FOOTNOTES:
[1] Demosthenes In Neæram, 122. Τας μεν γαρ ἑταιρας ἡδονης ἑνεκ' εχομεν, τας δε παλλακας της καθ' ἡμεραν θεραπεις του σωματος, τας δε γυναικας του παιδοποιεισθαι γνησιως και των ενδον ζυλακα πιστην εχειν.
As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment:
"More than a thousand women is one man
Worthy to see the light of life."
[2] Της τε γαρ, ὑπαρχουσης ζυσεως μη χειροσι γενεσθαι ὑμιν μεγαη η δοξα'και ἡς αν επ' ελαχιστον αρετης περι η ψογου εν αρσεσι κλεος η. Thucidides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II, 45.
"Phidias," Plutarch tells us in his Conjugal Precepts, "made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot on the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband or by her husband."
[3] Ariosto, referring to the undying fame of Sappho and Corinna, expresses himself in words as beautiful as they are true, as witness the following couplet:
Saffo e Corinna, perche furon dotte,
Splendono illustri, e mai non veggon notte.
—Orlando Furioso, Canto XX, strophe I.
[4] The nine "Terrestrial Muses" were Sappho, Erinna, Myrus, Myrtis, Corinna, Telesilla, Praxilla, Nossis and Anyta.
The Greek poet Antipater embodies the names of the "Terrestrial Nine" in an epigram which is well rendered in the appended Latin translation:
Has divinis linguis Helicon nutrivit mulieres
Hymnis, et Macedon Pierias scopulus,
Prexillam, Myro, Anytæ os, fœminam Homerum,
Lesbidum Sappho ornamentum capillatarum.
Erinnam, Telesillam nobilem, teque Corinna,
Strenuum Palladis scutum quæ cecinit.
Nossidem muliebri lingua, et dulsisonam Myrtin,
Omnes immortalium operatrices librorum.
Novem quidem Musas magnum cœlum, novem vero illas
Terra genuit hominibus, immortalem lætitiam.
[5] Cf. Poetriarum octo, Erinnæ, Myrus, Mytidis, Corinnæ, Telesillæ, Praxillæ, Nossidis, Anytæ fragmenta et elogia, by J. C. Wolf Hamburg, 1734. See also the charming memoir "Sappho" by H. T. Wharton, London, 1898, and Griechische Dicterinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Vienna, 1876.
[6] See Mulierum Græcarum quæ oratione prosa usæ sunt fragmenta et elogia Græce et Latine, by J. C. Wolf, London, 1739, Historia Mulierum Philosopharum, scriptore Ægidio Menagio, Lugduni, 1690, Griechische Philosophinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Norden, 1885, and Le Donne alle Scuole dei Filosofi Greci in Saggi e Note Critiche, by A. Chiappelli, Bologna, 1895.
[7] Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome and Among the Early Christians, pp. 58 and 59, by James Donaldson, London, 1907.
[8] There were several hetæræ named Lais. One of them, apparently a native of Corinth, was celebrated throughout Greece as the most beautiful woman of her age.
[9] For information respecting the hetæræ the reader is referred to the Letters of Alciphron, to Lucian's Dialogues on courtesans, and more particularly to the Deipnosophists of Athenæus, Chap. XIII. See also The Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius, Bohn Edition, London.
[10] Donaldson, op. cit., pp. 61 and 62.
Adolph Schmidt, one of the late biographers of Aspasia, accepts these statements as true and credits to Aspasia the making of both Pericles and Socrates. His views are also shared by other modern writers who have made a special study of the subject.
According to some writers an indirect allusion to Aspasia's intellectual superiority is found in the Medea of Euripedes in the following verses of the women's chorus:
"In subtle questions I full many a time
Have heretofore engaged, and this great point
Debated, whether woman should extend
Her search into abstruse and hidden truths.
But we too have a Muse, who with our sex
Associates to expound the mystic lore
Of wisdom, though she dwell not with us all."
[11] It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit that Aspasia was ever an hetæra in the sense of being a courtesan. After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. According to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry foreign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her nobility of character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great statesman's heart.
The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch's Pericles, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates and Plato's Menexenus. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject is Aspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de Fouquières, Paris, 1872. Cf. also Aspasie et le Siècle de Pericles, Paris, 1862; Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bièvre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt's Sur l'Age de Pericles, 1877-79.
