E. B. Browning.—“Aurora Leigh,” Book viii
PREFACE.
The six essays brought together in this small volume, in the order in which they were written, leave many questions, still warmly debated with regard to working women, almost untouched. The point of view of the writer is circumscribed by the conditions set forth in the first two chapters, which, true in 1891, may have a narrower or a wider application as time goes on. The position of women in the small section of the community known as the middle classes is there shown to be exceptional. The great majority of women belong to the working classes and spend their youth as wage-earners, in many cases under conditions injurious to mind and body, although the real work of their lives is eventually to be found in their own homes. With middle-class women the position is reversed. To those who have once realised what a large number of them may have to be self-supporting, the constant problem henceforth is to discover how the lives of educated women may be made of more value to themselves and others. The cost and reward of efficiency are therefore the two factors which in this little book are treated as being of primary, although not necessarily of greatest, importance.
The author begs to express her thanks to the Editors of the Nineteenth Century, Economic Journal, Contemporary Review, and Charity Organization Review, for permission to republish the articles which appeared in their magazines.
C. E. C.
THE ECONOMIC POSITION
OF
EDUCATED WORKING WOMEN.
February, 1890.
Mrs. Browning’s advice to women, much needed as it is at the present time, was somewhat harsh and unpractical at the time she gave it, more than thirty years ago. At that time it would not have been possible for a woman “to prove herself a leech and cure the plague”; for on the one hand she was debarred from obtaining the necessary qualifications, and on the other she was prohibited from practicing without them. The hospitals and lecture rooms were closed to her by prejudice, and practice was therefore forbidden her by Act of Parliament. Even had she obtained admittance to the dissecting room and hospital by quiet perseverance and tried ability, she could not have hoped by such means alone to remove the obstacles which were placed in her path by legislation. The charters necessary to empower the Universities to confer degrees on women could never have been obtained, except through determined agitation; and if the agitators themselves did not seem competent to exercise the powers which they wished conferred on women, they performed the work for which they were most competent and made the path clear for those who could not have removed the obstacles themselves. The poet and the novelist had no such difficulties to contend with. Such women had no greater hardships to endure than men. If men disbelieved that a woman could write a powerful novel, she had only to do it to convince them of the contrary. But, generally speaking, women were prohibited from doing what they could, on the ground that they could not if they would. It was not universally so; in many cases girls who showed mathematical or logical power, for instance, were discouraged from exercising it, because reasoning power was considered undesirable in women and likely to hinder their chances of marriage. But, on the whole, women’s incapacity for intellectual work was put forward as a reason for forbidding them to attempt it. The futility of forbidding women to do what they were incapable of doing was never perceived by the opponents of the movement for the higher education of women, who based their opposition on this ground. Nor did it avail much to point this out. Behind this asserted disbelief in the power of the educated woman to compete even with the average schoolboy, lay a real conviction, that if she could do so successfully, the more desirable it was to prevent her having the chance of proving it. It is on record that in the days of King Ahasuerus, more than 2,000 years ago, great terror was excited lest “the deed of Vashti should come abroad unto all women, so that they should despise their husbands in their eyes, when it should be reported that the King Ahasuerus commanded Vashti, the queen, to be brought in before him, but she came not. And in order that all wives should give to their husbands honour, both to great and small, Ahasuerus sent letters into all the King’s provinces, that every man should bear rule in his own house.” As in the days of King Ahasuerus, so thirty years ago it was felt that humility in women should be cultivated at all costs, and if they became aware that all men were not necessarily their intellectual superiors they would break out into open revolt. Women had been told that they should obey their husbands because the latter knew best. If that were denied, the claim to obedience would have to rest on the possession of might instead of right.