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SEX IN EDUCATION;
Or, A Fair Chance for Girls.
by
EDWARD H. CLARKE, M.D.,
Member of the Massachusetts Medical Society;
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
Late Professor of Materia Medica in Harvard College,
Etc., Etc.
Boston:
James R. Osgood and Company,
(Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.)
1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
Edward H. Clarke,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
Boston:
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, & Co.
"An American female constitution, which collapses just in the
middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber,
if it happen to live through the period when health and
strength are most wanted."
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_.
"He reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came
before him, _womanhood_.... What a woman should demand is
respect for her as she is a woman. Let her first lesson be,
with sweet Susan Winstanley, _to reverence her sex_."
CHARLES LAMB: _Essays of Elia_.
"We trust that the time now approaches when man's condition
shall be progressively improved by the force of reason and
truth, when the brute part of nature shall be crushed, that
the god-like spirit may unfold."
GUIZOT: _History of Civilization_, I., 34.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
INTRODUCTORY 11
PART II.
CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL 31
PART III.
CHIEFLY CLINICAL 61
PART IV.
CO-EDUCATION 118
PART V.
THE EUROPEAN WAY 162
PREFACE.
About a year ago the author was honored by an invitation to address
the New-England Women's Club in Boston. He accepted the invitation,
and selected for his subject the relation of sex to the education of
women. The essay excited an unexpected amount of discussion. Brief
reports of it found their way into the public journals. Teachers and
others interested in the education of girls, in different parts of the
country, who read these reports, or heard of them, made inquiry, by
letter or otherwise, respecting it. Various and conflicting criticisms
were passed upon it. This manifestation of interest in a brief and
unstudied lecture to a small club appeared to the author to indicate a
general appreciation of the importance of the theme he had chosen,
compelled him to review carefully the statements he had made, and has
emboldened him to think that their publication in a more comprehensive
form, with added physiological details and clinical illustrations,
might contribute something, however little, to the cause of sound
education. Moreover, his own conviction, not only of the importance of
the subject, but of the soundness of the conclusions he has reached,
and of the necessity of bringing physiological facts and laws
prominently to the notice of all who are interested in education,
conspires with the interest excited by the theme of his lecture to
justify him in presenting these pages to the public. The leisure of
his last professional vacation has been devoted to their preparation.
The original address, with the exception of a few verbal alterations,
is incorporated into them.
Great plainness of speech will be observed throughout this essay. The
nature of the subject it discusses, the general misapprehension both
of the strong and weak points in the physiology of the woman question,
and the ignorance displayed by many, of what the co-education of the
sexes really means, all forbid that ambiguity of language or euphemism
of expression should be employed in the discussion. The subject is
treated solely from the standpoint of physiology. Technical terms
have been employed, only where their use is more exact or less
offensive than common ones.
If the publication of this brief memoir does nothing more than excite
discussion and stimulate investigation with regard to a matter of such
vital moment to the nation as the relation of sex to education, the
author will be amply repaid for the time and labor of its preparation.
No one can appreciate more than he its imperfections. Notwithstanding
these, he hopes a little good may be extracted from it, and so
commends it to the consideration of all who desire the _best_
education of the sexes.
BOSTON, 18 ARLINGTON STREET, October, 1873.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
The demand for a second edition of this book in little more than a
week after the publication of the first, indicates the interest which
the public take in the relation of Sex to Education, and justifies the
author in appealing to physiology and pathology for light upon the
vexed question of the appropriate education of girls. Excepting a few
verbal alterations, and the correction of a few typographical errors,
there is no difference between this edition and the first. The author
would have been glad to add to this edition a section upon the
relation of sex to women's work in life, after their technical
education is completed, but has not had time to do so.
BOSTON, 18 ARLINGTON STREET,
Nov. 8, 1873.
NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
The attention of the reader is called to the definition of "education"
on the twentieth page. It is there stated, that, throughout this
essay, education is not used in the limited sense of mental or
intellectual training alone, but as comprehending the whole manner of
life, physical and psychical, during the educational period; that is,
following Worcester's comprehensive definition, as comprehending
instruction, discipline, manners, and habits. This, of course,
includes home-life and social life, as well as school-life; balls and
parties, as well as books and recitations; walking and riding, as much
as studying and sewing. When a remission or intermission is necessary,
the parent must decide what part of education shall be remitted or
omitted,--the walk, the ball, the school, the party, or all of these.
None can doubt which will interfere most with Nature's laws,--four
hours' dancing, or four hours' studying. These remarks may be
unnecessary. They are made because some who have noticed this essay
have spoken of it as if it treated only of the school, and seem to
have forgotten the just and comprehensive signification in which
education is used throughout this memoir. Moreover, it may be well to
remind the reader, even at the risk of casting a reflection upon his
intelligence, that, in these pages, the relation of sex to mature life
is not discussed, except in a few passages, in which the large
capacities and great power of woman are alluded to, provided the epoch
of development is physiologically guided.
SEX IN EDUCATION.
PART I.
INTRODUCTORY.
"Is there any thing better in a State than that both women and
men be rendered the very best? There is not."--PLATO.
It is idle to say that what is right for man is wrong for woman. Pure
reason, abstract right and wrong, have nothing to do with sex: they
neither recognize nor know it. They teach that what is right or wrong
for man is equally right and wrong for woman. Both sexes are bound by
the same code of morals; both are amenable to the same divine law.
Both have a right to do the best they can; or, to speak more justly,
both should feel the duty, and have the opportunity, to do their
best. Each must justify its existence by becoming a complete
development of manhood and womanhood; and each should refuse whatever
limits or dwarfs that development.
The problem of woman's sphere, to use the modern phrase, is not to be
solved by applying to it abstract principles of right and wrong. Its
solution must be obtained from physiology, not from ethics or
metaphysics. The question must be submitted to Agassiz and Huxley, not
to Kant or Calvin, to Church or Pope. Without denying the self-evident
proposition, that whatever a woman can do, she has a right to do, the
question at once arises, What can she do? And this includes the
further question, What can she best do? A girl can hold a plough, and
ply a needle, after a fashion. If she can do both better than a man,
she ought to be both farmer and seamstress; but if, on the whole, her
husband can hold best the plough, and she ply best the needle, they
should divide the labor. He should be master of the plough, and she
mistress of the loom. The _quæstio vexata_ of woman's sphere will be
decided by her organization. This limits her power, and reveals her
divinely-appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power,
and reveals his work. In the development of the organization is to be
found the way of strength and power for both sexes. Limitation or
abortion of development leads both to weakness and failure.
Neither is there any such thing as inferiority or superiority in this
matter. Man is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. The relation
of the sexes is one of equality, not of better and worse, or of higher
and lower. By this it is not intended to say that the sexes are the
same. They are different, widely different from each other, and so
different that each can do, in certain directions, what the other
cannot; and in other directions, where both can do the same things,
one sex, as a rule, can do them better than the other; and in still
other matters they seem to be so nearly alike, that they can
interchange labor without perceptible difference. All this is so well
known, that it would be useless to refer to it, were it not that much
of the discussion of the irrepressible woman-question, and many of the
efforts for bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to
ignore any difference of the sexes; seem to treat her as if she were
identical with man, and to be trained in precisely the same way; as if
her organization, and consequently her function, were masculine, not
feminine. There are those who write and act as if their object were to
assimilate woman as much as possible to man, by dropping all that is
distinctively feminine out of her, and putting into her as large an
amount of masculineness as possible. These persons tacitly admit the
error just alluded to, that woman is inferior to man, and strive to
get rid of the inferiority by making her a man. There may be some
subtle physiological basis for such views--some strange quality of
brain; for some who hold and advocate them are of those, who, having
missed the symmetry and organic balance that harmonious development
yields, have drifted into an hermaphroditic condition. One of this
class, who was glad to have escaped the chains of matrimony, but knew
the value and lamented the loss of maternity, wished she had been born
a widow with two children. These misconceptions arise from mistaking
difference of organization and function for difference of position in
the scale of being, which is equivalent to saying that man is rated
higher in the divine order because he has more muscle, and woman lower
because she has more fat. The loftiest ideal of humanity, rejecting
all comparisons of inferiority and superiority between the sexes,
demands that each shall be perfect in its kind, and not be hindered in
its best work. The lily is not inferior to the rose, nor the oak
superior to the clover: yet the glory of the lily is one, and the
glory of the oak is another; and the use of the oak is not the use of
the clover. That is poor horticulture which would train them all
alike.
