One hundred years ago the education of women in the most progressive and wealthy families went little beyond reading and writing. In 1819, when Mrs. Emma Willard issued an address to the members of the New York legislature advocating the endowment of an institution for the higher education of women, there was not a college in the country for girls. In 1892, the colleges of the United States numbered more than 50,000 female students. In 1888, the ratio of female students to the whole number of students pursuing a higher course of education in universities and colleges in this country was 29.3 per centum, or a little more than one fourth. At the same time the ratio in England was 11 per centum; in France, 2 per centum; while in Germany, Austria, and Italy the ratio was so slight as to be but a mere fraction of 1 per centum.
Such a thing as a female president of a college was unknown and probably undreamed of in the eighteenth century; but we learn from the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1887–88 that there are in the United States forty-two colleges and institutions for the superior instruction of women having a woman for president.
In the high and secondary schools, in 1888, over one half of the students were girls. And in the same year, tabulated statistics reveal that 63 per centum of the teachers were women. And this percentage will become greater and greater as we grasp the truth that woman is, by gift of greater intuition and sympathy, the natural instructor of the human race. The salaries paid to women teachers are grossly unfair when compared to the pay of male teachers for the same or less work. But as the difference in compensation is growing smaller every decade, there is at least room for hope that this injustice will soon be righted.
The law of evolution is the discoverer and formulator of woman’s advancement. The invention and use of gunpowder placed the peasant on an equal war-footing with the mailed knight. The enormous increase in mechanical appliances and productive machinery has taken woman out of the rank of unpaid menials, has given her leisure for mental development, opportunity to receive recompense for toil, and is largely breaking down the physical barriers which had hitherto been considered unsurmountable. Statistics show that there are forms of machinery in the operation of which the production of a woman is even greater than that of a man, thus furnishing an actual proof of the falsity of the idea that woman is incapacitated for competition with man in the physical world. And the trend of events is indicated by the statistics given in the Report of the Commissioner of Labor, from which we learn that in some trades and professions the percentage of women engaged has increased fivefold in the last decade.
While woman’s work has always been a recognized factor in the world’s progress, yet her admittance to the field of remunerative work is limited to the last one hundred years; is, in fact, the prominent feature of the nineteenth century. There is overwhelming evidence that her work in every department to which she has been admitted is as capable, acceptable, and in every way as faithfully performed as the work of her brother man. In the last century it is estimated that not more than 1 per centum of artists and teachers of art were women; while in 1890 women comprised 48.08 per centum, or nearly one half of that profession. Nearly the same proportion of increase is found in the ranks of teachers and musicians,—women now forming over 60 per centum of the teachers of the United States.
There are now about three million women and girls in this country who earn their own livelihood. And the eleventh census reveals the startling information that in the city of New York there are twenty-seven thousand men who are supported by their wives. Yet these men, useless to society, a burden to the women who support them, are permitted the immunities and privileges of law and custom, while women have equality only in the duties and punishments.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were but few occupations in which women were permitted to engage. Their abilities and ambitions were restricted to the school and the home. In the latter they received food and shelter as compensation; in the former, but one half or one third the salary allowed to male teachers. The first noticeable change in woman’s condition, when she became something more than a mere household drudge, whose busy hands carded and wove, spun and knit, the family supply of cloth, dates from the first bale of cotton grown in this country in the early years of the eighteenth century. In that bale of cotton lay the seeds of not only a new movement in labor, but the beginning of a new epoch for woman, in which her work and wages were destined to take coherent shape and form. In all industrial progress since that time women have taken an active part while receiving a meagre share of the product. Forced by the course of events to emerge from seclusion and repression, she has passed from one stage of development to another, always a step or two behind man in the progress of social evolution, till the close of the nineteenth century reveals myriad changes and the actual realization of Tennyson’s prophetic lines in the “Princess,” “We have prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans.”
GEORGE ELIOT.
One hundred years ago it was the duty of a woman to efface herself. She was expected to make of herself a mental blank-book upon which her husband might inscribe what he would. Thus it is only lately that women have begun actively to compete with men in expression of any kind. Indeed, previous to that time, with a few notable exceptions, they were denied recognition of individual life. The woman, if unmarried, was merged in the family, or, if married, merged in the husband. Her name, her religion, her gods, were changed on marriage. But, married or single, the absorption was complete. So it has happened that woman, throbbing with poetic sympathy, has, with the exception of Sappho, produced less high and unmistakable poetry than man. With more harmony, more music in her nature, her very soul attuned to symphony and rhythm, she has been little known as a composer. With far vision and clear literary insight, she has been suppressed in art and literature. George Eliot gave her sublime literary productions to the world under a masculine nom de plume, because of the prejudice of even that not remote day. Fanny Mendelssohn was compelled by her family to publish her musical compositions as her brother’s. Mary Somerville met only discouragement and ridicule in her mathematical studies. In every sphere, in every department of science and art, abuse, injustice, and the croaking of reactionary frogs have greeted each step of her upward way. The wonder is, then, not that she has accomplished so little, but that she is not in the same condition to-day that she was when Paul thrust a gag in her mouth in the shape of a Corinthian text, “And if a woman would learn anything, let her ask her husband at home.” It will be seen, therefore, that the oft-repeated assertion that women have not given to the world as much evidence of genius as men is a Lilliputian assertion tainted somewhat with envy. “There has been no Shakespeare among women,” says the advocates of man’s supremacy. With all the world as their own, and the gates of boundless opportunities swinging wide, there has been but one Shakespeare among men. It has been asserted that George Eliot is the Shakespeare among women and Mrs. Browning the counterpart of Bacon. But their immortality has not been tested. They lived but a little while ago. But there is one woman, at least, who has established her claim thoroughly, and whose genius twenty-five centuries have tested. Sappho is truly immortal. Her fame and genius have been sealed by the approval of all the great literati of the centuries. Coleridge, who occupies no uncertain place in the world of letters, says of her, “Of all the poets of the world, of all the illustrious artists of all literature, Sappho is the one whose every word has a peculiar and unmistakable poetic perfume, a seal of absolute perfection and illimitable grace.” Swinburne, the greatest living master in the world of verbal music, declares that, “Her verses are the supreme success, the final achievement, of poetic art.” Sappho’s claim to immortality exceeds that of Shakespeare’s by twenty-three hundred years.