[12] Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony. It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul.
[13] The Dialogues of Plato, Laws, VII, 805, Jowett's translation, New York, 1892.
[14] Op. cit., The Republic, V, 451 et seq. and 466.
[15] It was the boast of the Emperor Augustus that all his clothes were woven by his wife, sister or daughter. Suetonius, in his Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, informs us that this great master of the world filiam et neptes ita instituit ut etiam lanificio assuefaceret.
[16] This type of the old Roman schoolmaster is alluded to in the following well known verses of Martial:
"Quid tibi nobiscum est, ludi scelerate magister,
Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?
Nondum cristati rupere silentia Galli
Murmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas."
>
—Lib. IX, 79.
which have been rendered as follows:
Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue,
Thou head detested by the younger crew?
Before the cock proclaims the day is near
Thy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.
Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedagogorum"—melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues—and it appears from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the rod" was a phrase meaning "to leave school."
[17] Woman Through the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Reich, London, 1908.
Schoolhouses among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usually, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air, in some quiet street corner or in tabernæ—sheds or lean-tos—as in certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this in Epistola XX, Lib. I, when he writes:
"Ut pueros elementa docentem
Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus."
In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones. There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on their knees.
Cf. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education, pp. 278 and 346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.
[18] Cf. his Tiberius Gracchus. Cicero says of them, "Non tam in gremio educatos quam sermone matris."
[19] Ibidem, Life of Pompey.
[20] De Oratore, Lib. III, Cap. XII.
[21] "Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legatos, quam duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsistere non quiverit." Annales, Lib. I, Cap. 69.
[22] Œconomicus, VII, 5, 6.
[23] Epistolæ, Lib. I, 16.
[24] Sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima conjux. Epigrammata, Lib. II, 90.
Martial's taste in this respect was the same as that of Heine, who said of the woman he loved: "She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is," and the same as that of Rousseau, who declared that his last flame, Therèse Lavasseur, could not tell the time of day.
[25] Satire VI, 434-440.
[26] Joannis Stobæi Florilegium, Vol. IV, p. 212, Teubner's edition, 1857.
[27] The following is the epitaph as written by St. Jerome, "the Christian Cicero":
Scipio quam genuit, Pauli fudere parentes,
Gracchorum soboles, Agamemnonis inclyta proles,
Hoc jacet in tumulo, Paulam dixere priores,
Euxtochii genetrix, Romani prima senatus,
Pauperiem Christi et Bethlehemitica rura secuta est.
[28] In his preface to the Commentary on Sophonius.
[29] For an exhaustive account of the lives and achievements of St. Jerome and his noble friends, Paula and Eustochium, the reader is referred to L'Histoire de Sainte Paule, by F. Lagrange, Paris, 1870, and Saint Jerome, La Société Chrétienne à Rome et l'Émigration Romaine en Terre Sainte, by A. Thierry, Paris, 1867. Cf. also Woman's Work in Bible Study and Translation, by A. H. Johns in The Catholic World, New York, June, 1912.
[30] See Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, Reine de France, in Chap. XX, par Em. Briand, Paris, 1897.
[31] Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Lib. IV, Cap. 23.
[32] The Monks of the West, Book XI, Chap. II.
[33] Vol. I, pp. 46 and 49, New York, 1871.
[34] Op. cit., Book XI, Chap. II.
It will interest the reader to know that Cædmon has a place among the saints in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists. See the special article on him in Vol. II, p. 552, under the caption of "De S. Cedmono, cantore theodidacto."
[35] Woman Under Monasticism. Chapter IV, § 2, by Lina Eckenstein, Cambridge, 1896. In this chapter is an interesting account of the Anglo-Saxon nuns who were among the correspondents of Boniface.
[36] The reader will recall Chaucer's account in the Canterbury Tales of the wife of the well-to-do miller of Trumpyngton:
"A wyf he hadde y-comen of noble kyn;
She was y-fostred in a nonnerye.
There dorste no wight clepen hir but 'Dame;'
What for hire kynnrede and hir nortelrie,
That she had lerned in the nonnerie."
—Reeve's Tale.
[37] Pp. 78, 79, London, 1897.
[38] History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 369, New York, 1905.
[39] Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, London, 1895.
[40] The English Historical Review, July, 1888.
Another recent writer affirms without hesitation that "Hroswitha has earned a place apart in the Pantheon of women poets and writers. She alone in those troublous times of the tenth century recalls to our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word." Fortnightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896.
[41] Histoire de l'Éducation de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72 et seq. par Paul Rousselot, Paris, 1883.
A certain jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, one Pierre de Navarre, expressed the sentiment of many of his contemporaries when he wrote the following paragraph:
"Toutes fames doivent savoir filer et coudre; car la pauvre en aura mestier et la riche conoistra mieux l'œuvre des autres. A fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n'est especiaument pour estre nonain, car par lire et escrire, de fame sont maint mal avenu."
[42] Opera Omnia S. Hildegardis, Tom. 197, Col. 48 of Migne's Patrologiæ Cursus Completus. Cf. also Nova S. Hildegardis Opera, edidit Cardinalis Pitra, Paris, 1882, and Das Leben und Wirken der Heiligen Hildegardis, von J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1878.
[43] It was Peter Lombard, whose Sentences "became the very canon of orthodoxy for all succeeding ages," who, in marked contrast with those of ancient and modern times that regarded woman as the inferior or slave of man, asserted her equality with him in a sentence that should be written in letters of gold. "Woman," he declares, Sententiarum, Lib. II, Disp. 18, "was not taken from the head of man, for she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his foot, for she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, for she was intended to be his companion and comfort."
In this view the great Schoolman but follows the teachings of St. Augustine. For in his commentary, De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. 9, Cap. 13, the learned bishop of Hippo writes: "Quia igitur viro nec domina nec ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nec de capite, nec de pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se producendam cognosceret, quam de suo latere sumptam didecisset." Again the same illustrious doctor declares that woman was formed from man's side in order that it might be manifest that she was created to be united with him in love—in consortium creabatur dilectionis.
[44] Cf. Hortus Deliciarum, by Herrad de Lansberg, folio with one hundred and ten plates, Strasburg, 1901, and Herrade de Landsberg, by Charles Schmidt, Strasburg.
The erudite academician, Charles Jourdain, says of Herrad's great work "L'encyclopédie qu'on lui doit, l'Hortus Deliciarum, embrasse toutes les parties des connaissances humaines, depuis la science divine jusqu'à l'agriculture et la métrologie, et on s'étonne à bon droit qu'un tel ouvrage, qui supposait une érudition si variée et si méthodique, soit sorti d'une plume féminine. Quelle impression produirait aujourd'hui l'annonce d'une encyclopédie qui aurait pour auteur une simple, religieuse? Parlerons-nous des femmes du monde? Il n'existe d'elles, au XXe siècle, non plus que dans les siècles précédents aucun ouvrage comparable à l'Hortus Deliciarum." Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques, p. 480, Paris, 1888.
[45] See Revelationes Mechtildianæ ac Gertrudianæ, edit, Oudin, for the Benedictines at Solesmes, 1875.
[46] In her scholarly work on Woman Under Monasticism, p. 479, Lina Eckenstein writes as follows regarding the studies pursued in the convents of the Middle Ages:
"The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as incidental remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available writing whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writing of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethus, Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella, Terence by the side of Isidore of Seville. From remarks made by Hroswitha we see that the coarseness of the Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns, though she would have seen it otherwise; and, Herrad was so far impressed by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced this wisdom to be the 'product of the Holy Spirit also.' Throughout the literary world, as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general, and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely remote from each other and practically without intercourse."
[47] The Lady, p. 71, by Emily James Putnam, New York, 1910.
[48] Eckenstein, op. cit., p. 478.
[49] Ut. Sup., 479-480.
[50] See Womankind in Western Europe, p. 288 et seq., by Thomas Wright, London, 1869.
[51] "Pertinere videtur ad hæc tempora Betisia Gozzadini non minus generis claritate quam eloquentia ac legum professione illustris.... Betisiam Ghirardaccius et nostri ab eo deinceps scriptores eximiis laudibus certatim extulerunt." De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus a Sæculo XI usque ad Sæculum XIV, Tom. I, p. 171, Bologna, 1888-1896.
