Femina, A Work for Every Woman

by John A. Miller

The knowledge or even wisdom of a person is of no earthly use to himself or the world if he or she do not possess the faculty of letting the people know of this superior wisdom; and that is why some persons often become more celebrated and even renowned than others, who are intellectually their superiors, because the former possess the faculty and cunning to make people believe in their superiority. By this I simply desire to impress upon parents not to be over-anxious about their daughters standing first in their class room, but, rather, to be very anxious that they attain a healthy and vigorous growth, and that sufficient practical knowledge of domestic affairs be imparted to them so that they can creditably fill their mother’s places some day. This I consider the best legacy.

The time to commence to train mothers is from the moment they are born. The minds of parents should be disabused of the false delicacy about this aspect of a girl, and while no one expects daily lectures to be given to children or young girls upon the responsibilities which await them, such information should not be studiously avoided. I insist that this important fact should not be lost sight of, motherhood is the ultimatum of feminine existence.

Mistaken conceptions of woman’s education, in pinning girls to a life of close mental application, is often productive of uterine disease, by lowering the tone of the nervous system; while others who are ambitious to acquire a professional education in later life, fall by the wayside as hopeless invalids.

I do not disparage her capacity to study with equal proficiency the arts and sciences, often with more ardor and closer application, than her male colleagues, but she is simply striving to accomplish that which the men can and do willingly accomplish for her, while at the same time she is neglecting the education of those qualities which are the sole inheritance of her sex, and which man could not usurp if he would.

This class of uterine diseases develops in a few years into melancholy, which closes the windows of the soul to the sunlight of hope, and gradually drags the sufferer into a decline, that nothing but an entire change in the habits and thoughts of the patient will ameliorate or cure.

I would have our girls as independent of our boys as the latter are of our girls. I would have it understood that each, in their specialty for which God and nature has ordained them, is as honorable and important in the social and industrial conditions of mankind as the other. I would give woman the right, and deem it her privilege, to frankly and unrestrainedly profess her fondness or desire to marry the man who she believes would make her a desirable husband, because woman’s intuition transcends man’s reason.

A reform in this direction would, indeed, elevate the woman to man’s estate, where she belongs. A little less sentiment and more sense is a wholesome panacea for some of the abuses of the marital contract.

I fully subscribe to the view that a woman shall at all times receive the same wages for her mental and physical labor that men receive for the same work, but I am entirely opposed to that modern tendency and false social philosophy which is constantly striving to make a man out of a woman. There is something so grossly absurd and unnatural in this artificial readjustment of the natural duties of the sexes, in their industrial and social relations, that it has degenerated in many instances into fanaticism.