HIGHER EDUCATION OP WOMEN.
"In die Erd' isi's aufgenommen,
Glucklich ist die Form gefullt;
Wird's auch schon zu Tage kommen,
Dass es Fleiss und Kunst vergilt?
Wenn der Guss misslang?
Wenn die Form zersprang?
Ach, vielleicht, indem wir hoffen,
Hat uns Unheil schon getroffen."
SCHILLER, "Das Lied von der Gloeke."
So far in these pages the education of girls has only been considered up
to the age of eighteen or so, that is to the end of the ordinary
school-room course. At eighteen, some say that it is just time to go to
school, and others consider that it is more than time to leave it. They
look at life from different points of view. Some are eager to experience
everything for themselves, and as early as possible to snatch at this
good thing, life, which is theirs, and make what they can of it,
believing that its only interest is in what lies beyond the bounds of
childhood and a life of regulated studies; they want to begin to _live_.
Others feel that life is such a good thing that every year of longer
preparation fits them better to make the most of its opportunities, and
others again are anxious--for a particular purpose, sometimes, and very
rarely for the disinterested love of it--to undertake a course of more
advanced studies and take active part in the movement "for the higher
education of women." The first will advance as far as possible the date
of their coming out; the second will delay it as long as they are
allowed, to give themselves in quiet to the studies and thought which
grow in value to them month by month; the third, energetic and decided,
buckle on their armour and enter themselves at universities for degrees
or certificates according to the facilities offered.
There can be no doubt that important changes were necessary in the
education of women. About the middle of the last century it had reached
a condition of stagnation from the passing away of the old system of
instruction before anything was ready to take its place. With very few
exceptions, and those depended entirely on the families from which they
carae, girls were scarcely educated at all. The old system had given
them few things but these were of value; manners, languages, a little
music and domestic training would include it all, with perhaps a few
notions of "the use of the globes" and arithmetic. But when it dwindled
into a book called "Hangnail's Questions," and manners declined into
primness, and domestic training lost its vigour, then artificiality laid
hold of it and lethargy followed, and there was no more education for
"young ladies."
In a characteristically English way it was individual effort which came
to change the face of things, and honour is due to the pioneers who went
first, facing opposition and believing in the possibilities of better
things. In some other countries the State would have taken the
initiative and has done so, but we have our own ways of working out
things, "l'aveugle et tatonnante infaillibilite de l'Angleterre," as
some one has called it, in which the individual goes first, and makes
trial of the land, and often experiences failure in the first attempts.
From the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the "Vindication
of the Rights of Women" was published by Mary Wollstonecraft, the
question has been more or less in agitation. But in 1848, with the
opening of Queen's College in London, it took its first decided step
forward in the direction of provision for the higher education of women,
and in literature it was much in the air. Tennyson's "Princess" came in
1847, and "Aurora Leigh" from Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1851, and
things moved onward with increasing rapidity until at one moment it
seemed like a rush to new goldfields. One university after another has
granted degrees to women or degree certificates in place of the degrees
which were refused; women are resident students at some universities and
at others present themselves on equal terms with men for examination.
The way has been opened to them in some professions and in many spheres
of activity from which they had been formerly excluded.
One advantage of the English mode of proceeding in these great questions
is that the situation can be reconsidered from time to time without the
discordant contentions which surround any proclamation of non-success in
State concerns. We feel our way and try this and that, and readjust
ourselves, and a great deal of experimental knowledge has been gained
before any great interests or the prestige of the State have been
involved. These questions which affect a whole people directly or
indirectly require, for us at least, a great deal of experimenting
before we know what suits us. We are not very amenable to systems, or
theories, or ready-made schemes. And the phenomenon of tides is very
marked in all that we undertake. There is a period of advance and then a
pause and a period of decline, and after another pause the tide rises
again. It may perhaps be accounted for in part by the very fact that we
do so much for ourselves in England, and look askance at anything which
curtails the freedom of our movements, when we are in earnest about a
question; but this independence is rapidly diminishing under the more
elaborate administration of recent years, and the increase of State
control in education. Whatever may be the effect of this in the future,
it seems as if there were at present a moment of reconsideration as to
whether we have been quite on the right track in the pursuit of higher
education for women, and a certain discontent with what has been
achieved so far. There are at all events not many who are cordially
pleased with the results. Some dissatisfaction is felt as to the
position of the girl students in residence at the universities. They
cannot share in any true sense in the life of the universities, but only
exist on their outskirts, outside the tradition of the past, a modern
growth tolerated rather than fostered or valued by the authorities. This
creates a position scarcely enviable in itself, or likely to communicate
that particular tone which is the gift of the oldest English
universities to their sons. Some girl students have undoubtedly
distinguished themselves, especially at Cambridge; in the line of
studies they attained what they sought, but that particular gift of the
university they could not attain. It is lamented that the number of
really disinterested students attending Girton and Newnham is small; the
same complaint is heard from the Halls for women at Oxford; there is a
certain want of confidence as to the future and what it is all leading
to. To women with a professional career before them the degree
certificates are of value, but the course of studies itself and its
mental effect is conceded by many to be disappointing. One reason may be
that the characteristics of girls' work affect in a way the whole
movement. They are very eager and impetuous students, but in general the
staying power is short; an excessive energy is put out in one direction,
then it flags, and a new beginning is made towards another quarter. So
in this general movement there have been successive stages of activity.