[52] L'École de Salerne, p. 18, par C. Meaux, Paris, 1880. Among the most noted of these women was Trotula, who, about the middle of the eleventh century, wrote on the diseases of women as well as on other medical subjects. Compare the attitude of the school of Salerno towards women with that of the University of London, eight hundred years later. When, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, women applied to this university for degrees in medicine, they were informed, as H. Rashdall writes in The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. II, Part II, p. 712, Oxford, 1895, that "the University of London, although it had been empowered by Royal Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh Charter, because no University had ever granted such degrees." Cf. also Hæser's Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, Band I, p. 645, et seq., Jena, 1875. Verily, the so-called dark ages have risen up to condemn our vaunted age of enlightenment!
[53] Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400, Band I, p. 233, Berlin, 1885, von P. Heinrick Denifle, assistant archivist of the Vatican Library, and Histoire Litéraire de la France, Commencé par des Religieux Bénédictins de S. Maur et Continué par des Membres de l'Institut, Tom. IX, 281, Paris, 1733-1906.
[54] "Une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les dernières clartés du soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premières blancheurs du matin." Documents Inédits, p. 78, Paris, 1850.
[55] The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, p. 31, Oxford, 1895.
[56] A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 277, London, 1893.
[57] Cecelia Gonzaga, a pupil of the celebrated humanist, Vittorino da Feltre, read the Gospels in Greek when she was only seven years old. Isotta and Ginevra Nogorola, pupils of the humanist, Guarino Verronese, likewise distinguished themselves at an early age by their rare knowledge of Latin and Greek. In later years all three enjoyed great celebrity for their learning, and were, like Battista di Montefeltro, women of genuine humanist sympathies. Cecelia Gonzaga's scholarship was in no wise inferior to that of her learned brothers, who were among the most noted students of the famous Casa Zoyosa in Mantua, where Vittorino da Feltre achieved such distinction as an educator in the early part of the Italian Renaissance. The learned Italian writer, Sabbadini, beautifully expressed the relation of women to Humanism, when he declares, in his Vida di Guarino, "L'Humanismo si sposa alla gentilezza feminile,"—humanism weds feminine gentility.
[58] Among them are the pictures of Caterina Vigri, which are preserved in the Pinacoteca of Bologna and in the Academia of Venice.
[59] No less an authority than the illustrious sculptor, Canova, declared that her early death was one of the greatest losses ever suffered by Italian art.
[60] It was also said of the Venetian artist, Irene di Spilimbergo, that her pictures were of such excellence that they were frequently mistaken for those of her illustrious master, Titian.
[61] Among these works may be mentioned Il Merito delle Donne, by Modesta Pozzo di Zorgi, Venice, 1600; La Nobilità e l'Excellenza delle Donne, by Lucrezia Marinelli, Venice, 1601; De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Litteras Aptitudine, by Anna van Schurman, Leyden, 1641; Les Dames Illustres, by Jaquette Guillame, Paris, 1665, and L'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes, by Marie le Jars de Gournay, Paris, 1622. The last named work was by the celebrated fille d'alliance—adopted daughter—of Montaigne. It is to her that we owe the textus receptus of the Essais of the illustrious litterateur.
[62] The Women of the Renaissance, p. 290, by R. de Maulde la Clavière, New York, 1901.
[63] Called La Latina, because of her thorough knowledge of the Latin language.
[64] The famous Hellenist, Roger Ascham, tells of his astonishment on finding Lady Jane Grey, when she was only fourteen years of age, reading Plato's Phædo in Greek, when all the other members of the family were amusing themselves in the park. On his inquiry why she did not join the others in their pastime, she smilingly replied: "I wit all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never knew what true pleasure meant."
[65] To the poet Ronsard, she was a woman beyond compare, as is evinced by the following lines of a pastoral ode addressed to her:
"La Royne Marguerite,
La plus belle fleur d'élite
Qu'onques la terre enfanta."
[66] Cf. Œuvres de Lovize Labé, nouvelle edition emprimée en caractères dits de civilité, Paris, 1871.
[67] The French poet, Jean Dorat, who was then professor of Latin in the Collège de France, expresses this fact in the following strophe:
"Nempe uxor, ancillæ, clientes, liberi,
Non segnis examen domus,
Quo Plautus ore, quo Terentius, solent
Quotidiane loqui."
