The cause for congratulation was very real. If things had gone otherwise, it is difficult to see what the future of women's education in England would have been. Oxford was temporarily behind Cambridge in the movement, and a set-back at Cambridge would certainly have damaged prospects in the sister University, and, in fact, throughout England. Women would have been debarred from sharing in the best that University education in England can give, and would have been cut off from the historic sources of sound learning and of moral and intellectual inspiration.
A perusal of the Graces will show that though they gave all that was immediately needed, they did not satisfy all the actual or possible desires of the promoters of women's colleges. Outsiders, as before mentioned, already wished for full membership to be granted. To many this seemed a premature project. Yet those were right who foresaw that a desire for more complete membership was certain to come by and by. In 1881 there were few, if any, of the women quasi-graduates able to take an active part in University work. Some apprenticeship, under the wing of Alma Mater, might seem at least desirable. Again, the views held by Girton, that conditions of examinations such as those relating to preliminary qualifications and the Pass degree, ought from the first to have been the same for women as for members of the University, might be urged with some force. As already shown, the objection to compulsory Classics and Mathematics, even up to the standard of the Previous Examination, on the part of some of the founders and supporters of Newnham College was due, not to a preference for easier conditions, but from a fear of a detrimental effect on schools. In point of fact, so many other alternatives than those of the Previous Examination and the Higher Local are now offered that neither of these examinations is much favoured in the best schools that send girls up to the Universities. As to the Pass Degree: the suspicion with which it was regarded by the Newnham pioneers has already been noticed. The objection to it is not that it is bad in itself: many attempts have been made to render a pass course interesting and profitable to men who have not physical strength or intellectual persistency to embark on an honours curriculum, or who wish to reduce their academic duties in order to follow some social or intellectual hobbies. But there has always been the danger of demanding a very small amount of intellectual work and tolerating men who have no leaning towards academic pursuits, and to whom the University is chiefly attractive by reason of its scope for athletics and for genial life in comradeship. There was as yet, and it is to be hoped there will be permanently, no place in the women's colleges for the society woman without intellectual aspirations. Such an element would have been difficult to deal with, and would not have been successful from any point of view. True, Newnham never wished to discourage either students of discursive mind and original ideas and plans, or those who—through defective early education or delicate health—shrunk from a tripos course. In fact, some students whose presence and work in the College have proved eminently beneficial to themselves and to Newnham, have preferred to take a mixed course of study. For the rank and file, it is now supposed that the numerous triposes afford sufficient choice. If, at the end of her second year, a student is judged to be unable to proceed further on tripos lines, she is expected to go down, unless her studies are judged to be sufficiently serious and profitable for giving special leave to continue them. The equivalent of a pass degree is, as already stated, and as set forth in No. 9 of the Graces, only awarded to a student who has narrowly escaped failure. It may also be noticed that a failure, for a woman, leaves no chance of a second trial.
The Graces gave a real and substantial benefit to women students and—indirectly—to those who had been, informally, through a tripos course at Newnham. These latter did not obtain University recognition of any sort, but their names and tripos places were recorded in the Girton and Newnham Calendars, and this served as evidence of their standing to the educational world. When Trinity College, Dublin, for a few years (as will be hereafter related) granted an ad eundem B.A. or M.A. to Oxford and Cambridge women who had taken final honours examinations, those who had done so previous to the Graces (as will be hereafter noticed)[7] were admitted with the others. For some reason, those who many years later drew up the Representation of the People Act of 1918 felt obliged to draw the line more strictly and to limit the vote to those women who had obtained the equivalent of a degree since 1881.
There were no heart-burnings caused by the comparatively narrow range of the privileges given by the Graces, partly because it was always felt that more would come quietly as time and occasion should dictate. The resident staff, as such, obtained no recognition. No woman could sit on a board of studies, nor lecture formally in an academic building. Privately, the opinion of Newnham lecturers was sometimes asked on a question as to curricula, and women of distinction occasionally lectured and sometimes drew large audiences, while—in course of time—some undergraduates were advised by their tutors to seek admission to the lectures of a Newnham specialist. For some years there was no ground for formal extensions of privilege. And it was believed, and was to be proved again afterwards, that in the situation in which Newnham found itself, it was unwise to demand privileges that were not almost certain to be granted.
Anne J. Clough
In fact, the crowning triumph of the Graces marks the success of the policy of Miss Clough, Dr. and Mrs. Sidgwick, Miss Kennedy, and the other founders of the College: a policy of winning great things by not standing out for lesser ones, of pertinacity in following a large if at first vague programme, and of conciliation and "sweet reasonableness" towards those who looked askance on the whole movement. It must be observed that all the Founders were deeply imbued with love and reverence for the University, and that the students were brought up to regard it as almost an Alma Mater—at any rate, as a noble and worthy corporation, to which they owed a deep debt for its past doings, and for what it had always stood for in the nation and in the world, a debt increased by the privilege granted to them of living within its precincts and learning wisdom from its most distinguished sons. There was no "battering at the gates." The pioneers of the Women's Colleges, so far from tolerating any notion that the University would suffer from granting their requests, would have felt it a thing worth much labour and many struggles if they could in any way add to the great repute and dignity which Cambridge had, among Universities, enjoyed from far-back times.