When Col. Higginson asked, not long ago, in one of his charming
essays, that almost persuade the reader, "Ought women to learn the
alphabet?" and added, "Give woman, if you dare, the alphabet, then
summon her to the career," his physiology was not equal to his wit.
Women will learn the alphabet at any rate; and man will be powerless
to prevent them, should he undertake so ungracious a task. The real
question is not, _Shall_ women learn the alphabet? but _How_ shall
they learn it? In this case, how is more important than ought or
shall. The principle and duty are not denied. The method is not so
plain.
The fact that women have often equalled and sometimes excelled men in
physical labor, intellectual effort, and lofty heroism, is sufficient
proof that women have muscle, mind, and soul, as well as men; but it
is no proof that they have had, or should have, the same kind of
training; nor is it any proof that they are destined for the same
career as men. The presumption is, that if woman, subjected to a
masculine training, arranged for the development of a masculine
organization, can equal man, she ought to excel him if educated by a
feminine training, arranged to develop a feminine organization.
Indeed, I have somewhere encountered an author who boldly affirms the
superiority of women to all existences on this planet, because of the
complexity of their organization. Without undertaking to indorse such
an opinion, it may be affirmed, that an appropriate method of
education for girls--one that should not ignore the mechanism of their
bodies or blight any of their vital organs--would yield a better
result than the world has yet seen.
Gail Hamilton's statement is true, that, "a girl can go to school,
pursue all the studies which Dr. Todd enumerates, except _ad
infinitum_; know them, not as well as a chemist knows chemistry or a
botanist botany, but as well as they are known by boys of her age and
training, as well, indeed, as they are known by many college-taught
men, enough, at least, to be a solace and a resource to her; then
graduate before she is eighteen, and come out of school as healthy, as
fresh, as eager, as she went in."[1] But it is not true that she can
do all this, and retain uninjured health and a future secure from
neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other derangements of the
nervous system, if she follows the same method that boys are trained
in. Boys must study and work in a boy's way, and girls in a girl's
way. They may study the same books, and attain an equal result, but
should not follow the same method. Mary can master Virgil and Euclid
as well as George; but both will be dwarfed,--defrauded of their
rightful attainment,--if both are confined to the same methods. It is
said that Elena Cornaro, the accomplished professor of six languages,
whose statue adorns and honors Padua, was educated like a boy. This
means that she was initiated into, and mastered, the studies that were
considered to be the peculiar dower of men. It does not mean that her
life was a man's life, her way of study a man's way of study, or that,
in acquiring six languages, she ignored her own organization. Women
who choose to do so can master the humanities and the mathematics,
encounter the labor of the law and the pulpit, endure the hardness of
physic and the conflicts of politics; but they must do it all in
woman's way, not in man's way. In all their work they must respect
their own organization, and remain women, not strive to be men, or
they will ignominiously fail. For both sexes, there is no exception to
the law, that their greatest power and largest attainment lie in the
perfect development of their organization. "Woman," says a late
writer, "must be regarded as woman, not as a nondescript animal, with
greater or less capacity for assimilation to man." If we would give
our girls a fair chance, and see them become and do their best by
reaching after and attaining an ideal beauty and power, which shall be
a crown of glory and a tower of strength to the republic, we must look
after their complete development as women. Wherein they are men, they
should be educated as men; wherein they are women, they should be
educated as women. The physiological motto is, Educate a man for
manhood, a woman for womanhood, both for humanity. In this lies the
hope of the race.
