Higher studies for their daughters were regarded by the generality of men, the same writer tells us, "as great a profanation as the clergy would do if the laity would presume to exercise the functions of the priesthood."
Referring to the handicaps suffered by the women of England in the pursuit of knowledge, the same writer declares: "We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art is omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their nurses' instructions, our knowledge must be concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the mine."
Lord Chesterfield, in His Letters to His Son, expresses the opinion of his contemporaries when he writes on the same subject as follows: "Women are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, sometimes wit; but, for solid reasoning, good sense, I never in my life knew one who had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for twenty-four hours together.... A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them as he does a sprightly forward child; but he neither consults them about nor trusts them with serious matters, though he often makes them believe he does both, which is the thing in the world which they are proud of; for they love mightily to be dabbling in business, which, by the way, they always spoil, and, being distrustful that men in general look upon them in a trifling light, they almost adore that man who talks to them seriously and seems to consult and trust them."[83]
And this was written by that "mirror of politeness and chivalry" whose name has for two centuries been synonymous with that of a perfect gentleman! And Lady Montagu was compelled to pen her caustic and pathetic plaints during the age of Pope, Steele, Addison, Swift,[84] Johnson, Dryden and Goldsmith—the most brilliant pleiad of literary men that England had known since the days of Shakespeare.
So unnatural for women were literary and scientific pursuits regarded by all classes that the few who attained any eminence in them were classed as abnormal creatures who deserved no more consideration than did the Précieuses across the Channel. And so great was the power of public sentiment against women writers that Fanny Burney was afraid to acknowledge the authorship of Evelina. Even in Jane Austen's days, the feeling that a woman, in writing a book, was overstepping the limitations of her sex was so pronounced that she never actually avowed the authorship of those charming works which have been the delight of three generations of readers. It was this same sentiment that caused the Brontë sisters and George Eliot, as well as many other notable women, to write under pseudonyms. They feared to disclose their sex lest their works, if known as the productions of women, should be ipso facto branded as of inferior merit.
During the period in question women fared no better in the United States than in England. They were subject to the same educational debarment and were the victims of the same snobbery and intolerance. The Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants for many generations made no secret of their belief in the mental inferiority of woman, and applied to her the gospel of liberty contained in the following words of Eve to Adam as given in Paradise Lost:
"My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey; so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise."
To the Puritan of New England, as to the Puritan Milton, the relative attainments of woman and man were tersely expressed in Tennyson's couplet: