Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles

by C. W. Saleeby

Further, this higher education of women—and we may be content to accept the adjective without qualification, since it is after all only a comparative, and leaves us free to employ the superlative—may be and often is of very real value in certain cases and because of certain local conditions, such as the great numerical inequality of the sexes in nearly all civilized countries. It is valuable for that proportion of women, whatever it be, who, through some throw of the physiological dice, seem to be without the distinctive factor for psychical womanhood, the existence of which one has tentatively ventured to assume. These individuals, like all others, are entitled to the fullest and freest development of their lives, and it is well that there shall be open to them, as to the brothers they so closely resemble, opportunities for intellectual satisfaction and self-development. Therefore, surely, by far the most satisfactory function of higher education for women is that which it discharges in reference to these women. Their destiny being determined by their nature, and irrevocable by nurture, it is well that, though we cannot regard it as the highest, we should make the utmost of it by means of the appropriate education.

Only because sometimes we must put up with second bests can we approve of higher education for women other than those of the anomalous semi-feminine type to which we have referred. At present we must accept it as an unfortunate necessity imposed upon us by economic conditions. So long as society is based economically, or rather uneconomically, upon the disastrous principles which so constantly mean the sacrifice of the future to the present, so long, I suppose, will it be impossible that every fully feminine woman shall find a livelihood without some sacrifice of her womanhood. This is a subject to which we must return in a later chapter. Meanwhile it is referred to only because its consideration shows us some sort of excuse, if not warrant, for the higher education of woman, even though in the process of thus endowing her with economic independence, we disendow her of her distinctive womanhood, or at the very least imperil it; even though, more serious still, we deprive the race of her services as physical and psychical mother.

We have seen that there is just afoot a new tendency in the higher education of women, and it is indeed a privilege to be able to do anything in the way of directing public attention to this new trend. In reference thereto, it was hinted that though this newer form of higher education for woman is a great advance upon the old, and is so just because it implies some recognition of woman's place in the world, yet for one reason or another it falls short of what this present student of womanhood, at any rate, demands. As has been hinted further, probably those responsible for the new trend are by no means unaware that, though their line is nearer to the right one, the direct line to the "happy isles" has not quite been taken. But great is Mrs. Grundy of the English, and those who devised the new scheme—one is willing to hazard the guess—had to be content with an approximation to what they knew to be the ideal. That is why we devoted the last chapter to the question of prudery, inserting that between a discussion of the "higher education" of women and the present discussion, which is concerned with the highest education of women.

Words are only symbols, but, like other symbols, they are capable of assuming much empire over the mind. Man, indeed, as Stevenson said, lives principally by catchwords, and though woman, beside a cot, is less likely to be caught blowing bubbles and clutching at them, she also is in some degree at the mercy of words. The higher education of women is a good phrase. It appeals, just because of the fine word higher, to those who wish women well, and to those who are not satisfied that woman should remain for ever a domestic drudge. The phrase has had a long run, so to say, but I propose that henceforth we should set it to compete with another—the highest education of women. Whether this phrase will ever gain the vogue of the other even a biased and admiring father may well question. But if there is anything certain, having the whole weight of Nature behind it, and only the transient aberrations of men opposed thereto, it is that what I call the highest education of women will be and will remain the most central and capital of society's functions, when what is now called the higher education of women has gone its appointed way with nine-tenths of all present-day education, and exists only in the memory of historians who seek to interpret the fantastic vagaries of the bad old days.

Perhaps it is well that we should begin by freeing the word education from the incrustations of mortal nonsense that have very nearly obscured its vitality altogether. Before we can educate for motherhood, we must know what education is, and what it is not. We must have a definition of it and its object; in general as well as in this particular case, otherwise we shall certainly go wrong. Perhaps it may here be permitted to quote a paragraph from a lecture on "The Child and the State," in which some few years ago I attempted to express the first principles of this matter:—

"Now, as a student of biology, I will venture to propose a definition of education which is new, so far as I know, and which I hope and believe to be true and important. Comprehensively, so as to include everything that must be included, and yet without undue vagueness, I would define education as the provision of an environment. We may amplify this proposition, and say that it is the provision of a fit environment for the young and foolish by the elderly and wise. It has really scarcely anything in the world to do with my trying to make you pay for the teaching to my children of dogmas which I believe, and you deny. It neither begins nor ends with the three R's; and it does not isolate, from that whole which we call a human being, the one attribute which may be defined as the intellectual faculty. It is the provision of an environment, physical, mental, and moral, for the whole child, physical, mental, and moral. That is my definition of education. Now, what are we to say of the object of education? In providing the environment—from its mother's milk to moral maxims—for our child, what do we seek? Some may say, to make him a worthy citizen, to make him able to support himself; some may say, to make him fit to bear arms for his king and country; but I will give you the object of education as defined by the author of the most profound and wisest treatise which has ever been written upon the subject—Plato, Locke, and Milton not forgotten. 'To prepare us for complete living,' says Herbert Spencer, 'is the function which education has to discharge.' The great thing needed for us to learn is how to live, how rightly to rule conduct in all directions under all circumstances; and it is to that end that we must direct ourselves in providing an environment for the child. Education is the provision of an environment, the function of which is to prepare for complete living."

Perhaps the only necessary qualification of the foregoing is that, though it refers specially to the child, yet the need of education does not end with childhood, becoming indeed pre-eminent when childhood ends. So we may apply what has been said in the case of the girl, and we shall find it a sure guide to the highest education of women.

First, education being the provision of an environment in the widest sense of that very wide word, always misused when it is used less widely, we must be sure that in our scheme we avoid the errors of past or passing schemes which concern themselves only with some aspect of the environment, and so in effect prepare for something much less than complete living. It is not sufficient to provide an environment which regards the girl as simply a muscular machine, as is the tendency, if not actually the case, in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as merely an intellectual machine, as in the higher education of women; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as a sideboard ornament, in Ruskin's phrase, such as was provided in the earlier Victorian days. In all these cases we are providing only part of the environment, and providing it in excess. None of them, therefore, satisfies our definition of education, which conceives of environment as the sum-total of all the influences to which the whole organism is subjected—influences dietetic, dogmatic, material, maternal, and all other.[10]

Who will question that, according to this conception of education, such a thing as the higher education of women must be condemned as inadequate? No more than a man is woman a mere intellect incarnate. Her emotional nature is all-important; it is indeed the highest thing in the Universe so far as we know. The scheme of education which ignores its existence, and much more than fails to provide the best environment for it, is condemnable. But the scheme of education which derides and despises the emotional nature of woman, looking upon it as a weakness and seeking to suppress it, is damnable, and has led to the damnation—or loss, if the reader prefers the English term—of this most precious of all precious things in countless cases.

The only right education of women must be that which rightly provides the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman, the more we underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs, the more certainly shall we repeat in one form or another the errors of our predecessors.