[68] A prominent writer of the time, Jean Bouchet, expressed the prevailing opinion regarding the education of the women of the masses in the following quaint sentence: "Je suis bien d'opinion que les femmes de bas estat, et qui sont contrainctes vaquer aux choses familières et domestiques, ne doivent vaquer aux lettres, parce que c'est chose repugnante à rusticité; mais, les roynes, princesses et aultres dames qui ne se doib vent pour révérence de leur estat, appliquer à mesnage." Cf. Rousellot's Histoire de l'Éducation des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 109, Paris, 1883.
His ideal of a woman of the peasant type was apparently Joan of Arc, who, according to her own declaration, did not know a from b—"elle déclarait ne savoir ni a ni b."
[69] Clavière, op. cit., p. 415.
[70] The noted English divine, Thomas Fuller, chaplain to Charles II, recognized the irreparable loss to women occasioned by the destruction of the nunneries by the Reformers. "There were," he tells us in his quaint language, "good she schools wherein the girls and maids of the neyghborhood were taught to read and work.... Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, ... haply the weaker sex, besides the avoiding modern inconveniences, might be heyghtened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained." Church History, Vol. III, p. 336, 1845.
[71] M. Thureau Dangin, the perpetual secretary of the French Academy, wrote, "La tradition ne veut pas d'académiciennes."
[72] Carlyle, in a lecture on Dante, and the Divina Commedia, declares that "Italy has produced a greater number of great men than any other nation, men distinguished in art, thinking, conduct, and everywhere in the departments of intellect." He could with equal truth have said that Italy has produced more great women than any other nation.
[73] Medical Women, p. 63, et seq., by Sophia Jex-Blake, Edinburgh, 1886, and Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, Chap. III, by Elizabeth Blackwell, London, 1895.
[74] Mme. Dacier was a remarkable exception chiefly because she was the daughter and pupil of one Hellenist before becoming the wife of another.
[75] Lettres et Entretiens sur l'Éducation de Filles, Tom. I, pp. 225-231.
Compare this superficial course of study at Saint-Cyr with the elaborate course mapped out by Lionardo d'Arezzo in a letter addressed to the illustrious lady, Baptista Malatesta. In the broad programme of education for women recommended by this eminent man of letters, "poet, orator, historian, and the rest, all must be studied, each must contribute a share. Our learning thus becomes full, ready, varied, elegant, available for action or for discourse on all subjects."
Lionardo's curriculum of studies for women was quite as comprehensive as that required for men, "with perhaps a little less stress upon rhetoric and more upon religion. There was no assumption that a lower standard of attainment is inevitably a consequence of smaller capacity."
Nor was this thorough study of letters by the women of Italy "unfavorably regarded by social opinion"; neither did it introduce "a new standard of womanly activity. Women, indeed, at this epoch, seem to have preserved their moral and intellectual balance under the stress of the new enthusiasm better than men. The learned ladies were, in actual life, good wives and mothers, domestic and virtuous women of strong judgment and not seldom of marked capacity in affairs." Cf. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, pp. 122, 132, 197, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, 1905.
[76] Thus, in a letter of hers to Mme. de Lauzun occurs a sentence like the following: "Il lia sy lontant que je n'ay antandu parler de vous." The duchess of Monpensier, daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, in a letter to her father exhibits a similar ignorance of her own language, when she writes: "J'ai cru que Votre Altesse seret bien ése de savoir sete istoire." Quoted by Rousselot in his Histoire de l'Éducation des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 287.
[77] Les Femmes Savantes, Act II, Scene 7.
[78] Destouches, in his L'Homme singulier, makes one of his female characters, who loves study, speak in the following pathetic fashion:
"A learned woman ought—so I surmise—
Conceal her knowledge, or she'll be unwise.
If pedantry a mental blemish be
At all times outlawed by society,
If 'gainst a pedant all the world inveighs,
Shall pass unchecked in woman pedant's ways?
I hold it sure, condemned my sex is quite
To trifling nothings as its sole birthright;
Ridiculous 'tis thought outside its 'sphere';
The learned woman dare not such appear;
Nay, she must even cloak her brilliancy
So envy leave in peace stupidity;
Must keep the level of the common kind,
To subjects commonplace devote her mind,
And treating these she must be like the rest.
Lo, in such garb refinement must be dressed:
That knowledge shall not make her seem unwise,
She must herself in foolishness disguise."
—Act III, Scene 7.
