That, in the opinion of the board, it is not advisable for the University to hold out any encouragement that it will undertake the medical education of women.
The Harvard Divinity School at Cambridge sometimes admits women, but does not recognize them publicly, nor grant them degrees; but there are other theological schools in the State where a complete preparation for the ministerial profession can be obtained. The attitude of the churches toward women has changed greatly within thirty years. As early as 1869, women began to serve on committees, and to be ordained deaconesses of churches. They also hold important offices connected with the different church organizations. They serve on the boards of State and national religious associations. There are also missionary associations, both home and foreign, and Christian unions, all officered and managed exclusively by women. Even the treasurers of these large bodies are women, and their husbands or trustees are no longer required to give bonds for them.[149] At the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the word "male" was stricken from the discipline, and the word "person" inserted in its place, in all cases save those that concerned the ordination of clergy.
Olympia Brown was the first woman settled as pastor in the State. Her parish was at Weymouth Landing. In 1864 she petitioned the Massachusetts legislature "that marriages performed by a woman should be made legal." The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom the matter was referred, reported that no legislation was necessary, as marriages solemnized by women were already legal.[150] Thus the legislature of the State established the precedent, that "he" meant "she" under the law, in one instance at least. Phebe Hanaford, Mary H. Graves and Lorenza Haynes were the first Massachusetts women to be ordained preachers of the gospel. Rev. Lorenza Haynes has been chaplain of the Maine House of Representatives.
The three best-known women sculptors in this country were born and bred in Massachusetts. They are Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley and Anne Whitney. Harriet Hosmer was the first to free herself from the traditions of her sex and follow her profession as a sculptor. When she desired to fit herself for her vocation there was no art school east of the Mississippi river where she could study anatomy, or find suitable models. Margaret Foley, who, amid the hum of the machinery of the Lowell cotton mills, first conceived the idea of chiseling her thought on the surface of a "smooth-lipped shell," was obliged to go to Rome in order to get the necessary instruction in cameo-cutting. There her genius developed so much that she began to model in clay, and soon became a successful sculptor in marble. Lucy Larcom, in her "Idyl of Work," says of Miss Foley:
"That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome
Faces in marble, classic as her own."
One of her finest creations is "The Fountain," first exhibited in Horticultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876. A free art-school was opened to women in Boston in 1867, and Anne Whitney was not obliged to go to Rome for instruction in the appliances of her art. Harriet Hosmer and Margaret Foley have both made statues which adorn the public buildings and parks of their native country; and Anne Whitney's statues of Samuel Adams and Harriet Martineau are the crowning works of her genius.
No great work has yet been done by Massachusetts women in oil painting; but in water colors, and in decorative art, many have excelled, first prizes in superiority of design having been taken by them over their masculine competitors. Lizzie B. Humphrey, Jessie Curtis, Sarah W. Whitman and Fidelia Bridges, take high rank as artists. Helen M. Knowlton, a pupil of William M. Hunt, is a skillful artist in charcoal and has produced some fine pictures. Women form a large proportion of the students in the school of design recently opened in Boston. A great deal of the ornamental painting now so fashionable on cards and all fancy articles is done by the deft fingers of women. The census of 1880 reports 268 artists and 1,270 musicians and teachers of music.
Of woman as actress and public singer, it is unnecessary to speak, since she has the right of way in both these professions. Here, fortunately, the supply does not exceed the demand; consequently she has her full share of rights, and what is better, equitable pay for her labor. In 1880 there were 111 actresses. Charlotte Cushman, Clara Louise Kellogg and Annie Louise Cary were born in Massachusetts.
The drama speaks too feebly on the right side of the woman question. No successful modern dramatist has made this "humour" of the times the subject of his play. An effort was made in 1879, by the executive committee of the New England Association, to secure a woman suffrage play: but it was not successful, and there is yet to be written a counteractive to that popular burlesque, "The Spirit of '76." It is to be regretted that the stage still continues to ridicule the woman's rights movement and its leaders; for, as Hamlet says:
"The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."