Women of distinction/Chapter 98
CHAPTER XCVIII.
HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN.
The dense darkness which for six thousand years has enveloped woman's intellectual life is rapidly disappearing before the rays of modern civilization. Advanced public sentiment says, "Let there be light," and there is light, but it is not that of a brilliant noonday; rather is it the brightness of a rising sun, destined to flood the world with glory.
There are still many who, while advocating female education to a certain point, decry the necessity and the propriety of giving to woman what is known as the higher education. By this term we mean that education involving the same head-training, having for its basis the same general studies deemed essential to our brothers, that education acquired only at the college and the university.
The very fact that woman has a mind capable of infinite expansion is, in itself, an argument that she should receive the highest possible development. Man is placed here to .grow. It is his duty to make the most of the powers within him. Has any one a right to thwart him in these efforts, to shut him out from the means to this end, to say to him as concerns his educational training, "Thus far thou shalt go and no further"? This being true of man specifically, is no less true of man generically. Poets and novelists all agree in according to woman a heart, but in the practical treatment of subjects the fact should not be overlooked that she has also a head. The Martineaus, Hemans, Hannah Mores, George Eliots and Mrs. Brownings have not failed to make this demonstration. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that most women are intellectually inferior to most men, still, in the words of Plato, "Many women are in many things superior to many men." Should not those who have capacity and inclination be allowed to receive this higher education? Should not those who have a gift be allowed to develop and to exercise it? If a woman has a message for the world, must she remain dumb? Notwithstanding woman has been hedged in by certain artificial limitations from time almost immemorial, the effort to repress powerful intellect, magnificent genius, because found in her person, has not always been successful. What a loss to the world had not Mrs. Stowe taken up her pen to depict the horrors of slave life, yet probably she would have darned a greater number of stockings and sewed on more buttons had she desisted from such labors. Nor would we have had Lucretia Mott withhold herself from public life, from her platform efforts as temperance reformer and anti-slavery agitator. "Something God had to say, to her" and through her to an erring people.
Woman moulds and fashions society. Man's chivalrous deference gives her a pre-emiinence and an influence here which carry with them a proportionally great responsibility. The better the training she has received the better enabled will she be to perform the social duties devolving upon her. The more effectual the intellectual armor in which she encases herself the more prepared will she be to engage in the skirmishes of mind. Men adapt themselves to their company, and conversation in society does not rise above the level of its women. It is necessary, then, that woman be ready to meet man upon equal intellectual ground, that her mental equipment be not inferior to his own. We would not have social converse composed exclusively of discussions on the "ologies" or made up of quotations from the "little Latin and less Greek" learned in the schools, but the discipline gained by such scholastic training makes one undeniably brighter, wittier, more entertaining, capable of wielding a greater influence for good. The salons of the intellectual women of France afford numerous examples of what may be accomplished by woman in society. Who has not heard of Madames Récamier and Roland, of Madame de Sevigne, hated by Louis XIV. because of her wit; of Madame de Staël, persecuted by Napoleon, who could not forgive her for being more clever than himself? These women, when old and faded, still charmed by grace and cultivation of mind. Loveliness of person is a rare gift, a precious boon to be duly appreciated, but only mind is truly beautiful.
"Mind, miud alone, bear witness, earth and heaven;
The living fountain in itself contains of beauteous and sublime! Here hand in hand
Sit paramount the graces."
The possession of a higher education multiplies woman's bread-winning opportunities. This is a most important consideration. All women do not enter the domestic state, and even many who do are afterwards so situated as to require a resort to some means of earning their own living and that of others dependent upon them. What shall these women do? It is true that sewing is considered a very respectable occupation and nursing is certainly a most feminine employment, but some women have no desire to sing the song of the shirt and possess no taste for minding babies, least of all those of other people; besides, both of these avenues of female labor, as others of similar character, are overcrowded and but slightly remunerative.
I repeat it, what is to be done with these women, seeking the means by which to earn their daily bread? Will you give them this higher education, and thereby open doors to congenial and paying pursuits; or will you frown them down, and tempt to'dishonor by refusing the means of self-support?. "Quoting Plato again: "Neither a woman as a woman nor a man as a man has any special function, but the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also."; While I do not agree with the ancient sage in his comprehensive statement I do believe that if a woman has a gift for a particular calling and she is not debarred from that calling by the natural barrier of sex, it is both presumptions and unjust for man to attempt to restrain her, on the plea that the work for which nature has evidently designed her is unfeminine. Even men with wise and statesman-like views upon other subjects turn fanatics upon this. They would not have a woman lecture, because it would make her too public; as if publicity could harm one whose only desire is to do good work in a good cause. Nor would they have her a physician, because she must study "indelicate" subjects; as if to a pure-minded person the contemplation of the workmanship of these bodies, wondrously and divinely wrought, could be indelicate.
Woman is for a helpmeet unto man. She is meant to be his assistant in every good work and his companion in the fullest sense of the word. Properly to sustain this relation she must needs have equal educational advantages. There can be no perfect companionship between two people one of whom is by far the intellectual superior of the other. The one will have thoughts, feelings and aspirsations which the other can neither sympathize with nor understand. That wife whose mind has been equally broadened and deepened, who is capable of giving wise counsels and judgments, and of intelligently aiding in the furtherance of their mutual aims, can alone be truly a helpmeet to her husband. "Verily, two cannot walk together except the}' be agreed." Many an eminent man attributes greatly his success to the clear head, as well as the loving heart, of the woman who is his wife. She is the power behind the throne, often more powerful than the monarch himself; hers may be the hand at the helm, moving noiselessly but most effectually. There are many unknown Caroline Herschels, quietly aiding a brother or a husband on to fame.
It is even more necessary that women be well educated than men, for they are to be the mothers of future generations. Men make laws and institutions, but women make men. The child in the hands of its mother is as clay in the hands of the potter. It is hers to "rear the tender mind," to direct the infant thought, to impress the growing character. There can be no higher mission than this, no more responsible position, no calling requiring greater knowledge and wisdom.
An ancient philosopher says: "The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained in that sort of excellence in which when he grows up to manhood he will have to be perfected." The learned Bacon and the great Washington were equally indebted to their mothers, because of the studiousness of the one and the broad culture of the other. No one can direct the early training of the child as can the mother herself; she gives a bias to the youthful mind which it is more than likely to retain.
"'Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."
Ought not women to have broad and full and able minds to perform aright the duties of motherhood? Is it not to the interest of society, of the state, of the nation, that women be liberally educated? To have the mothers ignorant would be through them to weaken the sons, and finally the commonwealth.
"The hand that rocks the cradle,
Is the hand that rules the world."
Fear not to lend your influence for the higher education of woman. She will be none the less a woman when she has received such an education; she will have lost none of that grace and sweetness of character which men admire. Woman asks not of education to make her a man; she asks that herself be given back to her, but herself awakened, strengthened, elevated. Would you open new avenues of employment for her, would you render her a useful and independent member of society? Then give her a higher education. Would you develop the hidden resources of her mind, would you fit her to raise the tone and character of society? Give her a higher education. Would you have her assist her husband in his vexed problems of thought? Would you have her his companion in intellectual and spiritual life? Would you have her train her children aright and be a fountain of knowledge to her family? Then give her a higher education.