This was the frank, involuntary utterance of a cultivated man, brought suddenly, for the first time, as he said, to consider the question of the education of women, an elemental half of humanity, in the unbiassed, comprehensive view of the subject that can alone lead to a just decision. He was an Eastern man, outside of the turmoil and interests of the discussion. No personal or professional craft lurked unrecognized behind his conclusions to give them a bias. With him it was a question of social science, general human happiness and welfare. With us, however, where it has become a practical question touching domestic, social, and professional interests, its complications multiply, and it is exceedingly difficult for the most honest and unselfish occupants of place or privilege, to look at it without touching, in some of its intricacies, the question, “Does not space for her to bourgeon,” imply restricting me and mine?
The old Chinese wall of prejudice, surrounding the subject of woman's education, from which there are so many out-comes, is not broken down yet. We only learn how strong it is when we come to some new point in the siege or defence. Sermons that have been preached at learned women, and jokes perpetrated at their expense, are still issued in modernized editions, and scare and sting as of yore. It is quite curious to note how the style changes, but the thought remains the same. Our fathers planned our earliest educational institutions according to the best they knew. Our mothers economized and hoarded that they might leave bequests to colleges and theological schools, where their sons could be educated; while their daughters picked up such crumbs of knowledge as they could find. Both wrought their best, according to the light of their day, but the shadow of their fuller eclipse extends to us. Calvin's requirements in a wife were with them as weighty to determine woman's status in society as was his “Five Points in Theology,” their creed: “That she be learned is not requisite. That she be beautiful, only that she be not ill-looking, is not important. But she must be of sound health, that she may bear me children. She must be industrious, economical, obedient, and know how to take good care of my health.”
This was the summary of what women needed to know and be, in the opinion of one regarded by our fathers as a law-giver, entrusted with the oracles of God. An old manuscript copy of a sermon, esteemed fifty years ago so rich in thought as to make it worth transcribing, to keep among family treasures, lies before me. From it, among more piquant instructions, I copy a sentence: “But if thou wilt please God, take much pains with thy heart, to make it stand in awe of thy husband. Look, therefore, not on his qualities but on his place, for if thou despisest him, thy contempt redounds upon God.” “When a woman counts herself equal with her husband, though he be of meaner birth and smaller capacity, the root of all good carriage is dried up.”
In proof that we have outlived only the form of such sentiment, I recommend the reading of Part VII. of Mr. Hamerton's “Intellectual Life,” a very recent publication, and, the reviewers say, “a charming book.”
In a discourse on “Women and Marriage” he says: “It appears to be thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to give them a degree of respect for men's attainments which they would not feel, were they prepared to estimate them critically.” This educational policy and its workings Mr. Hamerton illustrates by numerous examples. He says: “The opinion of a distinguished artist was, that a man devoted to art might marry either a plain-minded woman who would occupy herself exclusively with household matters, and shield his peace by taking these cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his artistic life. * * * And of the two kinds of women which he considered possible, he preferred the former, that of an entirely ignorant person, from whom no interference was to be apprehended. He considered the first Madam Ingres the true model of an artist's wife, because she did all in her power to guard her husband's peace, and never herself disturbed him, acting the part of a breakwater, which protects a space of calm and never disturbs the peace it has made.”
A woman too ignorant to wish to comprehend her husband lest she should meddle in his pursuits, and who should find her crumb of the happiness that human life and family compact ought to yield, in “acting as a breakwater” to protect him, and “never disturb his peace,” was a great artist's view of the education needed by a woman! To this I would oppose my more humble experience, but I am sure there are women enough who would add theirs thereto, to make the sum equal in weight to that of Mr. Hamerton's artist friend. Among the women whom I have known in life, the most highly intellectual have been the least meddlesome; for the very good reason that they have been too busy with the work of their own brains to meddle with what concerned other people. Nor have such women been less the helps, fitted, if need be, to act as “breakwaters” to protect the calm of a man engaged in any great work. On the contrary, the discipline acquired in study and thought has been turned to account in this way, as well as in any other.
Mr. Hamerton gives another friend's view of the education needful for a woman,—“one of the most intellectual men he ever knew,” but “whose wife really knew nothing of his intellectual existence whatever.” His theory was “that women ought not to be admitted to the region of masculine thought; it is not good for them.”
So Dr. Clarke evidently thinks, and thinks he proves it physiologically. The existence of the terrible evils he depicts is not to be doubted; and she would be less than a true woman who did not protest, by precept, preaching, and example, against the follies and sins of school or social life that induce such evils: but that it was eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge—“persistent brain-work” even—that furnished Dr. Clarke's cases, “chiefly clinical,” an experience of teaching extending over forty years would forbid me to believe.
As a woman, I have heard the smothered cry of woe as pitiful, of suffering as great, from those who prayed for death as a relief—though it was not from suffering of the body—as any that Dr. Clarke describes.
In our pity for physical suffering, some may well be reserved for the soul of her who