Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 3, Vol. I, January 19, 1884

No. 3.—Vol. I.
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SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884.
A WORD TO THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
There may be theoretically much to sympathise with in the cry for the yet higher culture of the women of our middle classes, but at the same time not a little to find fault with in practice. While it is difficult to believe that there can be such a thing as over-education of the human subject, male or female, there may yet be false lines of training, which lead to a dainty misplaced refinement, quite incompatible with the social position the woman may be called to fill in after-life, and which too often presupposes, what even education has a difficulty in supplying—a subsistence in life. Where we equip, we too frequently impede. In the hurry to be intelligent and accomplished, the glitter of drawing-room graces is an object of greater desire than the more homely but not less estimable virtues identified with the kitchen. Our young housewives are imbued with far too much of the æsthete at the expense of the cook; too much of the stage, and too little of the home. In abandoning the equally mistaken views of our grandfathers on women’s up-bringing, we have gone to the opposite extreme, to the exclusion of anything like a means to an end; and in the blindest disregard of the recipients’ circumstances in life, present and prospective.
In considering what the aim of female education ought to be, it is surely not too much to expect that of all things it should mentally and physically fit our women for the battle of life. Its application and utility should not have to end where they practically do at present—at the altar. While it is necessary to provide a common armour for purposes of general defence, there certainly ought to be a special strengthening of the harness where most blows are to be anticipated; and if not to all, certainly to middle-class women, the years of battle come after , not before marriage. Every one of them, then, ought to be trained in conformity with the supreme law of her being, to prove a real helpmate to the man that takes her to wife. Make sure that she is first of all thoroughly qualified for a mother’s part, in what may be called a working sphere of life; then add whatever graces may be desirable as a sweetening, according to taste, means, and opportunity. It is in this happy blending of abstract knowledge with the economy of a home, that true success in the education of middle-class women must be sought.