its morals; an
impression which her attempted suicides no doubt confirmed.
We shall not share in this country in any prejudice which republicanism
or Unitarianism excited. We are, I trust, ready to admit that an attempt
at suicide could only come with delirium, for which she would be as free
from responsibility as for a typhoid fever or an Asiatic cholera. What
we have to do, then, is to understand her relation to the laws of
marriage, and to see how far her second marriage can be justified. When
she met Imlay at Paris, I do not think she had ever considered the
social bearing of these laws, except so far as her mother's experience
had pained her. That experience made her willing to do what other women
about her were doing, with no bad result that she could see, to keep
herself free from pecuniary entanglement. In one way, this was prudent;
in an other way, it was extremely imprudent; and the imprudence touched
a more vital point than the prudence: but that it was never considered
criminal by wise and candid judges, that she was never compromised in
any relation up to this, the intimacies we have recorded prove. Had she
been a weak, _immoral_ woman, she would have continued to live with
Imlay for her child's sake, but availing herself of the shelter of a
connection from which she recoiled. At this moment, she wrote to her
husband, "Your reputation shall not suffer. I shall never have a
confidant. I am content with the approbation of my own mind; and, if
there be a Searcher of hearts, mine will not be rejected." And again:
"My child may have reason to blush for her mother's want of prudence;
but she shall never despise me." These are not the words of a weak or
irreligious woman. So far, then, all was well, except that society had
no efficient outlawry for the man who had deserted her. She still
occasionally met him, but bore the unexpected trial, when it came, with
dignity and sweetness. When Godwin sought her in marriage, he knew, of
course, that no legal ties bound her. Mary saw no harm in using the
liberty that remained to her. "Why could she not have remained single?"
said the world; but had the world been so just and kind to her, that we
could expect her to resist the influence of a generous and courageous
love? Had she lived in this country, and been divorced by the laws of
Indiana, society would have been silent; but the real evil would have
been the same.
"Never did there exist a woman," said her husband, "who might with less
fear expose her actions, and call upon the universe to judge them." I
believe this to be true so far as her own relations were concerned; and
I believe, that, by her second marriage, she meant to exercise a right
of protest against existing laws, which two of the most gifted children
of the nineteenth century have exercised again in our own time with
emphasis. It requires a philosophic mind to see the relation of the
individual to the state: heroic, indeed, is the spirit which, perceiving
it, braves the common expectation by a defiant life. On the other hand,
it is by no prejudice that we demand this account of each person's
private affairs. It is a demand born of an ill-defined, dimly
entertained, but still a just idea of the relations of God, the family,
and the state. I ought not to say so much, without adding that no one in
this country can adequately judge of the pressure of the marriage laws
as they still exist in England. What is resisted, is, in most instances,
what no American woman would be expected to bear; but for England, as
for this country, I rest in the confident hope that a right adjustment
of woman's relation to society will change healthfully all existing
legislation. Such legislation as that of Indiana does not seem to me an
advance, although it may have been demanded by an _advancing_ public
sentiment.
I have said this honestly, with a tender pity in my heart, to clear the
memory of a much-abused woman. Does any one ask me if I would justify
the position in which she stood? I answer, frankly, No. We do not live
to ourselves alone; and if we are ever tempted to take a step against
the moral convictions of the world, believing that we can do as we will
with our own, one would think the possibility that children may be born
to inherit the obloquy we excite, without themselves deserving it, would
be enough to deter any right-minded woman. No love or care, or abject
self-sacrifice, can reconcile a child to the stain of illegitimacy.
"What does the Lord thy God require of thee?"--"To do justly, love
mercy, and walk humbly." It is not walking humbly to set up our own
conception of fitness against the accumulated experience of mankind.
Still farther: It is of
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