The Education of American Girls

by Anna C. Brackett

The German mother begins at the birth of her infant daughter to spin and weave the linen which is to form her dowry in marriage. If all mothers would begin to lay up for their daughters a dowry of muscular energy and nervous strength from the time of their birth, how would the mythical curse be removed from maternity, and the saddest of all deaths, that of the young wife in the first child-birth, be as rare as it is in Abyssinia.

The first requisite for the mother is to believe in a possible happy destiny for her child, and to seek to secure it for her.

One great secret of all art, and therefore of all education, is the nice balancing of the generic with the special or the individual. Coleridge says “this is the true meaning of the ideal in art.” False culture, by the emphasis laid upon peculiarities of race, sex, or families, develops these peculiarities more and more, and tends to produce monstrosities, while nature always strives to mix the breed and restore the original type.

Nature has her own boundaries, which she does not pass over, but they are always delicate and nicely adjustable. When the gardener wishes bleached celery, or seedless bananas, or monster squashes, he gives special food in the soil of the plants, or covers them from the sun, or nips off the spraying tendrils, that he may produce the variety he covets, but when the farmer would raise corn or wheat for the millions, he ploughs deep into the soil of the prairie, sows his seed broadcast, and trusts it to the free influences of the sun and the winds, and the harvest that he reaps is reproductive, and may be multiplied for hundreds of years.

It is curious in tracing the progress of both vegetable and animal life upwards towards humanity, to see how nature plays with the secondary distinctions of sex. The great distinction always remains of the fertilizing and the reproductive function; but as regards size, beauty, the care of the young, and all moral and mental qualities, there is the greatest diversity of manifestation. In some species, even, the male builds the nest and protects the offspring from the ferocious mother, who, like Saturn, devours her own children, and sometimes, among fishes, even her mate. So is it in regard to the mental differences between men and women. Few persons will deny that the difference of sex which runs through creation, colors every part of life; and yet the difference is so delicate, and so varied, that I have never heard any broad statement which was not liable to sufficient exceptions to destroy its value. I have again and again asked teachers of mixed schools, What difference do you find between the proficiency of the boys and girls in their various studies? Where differences have been pointed out, they have often been just opposite in different schools, one claiming mathematics, another languages, another grammar, or logic, as specially adapted to feminine taste or capacity.

So, in human education the first attention should be given to bringing out the broad, healthy powers of human nature, not to increasing any peculiar attributes. “How much of life,” asked Margaret Fuller, “is the life neither of man or of woman, but of Humanity?” Every mother should seek to lay a firm foundation in this common ground of Humanity, out of which the special flowers will grow more rich and abundant.

Especially should all premature recognition of sex be avoided; nature should be allowed to develop slowly and quietly. Sex must be recognized; the names of brother and sister, the slight difference in costume are sufficient, but in play and work, and especially in dress and manners, the early distinctions between the sexes tend to produce mannishness on one side and effeminacy on the other. The girl's dress may be a little different in form, but why should the boy wear stout gingham or warm flannel, and she be clothed in fragile muslin, or expensive silk? Why should he be able to climb fences or leap ditches without risk to his clothes, and she be kept in perpetual bondage by her ribbons and her ruffles? Look at a boy's simple round straw or felt hat, with a plain band about it, and pity the little girl with her delicate chip and a wreath of artificial flowers. Is it because the girl's physique is more delicate and complicated, that she is thus denied the natural and healthy exercise of her powers, and burdened with a load of finery under which the strong man would halt and stagger? The more delicate the organization, the smaller the lungs, the more absolutely important is perfect freedom of dress and motion, and the more essential is life in the open air. If we must keep any of the children in-doors let it be the boys; they will have out-door life afterwards, but let girlhood have its free play before custom and fashion fetter it forever. So, too, in manners; how many mothers apologize for their unendurable little ruffians by saying, “You know boys will be rude!” Why should boys be rude? Is not gentleman our highest term for all that is honorable and manly? The physical power that is not under the control of higher qualities is rude, but rudeness is not evidence of power, only witness to the want of culture. A sadly pathetic vein runs through Miss Edgeworth's children's stories, especially Frank, in the difference she makes in the life of man and woman. The children make a list of the virtues which should be cultivated by men and women, and courage is put down very low on the woman's side and first on the man's. But there is no sex in morals, and until courage is deemed essential to woman and purity to man there can be no moral perfection in either.

Still more is the direct appeal to sexual differences to be avoided in early childhood. Many foolish parents encourage the custom of having little beaux and juvenile flirtations, and even very young children are taught games in which the boy takes out a girl as his partner, and the reverse. I once saw a dear little girl about four years old put her arm affectionately around the neck of a little playmate, and her father said, “Oh, for shame, you shouldn't kiss a boy.” Could he have answered her simple question, “Why not?”

This is one of the important benefits of the co-education of the sexes. Brought up together in schools as in families, side by side, from early childhood, there is no false mystery about their relation. Their common life is developed, and they value each other for individual qualities. I have never found an exception to the statement by teachers of mixed schools, that there is less of nonsense, less of false sentimentality and precocious sexual attraction, than where the boys and girls are kept separate.

In life as in art those characters are the finest in which the distinction of sex is recognized but not emphasized—in which the human nature preponderates over that of man or woman. In the Hercules, the masculine attributes are exaggerated almost to repulsiveness, but in the Apollo they are present, but they never intrude themselves upon our attention. Vigor, freedom, life, and action, the inspiration of genius, joy in existence, are his attributes, and while the muses are feminine, he is the god of poesy and music. So the Milo Venus has all the traits of womanhood, but not in excess, and her sweet, dignified presence reminds us that she is a goddess, and not a weak, self-conscious woman, like the Medicean image. But the type of womanhood in western Europe and America has emphasized all that is weak, all that is sentimental, all that is helpless in woman, and attenuated it to such delicate proportions as to give it a strange and unnatural charm, like the beauty of consumption. Let us recognize it as an exquisite creation of art, not of nature, as wonderful as the pouter pigeon or the saffron rose. The delicate whiteness of the complexion, scarcely tinged with pink, the fine silky hair, the fragile, willowy form, the tiny hand and foot, the languid blue eye, the soft, low voice, the sensitive nerves that shrink from every breath of heaven, and weep at every tale of woe, the slight cough that touches your compassion, the trembling step that appeals to you for help, are not these all characteristic of that fair, frail, lovely being, to whom sonnets are written and homage tendered when she is young and rich.