One of the burning questions now in the colleges for the higher education
of women is whether the undergraduates shall wear the cap and gown. The
subject is a delicate one, and should not be confused with the broader
one, what is the purpose of the higher education? Some hold that the
purpose is to enable a woman to dispense with marriage, while others
maintain that it is to fit a woman for the higher duties of the married
life. The latter opinion will probably prevail, for it has nature on its
side, and the course of history, and the imagination. But meantime the
point of education is conceded, and whether a girl is to educate herself
into single or double blessedness need not interfere with the
consideration of the habit she is to wear during her college life. That
is to be determined by weighing a variety of reasons.
Not the least of these is the consideration whether the cap-and-gown
habit is becoming. If it is not becoming, it will not go, not even by an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States; for woman's dress
obeys always the higher law. Masculine opinion is of no value on this
point, and the Drawer is aware of the fact that if it thinks the cap and
gown becoming, it may imperil the cap-and-gown cause to say so; but the
cold truth is that the habit gives a plain girl distinction, and a
handsome girl gives the habit distinction. So that, aside from the
mysterious working of feminine motive, which makes woman a law unto
herself, there should be practical unanimity in regard to this habit.
There is in the cap and gown a subtle suggestion of the union of learning
with womanly charm that is very captivating to the imagination. On the
other hand, all this may go for nothing with the girl herself, who is
conscious of the possession of quite other powers and attractions in a
varied and constantly changing toilet, which can reflect her moods from
hour to hour. So that if it is admitted that this habit is almost
universally becoming today, it might, in the inscrutable depths of the
feminine nature--the something that education never can and never should
change--be irksome tomorrow, and we can hardly imagine what a blight to a
young spirit there might be in three hundred and sixty-five days of
uniformity.
The devotees of the higher education will perhaps need to approach the
subject from another point of view--namely, what they are willing to
surrender in order to come into a distinctly scholastic influence. The
cap and gown are scholastic emblems. Primarily they marked the student,
and not alliance with any creed or vows to any religious order. They
belong to the universities of learning, and today they have no more
ecclesiastic meaning than do the gorgeous robes of the Oxford chancellor
and vice-chancellor and the scarlet hood. From the scholarly side, then,
if not from the dress side, there is much to be said for the cap and
gown. They are badges of devotion, for the time being, to an intellectual
life.
They help the mind in its effort to set itself apart to unworldly
pursuits; they are indications of separateness from the prevailing
fashions and frivolities. The girl who puts on the cap and gown devotes
herself to the society which is avowedly in pursuit of a larger
intellectual sympathy and a wider intellectual life. The enduring of this
habit will have a confirming influence on her purposes, and help to keep
her up to them. It is like the uniform to the soldier or the veil to the
nun--a sign of separation and devotion. It is difficult in this age to
keep any historic consciousness, any proper relations to the past. In the
cap and gown the girl will at least feel that she is in the line of the
traditions of pure learning. And there is also something of order and
discipline in the uniforming of a community set apart for an unworldly
purpose. Is it believed that three or four years of the kind of
separateness marked by this habit in the life of a girl will rob her of
any desirable womanly quality?
The cap and gown are only an emphasis of the purpose to devote a certain
period to the higher life, and if they cannot be defended, then we may
begin to be skeptical about the seriousness of the intention of a higher
education. If the school is merely a method of passing the time until a
certain event in the girl's life, she had better dress as if that event
were the only one worth considering. But if she wishes to fit herself for
the best married life, she may not disdain the help of the cap and gown
in devoting herself to the highest culture. Of course education has its
dangers, and the regalia of scholarship may increase them. While our
cap-and-gown divinity is walking in the groves of Academia, apart from
the ways of men, her sisters outside may be dancing and dressing into the
affections of the marriageable men. But this is not the worst of it. The
university girl may be educating herself out of sympathy with the
ordinary possible husband. But this will carry its own cure. The educated
girl will be so much more attractive in the long-run, will have so many
more resources for making a life companionship agreeable, that she will
be more and more in demand. And the young men, even those not expecting
to take up a learned profession, will see the advantage of educating
themselves up to the cap-and-gown level. We know that it is the office of
the university to raise the standard of the college, and of the college
to raise the standard of the high school. It will be the inevitable
result that these young ladies, setting themselves apart for a period to
the intellectual life, will raise the standard of the young men, and of
married life generally. And there is nothing supercilious in the
invitation of the cap-and-gown brigade to the young men to come up
higher.
There is one humiliating objection made to the cap and gown-made by
members of the gentle sex themselves--which cannot be passed by. It is of
such a delicate nature, and involves such a disparagement of the sex in a
vital point, that the Drawer hesitates to put it in words. It is said
that the cap and gown will be used to cover untidiness, to conceal the
makeshift of a disorderly and unsightly toilet. Undoubtedly the cap and
gown are democratic, adopted probably to equalize the appearance of rich
and poor in the same institution, where all are on an intellectual level.
Perhaps the sex is not perfect; it may be that there are slovens (it is a
brutal word) in that sex which is our poetic image of purity. But a neat
and self-respecting girl will no more be slovenly under a scholastic gown
than under any outward finery. If it is true that the sex would take
cover in this way, and is liable to run down at the heel when it has a
chance, then to the “examination” will have to be added a periodic
“inspection,” such as the West-Pointers submit to in regard to their
uniforms. For the real idea of the cap and gown is to encourage
discipline, order, and neatness. We fancy that it is the mission of woman
in this generation to show the world that the tendency of woman to an
intellectual life is not, as it used to be said it was, to untidy habits.