Perhaps it should be mentioned in this connection, that, throughout
this paper, education is not used in the limited and technical sense
of intellectual or mental training alone. By saying there is a boy's
way of study and a girl's way of study, it is not asserted that the
intellectual process which masters Juvenal, German, or chemistry, is
different for the two sexes. Education is here intended to include
what its etymology indicates, the drawing out and development of every
part of the system; and this necessarily includes the whole manner of
life, physical and psychical, during the educational period.
"Education," says Worcester, "comprehends all that series of
instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the
understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits, of
youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations." It has
been and is the misfortune of this country, and particularly of New
England, that education, stripped of this, its proper signification,
has popularly stood for studying, without regard to the physical
training or no training that the schools afford. The cerebral
processes by which the acquisition of knowledge is made are the same
for each sex; but the mode of life which gives the finest nurture to
the brain, and so enables those processes to yield their best result,
is not the same for each sex. The best educational training for a boy
is not the best for a girl, nor that for a girl best for a boy.
The delicate bloom, early but rapidly fading beauty, and singular
pallor of American girls and women have almost passed into a proverb.
The first observation of a European that lands upon our shores is,
that our women are a feeble race; and, if he is a physiological
observer, he is sure to add, They will give birth to a feeble race,
not of women only, but of men as well. "I never saw before so many
pretty girls together," said Lady Amberley to the writer, after a
visit to the public schools of Boston; and then added, "They all
looked sick." Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe,
where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills and colors
the faces of ladies and peasant girls, reminding one of the canvas of
Rubens and Murillo; and am always equally surprised on my return, by
crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consumption,
scrofula, anemia, and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system
of educating girls is the cause of this palor and weakness. How our
schools, through their methods of education, contribute to this
unfortunate result, and how our colleges that have undertaken to
educate girls like boys, that is, in the same way, have succeeded in
intensifying the evils of the schools, will be pointed out in another
place.
It has just been said that the educational methods of our schools and
colleges for girls are, to a large extent, the cause of "the thousand
ills" that beset American women. Let it be remembered that this is not
asserting that such methods of education are the sole cause of female
weaknesses, but only that they are one cause, and one of the most
important causes of it. An immense loss of female power may be fairly
charged to irrational cooking and indigestible diet. We live in the
zone of perpetual pie and dough-nut; and our girls revel in those
unassimilable abominations. Much also may be credited to artificial
deformities strapped to the spine, or piled on the head, much to
corsets and skirts, and as much to the omission of clothing where it
is needed as to excess where the body does not require it; but, after
the amplest allowance for these as causes of weakness, there remains a
large margin of disease unaccounted for. Those grievous maladies which
torture a woman's earthly existence, called leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea,
dysmenorrhoea, chronic and acute ovaritis, prolapsus uteri, hysteria,
neuralgia, and the like, are indirectly affected by food, clothing,
and exercise; they are directly and largely affected by the causes
that will be presently pointed out, and which arise from a neglect of
the peculiarities of a woman's organization. The regimen of our
schools fosters this neglect. The regimen of a college arranged for
boys, if imposed on girls, would foster it still more.
The scope of this paper does not permit the discussion of these other
causes of female weaknesses. Its object is to call attention to the
errors of physical training that have crept into, and twined
themselves about, our ways of educating girls, both in public and
private schools, and which now threaten to attain a larger
development, and inflict a consequently greater injury, by their
introduction into colleges and large seminaries of learning, that have
adopted, or are preparing to adopt, the co-education of the sexes.
Even if there were space to do so, it would not be necessary to
discuss here the other causes alluded to. They are receiving the
amplest attention elsewhere. The gifted authoress of "The Gates Ajar"
has blown her trumpet with no uncertain sound, in explanation and
advocacy of a new-clothes philosophy, which her sisters will do well
to heed rather than to ridicule. It would be a blessing to the race,
if some inspired prophet of clothes would appear, who should teach
the coming woman how, in pharmaceutical phrase, to fit, put on, wear,
and take off her dress,--
"Cito, Tuto, et Jucunde."
Corsets that embrace the waist with a grip that tightens respiration
into pain, and skirts that weight the hips with heavier than maternal
burdens, have often caused grievous maladies, and imposed a needless
invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that
breeches do not make a man, nor the want of them unmake a woman.