[79] No one, however, went so far in his opposition to the education of women as the notorious Silvain Maréchal, the author of Projet d'une Loi portant Defense d'Apprendre à Lire aux Femmes, who would have a law passed forbidding women to learn to read. He maintained that a knowledge of science and letters interfered with their being good housekeepers. "Reason," he avers, "does not approve of women studying chemistry. Women who are unable to read make the best soup. I would rather," he declares in the words of Balzac, "have a wife with a beard than a wife who is educated." See pp. 40, 50 and 51, of the edition of this strange work, published at Brussels, 1847.
[80] In her Problema Practicum, addressed to Dr. Rivet, Anna van Schurman states and develops in true syllogistic form a series of propositions in defense of her thesis in favor of the higher education of women. Two of these propositions are here given as illustrative of her points of view:
I. Cui natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium, ei conveniunt scientiæ et artes. Atque feminæ natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium. Ergo.
II Quidquid intellectum hominis perficit et exornat, id femmæ Christianæ convenit. Atqui scientiæ et artes intellectum hominis perficiunt et exornant. Ergo. See Nobiliss. Virginis Annæ Schurman Opuscula, pp. 35 and 41, Leyden, 1656, and her De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Literas Aptitudine, Leyden, 1641. Cf. also Anna van Schurman, Chap. IV, by Una Birch, London, 1909.
[81] A writer of the seventeenth century gives the following as the popular programme of female study: "To learn alle pointes of good housewifery, spinning of linen, the ordering of dairies, to see to the salting of meate, brewing, bakery, and to understand the common prices of all houshold provisions. To keepe account of all things, to know the condition of the poultry—for it misbecomes no woman to be a hen-wife. To know how to order your clothes and with frugality to mend them and to buy but what is necessary with ready money. To love to keep at home." How like the German four K's and the words on the sarcophagus of a Roman matron—lanifica, frugi, domiseda—a diligent plyer of the distaff, thrifty and a stay-at-home.
[82] The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vol. II, p. 5, Bohn Edition, 1887.
[83] Letter XLIX, London, Sept. 5, O. S., 1748.
Walpole, writing in 1773, makes the following curious declaration: "I made a discovery—Lady Nuneham is a poetess, and writes with great ease and sense some poetry, but is as afraid of the character, as if it was a sin to make verses." And Lord Granville tells us of an eminent statesman and man of letters who, in the early part of the last century, was so troubled on discovering in his daughter a talent for poetry that he "appealed to her affection for him, and made a request to her never to write verses again. He was not afraid of her becoming a good poetess, but he was afraid of the disadvantages which were likely to be suffered by her, if she were supposed to be a lady of literary attainments."
[84] It was Swift who had such a low opinion of woman's intellect that in writing to one of his fair correspondents he told her that she could "never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a schoolboy." Lady Pennington, strange to say, seems to have shared his views, for in a manual of advice to young ladies, she declares: "A sensible woman will soon be convinced that all the learning the utmost application can make her master of will be in many points inferior to that of the schoolboy." "At the time the Tatler first appeared in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured," and it was then considered "more important for a woman to dance a minuet well than to know a foreign language."
[85] The wife of President John Adams, descended from the most illustrious colonial families, writing in 1817, regarding the educational opportunities of the girls of her time and rank, expressed herself as follows:
"Female education in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic, and, in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." According to her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, "The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was to be found in the families of the educated class, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of useful instruction was secured in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and, what of farther mental development depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it." Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, pp. X and XI, New York, 1876.
[86] When the students of Girton and Newnham in 1897, after passing the Cambridge examinations—many of them with the highest honors—applied for degrees, "the undergraduate world was stirred to a fine frenzy of wrath against all womankind," and an astonished world saw re-enacted scenes scarcely less disgraceful than those which characterized the riotous demonstrations which, seventeen years before, had greeted seven young women at the portals of the University of Edinburgh.
[87] The Queen's Reign, Chap. V, London, 1897.
[88] Proposition third, of her Propositiones Philosophicæ, Milan, 1738, reads as follows:
"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem sexum meruisse nullus infirmabitur; nam præter septuaginta fere eruditissimas, Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore floruisse novimus, quæ in philosophicis disciplinis maximam ingenii laudem sunt assecutæ. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius cum feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdicunt, eo vel maxime, quod hæc illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus non modo haud noxia futura sint verum etiam perutilia."
This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propositions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to in the preceding pages.