A PROFESSION FOR LADIES.
BY MRS. SARAH J. HALE.
Many good men, who really feel solicitous for the improvement and elevation of the female sex, doubt the expediency of bestowing on young ladies a regular scientific education. They doubt this, because there is no profession in which the talents of women may be employed without injury to the female character—to that retiring modesty which should ever
“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.”
No person of reflection and good judgment, who wishes to promote the happiness and respectability of woman, would seek to place her in the lecture room of the physician—in the forum—the desk—or the halls of legislation. The attempt to inspire our sex with the ambition to appear like men, is too absurd to merit discussion. Would any lady consider herself competent to direct the management of a ship in a storm, or a fire-engine at a conflagration? The storms of the political ocean, and the fires of party spirit, would as little accord with her moral delicacy of mind and feeling. Still she was not formed to be a trifler on earth. She has mental powers which, if not equal with those of man, are yet far too precious to be wasted in indolence, or allowed to rest in ignorance of their duties. Women have a vast influence on society, which nothing can prevent; this influence will be beneficial or deleterious in proportion to the reasonable and enlightened manner in which it is exerted. To secure it on the side of virtue and intelligence, should be the aim of every person who wishes to promote individual and social improvement and happiness, and our national prosperity and glory. There is no country where the right direction of female influence is so necessary as in America, because here the popular breath guides and impels as it were, the bark of state. Our people must, therefore, be educated—not made learned in ancient lore merely, or even instructed deeply in modern sciences, but trained to the love of excellence, and habituated to the control of the passions. The heart and the understanding must alike be cultivated, and this can never be effected without the co-operation of women.
It is in the department of teaching, that women exert their greatest power. Important as is their influence in the nursery, the task of education is but commenced there. Females might be extensively employed in school keeping. Why should not a department so peculiarly fitted to their talents, feelings and station, be more generally appropriated to them? In New England, it is true, this has partially been done; and to that, more than to any other single cause, may be traced the general diffusion of learning among all classes of our people. Had only men been permitted to teach a common or district school, the expense would have prevented schools from being continued in our thinly settled towns, except for a small part of each year. Then, it is a truth, which few will feel disposed to question, that the young imbibe instruction more readily from female teachers than from those of the other sex. Another, and very important consideration, is the effect which the employment has had on those females engaged in it. Their own minds have been disciplined and strengthened, and when married, they have carried into their own families those habits of attention to intellectual improvement, which have qualified them to judge of the talents and to direct the studies of their own children. Thus, their influence on society has been continually active in promoting the fashion of learning,—that peculiar mode of thinking, which, even among our poorest class, attaches infamy to ignorance, and incites the dullest laborer to consider himself disgraced if his children cannot at least read and write.
Here, then, is the profession to which I would direct the talents and energies of my own countrywomen. The field is wide enough for the display of all their genius, and there are laurels sufficient to satisfy the most ambitious. Many distinguished female writers have likewise been distinguished as teachers of children and youth. Mrs. Hannah More was greatly indebted to her situation as an instructress for the cultivation and development of her extraordinary talents. Mrs. Barbauld owed much of her literary excellence to the necessity she felt of assisting her husband in the education of his pupils. Miss Edgeworth, though not ostensibly a teacher, was nevertheless stimulated in her literary career—first entered upon to promote education—by the practical illustrations of its benefits, which she daily witnessed while assisting her father in the instruction of his numerous family. Among the French ladies, Madame de Genlis, and Madame Campan, were distinguished for their skill in teaching youth; and the genius and writings, of the first especially, are well known. The present king of the French was her pupil, and to her wise and efficient management, owes much of that practical knowledge and energy of character which has distinguished his career.
Indeed, there is no method by which a lady can, with safety and credit to herself, so surely and speedily acquire that very necessary knowledge for a popular writer—the knowledge of the human heart—as by becoming an instructress of the young. Let American ladies, who wish for literary distinction, if such there are, enter the school-room as their temple of fame—and then they will be useful if they are not celebrated. I shall be told that they cannot do this—that men have engrossed the employment of school-keeping, as well as that of every other, by which money can be acquired; and that female teachers are excluded from all schools excepting those of the very youngest scholars. This is too true. Ought it thus to be?—Is it for the public benefit, to employ men to teach schools, when women could do that duty better,—even were the same compensation to be allowed to the female as to the male?
It has become a proverb, that none but a man of inferior abilities, will keep a school from choice—that it is a drudgery, in which no man of genius will engage, but from necessity,—or persevere in, but from pecuniary motives. Allow this repugnance to the business of instruction to proceed, as perhaps it does, from man's superior talents,—say, that it is not in accordance with the strong powers and stirring energies of his mind, to rest contented in the prison of a school-room; yet to women, less gifted with confidence in their own abilities, and having so few objects of pursuit, it would furnish an employment congenial as well as honorable. There is no branch of learning taught in our common schools which females would not be capable of teaching. They should also be employed, as assistants, in every school and seminary, where there are pupils of their own sex. One very important object to be effected by this arrangement, would be the saving of expense. Women can afford to teach for a less reward than men, even should they prove, as they often doubtless would prove, the more capable instructors. To make education universal, it must be afforded cheap. It is a false principle, which estimates the benefits of a privilege by the money it costs. If it were true, our Republican government would be a miserable one, in comparison with those of royal magnificence. It is, usually, the abuses of our privileges, which form the largest item in their expense. Our nation has need of all the talents of its citizens, exerted in the most beneficial manner, to keep pace with the spirit of the age. Why then, refuse the assistance of female intellect, when it might be so usefully and appropriately exerted?—There are now, as it is reported, about ten thousand schoolmasters in the State of New York. One half of that number might, undoubtedly, be employed more profitably to the country, and pleasantly to themselves, in other business, and their duties, as teachers, better as well as cheaper, performed by intelligent women. There are many such to whom even a moderate compensation would be wealth, and would stimulate to unwearied exertion.