Let the statement be emphasized and reiterated until it is heeded,
that woman's neglect of her own organization, though not the sole
explanation and cause of her many weaknesses, more than any single
cause, adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits
and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by
dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of
herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible,
breeds the germs of diseases that in later life yield torturing or
fatal maladies. Every physician's note-book affords copious
illustrations of these statements. The number of them which the writer
has seen prompted this imperfect essay upon a subject in which the
public has a most vital interest, and with regard to which it acts
with the courage of ignorance.
Two considerations deserve to be mentioned in this connection. One is,
that no organ or function in plant, animal, or human kind, can be
properly regarded as a disability or source of weakness. Through
ignorance or misdirection, it may limit or enfeeble the animal or
being that misguides it; but, rightly guided and developed, it is
either in itself a source of power and grace to its parent stock, or a
necessary stage in the development of larger grace and power. The
female organization is no exception to this law; nor are the
particular set of organs and their functions with which this essay has
to deal an exception to it. The periodical movements which
characterize and influence woman's structure for more than half her
terrestrial life, and which, in their ebb and flow, sway every fibre
and thrill every nerve of her body a dozen times a year, and the
occasional pregnancies which test her material resources, and cradle
the race, are, or are evidently intended to be, fountains of power,
not hinderances, to her. They are not infrequently spoken of by women
themselves with half-smothered anathemas; often endured only as a
necessary evil and sign of inferiority; and commonly ignored, till
some steadily-advancing malady whips the recalcitrant sufferer into
acknowledgment of their power, and respect for their function. All
this is a sad mistake. It is a foolish and criminal delicacy that has
persuaded woman to be so ashamed of the temple God built for her as to
neglect one of its most important services. On account of this
neglect, each succeeding generation, obedient to the law of hereditary
transmission, has become feebler than its predecessor. Our
great-grandmothers are pointed at as types of female physical
excellence; their great-grand-daughters as illustrations of female
physical degeneracy. There is consolation, however, in the hope, based
on substantial physiological data, that our great-grand-daughters may
recapture their ancestors' bloom and force. "Three generations of
wholesome life," says Mr. Greg, "might suffice to eliminate the
ancestral poison, for the _vis medicatrix naturæ_ has wonderful
efficacy when allowed free play; and perhaps the time may come when
the worst cases shall deem it a plain duty to curse no future
generations with the _damnosa hereditas_, which has caused such bitter
wretchedness to themselves."[2]
The second consideration is the acknowledged influence of beauty.
"When one sees a god-like countenance," said Socrates to Phædrus, "or
some bodily form that represents beauty, he reverences it as a god,
and would sacrifice to it." From the days of Plato till now, all have
felt the power of woman's beauty, and been more than willing to
sacrifice to it. The proper, not exclusive search for it is a
legitimate inspiration. The way for a girl to obtain her portion of
this radiant halo is by the symmetrical development of every part of
her organization, muscle, ovary, stomach and nerve, and by a
physiological management of every function that correlates every
organ; not by neglecting or trying to stifle or abort any of the vital
and integral parts of her structure, and supplying the deficiency by
invoking the aid of the milliner's stuffing, the colorist's pencil,
the druggist's compounds, the doctor's pelvic supporter, and the
surgeon's spinal brace.
When travelling in the East, some years ago, it was my fortune to be
summoned as a physician into a harem. With curious and not unwilling
step I obeyed the summons. While examining the patient, nearly a dozen
Syrian girls--a grave Turk's wifely crowd, a result and illustration
of Mohammedan female education--pressed around the divan with eyes and
ears intent to see and hear a Western Hakim's medical examination. As
I looked upon their well-developed forms, their brown skins, rich
with the blood and sun of the East, and their unintelligent, sensuous
faces, I thought that if it were possible to marry the Oriental care
of woman's organization to the Western liberty and culture of her
brain, there would be a new birth and loftier type of womanly grace
and force.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Woman's Wrongs, p. 59.
[2] Enigmas of Life, p. 34.