Mrs. Chapone, in the eighteenth century, advised her niece to avoid the study of classics and science lest she "excite envy in one sex and jealousy in the other." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu laments thus: "There is hardly a creature in the world more despicable and more liable to universal ridicule than a learned woman," and "folly is reckoned so much our proper sphere, we are sooner pardoned any excesses of that than the least pretensions to reading and good sense." Pursuant to the prevailing sentiment on the education of women, the subjects which they studied and the books which they were allowed to read were carefully regulated. As to their reading, it was confined to romantic tales whereof the exceeding insipidity could not awaken any symptom of intelligence. Lyly dedicated his Euphues to the "Ladies and Gentlewomen of England" and Sidney's Arcadia owed its vast success to its female readers.
The subjects studied followed the orthodox views. Beginning with the reign of Queen Anne boarding-schools for girls became very numerous. At these schools "young Gentlewomen" were "soberly educated" and "taught all sorts of learning fit for young Gentlewomen." The "learning fit for young Gentlewomen" comprised "the Needle, Dancing, and the French tongue; a little Music on the Harpsichord or Spinet, to read, write, and cast accounts in a small way." Dancing was the all-important study, since this was the surest route to their Promised Land, matrimony. The study of French consisted in learning parrot-like a modicum of that language pronounced according to the fancy of the speaker. As, however, the young beau probably did not know any more himself, the end justified the means. Studies like history, when pursued, were taken in homoeopathic doses from small compendiums; and it was adequate to know that Charlemagne lived somewhere in Europe about a thousand or so years ago. Yet even this was rather advanced work and exposed the woman to be damned by the report that she was educated. Ability to cook was not despised and pastry schools were not uncommon. Thus in the time of Queen Anne appears this: "To all Young Ladies: at Edw. Kidder's Pastry School in little Lincoln's Inn Fields are taught all Sorts of Pastry and Cookery, Dutch hollow works, and Butter Works," etc.
At last in the first decades of the nineteenth century the civilised world began slowly to take some thought of women's higher education and to wake up to the fact that because a certain system has been in vogue since created man does not necessarily mean that it is the right one; a very heretical and revolutionary idea, which has always been and still is ably opposed by that great host of people who have steadily maintained that when men and women once begin to think for themselves society must inevitably run to ruin. In 1843 there was established a certain Governesses' Benevolent Institution. This was in its inception a society to afford relief to governesses, i.e., women engaged in tutoring, who might be temporarily in straits, and to raise annuities for those who were past doing work. Obviously this would suggest the question of what a competent governess was; and this in turn led to the demand for a diploma as a warrant of efficiency. That called attention to the extreme ignorance of the members of the profession; and it was soon felt that classes of instruction were needed. A sum of money was accordingly collected in 1846 and given the Institution for that purpose. Some eminent professors of King's College volunteered to lecture; and so, on a small scale to be sure, began what is now Queen's College, the first college for women in England, incorporated by Royal Charter in 1853. In 1849 Bedford College for women had been founded in London through the unselfish labours of Mrs. Reid; but it did not receive its charter until 1869. Within a decade Cheltenham, Girton, Newnham, and other colleges for women had arisen. Eight of the ten men's universities of Great Britain now allow examinations and degrees to women also; Oxford and Cambridge do not.
Women in the professions.
Since then women's right to any higher education which they may wish to embrace has been permanently assured. As early as 1868 Edinburgh opened its courses in pharmacy to women. In 1895 there were already 264 duly qualified female physicians in Great Britain. In many schools they are allowed to study with men, as at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Edinburgh; there are four medical schools for women only. We find women now actively engaged in agriculture, apiculture, poultry-keeping, horticulture; in library work and indexing; in stenography; in all trades and professions. The year 1893 witnessed the first appointment of women as factory inspectors, two being chosen that year in London and in Glasgow. Nottingham had chosen women as sanitary inspectors in 1892. Thus in about two decades woman has advanced farther than in the combined ages which preceded. Before these very modern movements we may say that the stage was the only profession which had offered them any opportunity of earning their living in a dignified way. It seems that a Mrs. Coleman, in 1656, was the first female to act on the stage in England; before that, all female parts had been taken by boys or young men. A Mrs. Sanderson played Desdemona in 1660 at the Clare Market Theatre. In 1661, as we may see from Pepys' Diary (Feb. 12, 1661), an actress was still a novelty; but within a few decades there were already many famous ones.
Woman suffrage in England
We have seen that now woman has obtained practically all rights on a par with men. There are still grave injustices, as in divorce; but the battle is substantially won. One right still remains for her to win, the right, namely, to vote, not merely on issues such as education—this privilege she has had for some time—but on all political questions; and connected with this is the right to hold political office. We may fittingly close this chapter by a review of the history of the agitation for woman suffrage.
In the year 1797 Charles Fox remarked: "It has never been suggested in all the theories and projects of the most absurd speculation, that it would be advisable to extend the elective suffrage to the female sex." Yet five years before Mary Wollstonecraft had published her Vindication of the Rights of Women. Presently the writings of Harriet Martineau upon political economy proved that women could really think on politics.
We may say that the general public first began to think seriously on the matter after the epoch-making Reform Act of 1832. This celebrated measure admitted £10 householders to the right to vote and carefully excluded females; yet it marked a new era in the awakening of civic consciousness: women had taken active part in the attendant campaigns; and the very fact that "male persons" needed now to be so specifically designated in the bill, whereas hitherto "persons" and "freeholders" had been deemed sufficient, attests the recognition of a new factor in political life.
In 1865 John Stuart Mill was elected to Parliament. That able thinker had written on The Subjection of Women and was ready to champion their rights. A petition was prepared under the direction of women like Mrs. Bodichon and Miss Davies; and in 1867 Mill proposed in Parliament that the word man be omitted from the People's Bill and person substituted. The amendment was rejected, 196 to 83.