FOOTNOTES:
[1] As this pursuit is sometimes recommended with apparent seriousness, it may be as well to point out to the uninitiated, that if mistresses are to do the cooking, masters must dine alone. Dinners cannot be cooked an hour beforehand, and left to serve themselves up. In this, as in other arts, the finishing touches are among the most important. This does not mean, of course, that a mistress may not give directions and occasional help, or that it may not be a very good thing for girls to lend a hand, now and then, by way of learning to cook. That is a different thing from regularly spending a considerable part of their daily lives in the kitchen.
[2] Letter to Dr Greenhill, an old pupil, in ‘Life of Dr Arnold,’ p. 392.
[3] Sermons par T. Colani.—Deuxième Recueil, p. 293.
[4] ‘M. de Parthenau would have been surprised had any one suggested that this peaceful life was less to the taste of his children than himself. Like so many excellent fathers, he sincerely believed that because it suited him, it must suit them. He had forgotten his own stormy youth, to find himself happy by his fireside, and it never occurred to him to ask, “Is my daughter happy?” So much the better, since he could have done nothing; and Thérèse was the last person to make him suspect that she was not perfectly satisfied. Yet, whoever had seen her, would have thought her destined for a wider sphere than that of the narrow world where she strove to be content. It had not always been so. Now, however, she stifled all the aspirations, the radiant visions which once haunted her, under the crowd of occupations which she found for herself. She silenced the cry of her intellect, and yet heard it always; perhaps because she shunned as snares the natural outlets which presented themselves, refusing each rare opportunity of leaving home, lest she should return discontented; and putting away books and pencils, that she might have no interests but those of her father and her poor dependents. It was an honest, mistaken effort to do right; and the confessor, who stood to her in the place of a conscience, approved it—nay, urged it on her. It was strange, this mute, ceaseless conflict, known only in its full extent to herself, and hidden under so monotonous and peaceful a life!’—Sydonie’s Dowry, p. 24.
May not something like a counterpart of this mute, ceaseless conflict be hidden under many a monotonous and peaceful English life?
CHAPTER IV.
THINGS AS THEY MIGHT BE.
Supposing so much to be granted, it will be asked, What can be done? Clearly, girls cannot be kept at school indefinitely till they marry. When they leave school, say at eighteen, what are they to do next? The answer must chiefly depend on circumstances. Where the resources of the parents are such that there is a reasonable certainty of an abundant provision for the future, an education corresponding with that given by the universities to young men—in other words, ‘the education of a lady,’ considered irrespectively of any specific uses to which it may afterwards be turned—would appear to be the desideratum. And clearly ‘the education of a lady’ ought to mean the highest and the finest culture of the time. The accurate habits of thought and the intellectual polish by which the scholar is distinguished, ought to be no less carefully sought in the training of women than in that of men. This would be true, even if only for the sake of the charm which high culture gives to social intercourse, a charm attainable in no other way. But apart from this consideration, the duties of women of the higher class are such as to demand varied knowledge as well as a disciplined mind and character. Difficult cases in social ethics frequently arise, on which women are obliged to act and to guide the action of others. However incompetent they may be, they cannot escape the responsibility of judging and deciding. And though natural sagacity and the happy impulses of which we hear so much often come to their aid, prejudice and mistaken impulses ought also to be taken into the account as disturbing elements of a very misleading kind. In dealing with social difficulties, the value of a cultivated judgment, able to unravel entangled evidence, and to give due weight to a great variety of conflicting considerations, would seem to be obvious enough. It would be well worth while to exchange the wonderful unconscious instinct, by which women are supposed to leap to right conclusions, no one knows how, for the conscious power of looking steadily and comprehensively at the whole facts of a case, and thereupon shaping a course of action, with a clear conception of its probable issues. Of course, a merely literary education will not give this power. Knowledge of the world and of human nature, only to be gained by observation and experience, go farther than mere knowledge of books. But the habit of impartiality and deliberation—of surveying a wide field of thought—and of penetrating, so far as human eye can see, into the heart of things—which is promoted by genuine study even of books alone—tends to produce an attitude of mind favourable for the consideration of complicated questions of any sort. A comparison between the judgment of a scholar and that of an uneducated man on matters requiring delicate discrimination and grasp of thought, shows the degree in which the intellect may be fitted by training for tasks of this nature. A large and liberal culture is probably also the best corrective of the tendency to take petty views of things, and on this account is especially to be desired for women on whom it devolves to give the tone to ‘society.’