The higher education movement has gone on its own course. The first
pioneers had clear and noble ideals; Bedford College, the growth of
Cheltenham, the beginnings of Newnham and Girton Colleges, the North of
England Ladies' "Council of Education" represented them. Now that the
movement has left the port and gone beyond what they foresaw, it has met
the difficulties of the open sea.
Nursing was another sphere opened about the same time, to meet the
urgent needs felt during the Crimean War; it was admirably planned out
by Florence Nightingale, again a pioneer with loftiest ideals. There
followed a rush for that opening; it has continued, and now the same
complaint is made that it is an outlet for those whose lives are not to
their liking at home, rather than those who are conscious of a special
fitness for it or recognized as having the particular qualities which it
calls for. And then came the development of a new variety among the
unemployed of the wealthier classes, the "athletic girl." Not every one
could aspire to be an athletic girl, it requires some means, and much
time; but it is there, and it is part of the emancipation movement. The
latest in the field are the movements towards organization of effort,
association on the lines of the German _Frauenbund_, and the French
_Mouvement Feministe_, and beside them, around them, with or without
them, the Women's Suffrage Movement, militant or non-militant. These are
of the rising tide, and each tide makes a difference to our coast-line,
in some places the sea gains, in others the land, and so the thinkers,
for and against, register their victories and defeats, and the face of
things continues to change more and more rapidly.
It seems an ungracious task, unfair--perhaps it seems above all
retrograde and ignorant--to express doubt and not to think hopefully
of a cause in which so many lives have been spent with singular
disinterestedness and self-devotion. Yet these adverse thoughts are in
the air, not only amongst those who are unable to win in the race, but
amongst those who have won, and also amongst those who look out upon
it all with undistracted and unbiassed interest; older men, who look
to the end and outcome of things, to the ultimate direction when
the forces have adjusted themselves. Those who think of the next
generation are not quite satisfied with what is being done for our
girls or by them.
Catholics have been spurred hotly into the movement by those who are
keenly anxious that we should not be left behind, but should show
ourselves able to be with the best in all these things. Perhaps at the
stage which has been reached we have more reason than others to be
dissatisfied with the results of success, since we are more beset than
others by the haunting question--_what then_? For those who have to
devote themselves to the cause of Catholic education it is often and
increasingly necessary to win degrees or their equivalents, not
altogether for their own value, but as the key that fits the lock, for
the gates to the domain of education are kept locked by the State. And
so in other spheres of Catholic usefulness the key may become more and
more necessary. But--may it be suggested--in their own education, a degree
for a man and a degree for a girl mean very different things, even if
the degree is the same. For a girl it is the certificate of a course of
studies. For a man an Oxford or Cambridge degree means atmosphere unique
in character, immemorial tradition, association, all kinds of interests
and subtle influences out of the past, the impressiveness of numbers,
among which the individual shows in very modest proportions indeed
whatever may be his gifts. The difference is that of two worlds. Bat
even at other universities the degree means more to a man if it is
anything beyond a mere gate-key. It is his initial effort, after which
comes the full stress of his life's work. For a girl, except in the
rarest cases, it is either a gate-key or a final effort, either her
life's work takes a different turn, or she thinks she has had enough.
The line of common studies is adapted for man's work and programme of
life. It has been made to fit woman's professional work, but the fit is
not perfect. It has a marked unfitness in its adaptation for women to
the real end of higher education, or university education, which is the
perfecting of the individual mind, according to its kind, in
surroundings favourable to its complete development.
Atmosphere is a most important element at all periods of education, and
in the education of girls all-important, and an atmosphere for the
higher education of girls has not yet been created in the universities.
The girl students are few, their position is not unassailable, their
aims not very well defined, and the thing which is above all required
for the intellectual development of girls--quiet of mind--is not assured.
It is obvious that there can never be great tradition and a past to look
back to, unless there is a present, and a beginning, and a long period
of growth. But everything for the future consists in having a noble
beginning, however lowly, true foundations and clear aims, and this we
have not yet secured. It seems almost as if we had begun at the wrong
end, that the foundations of character were not made strong enough,
before the intellectual superstructure began to be raised--and that this
gives the sense of insecurity. An unusual strength of character would be
required to lead the way in living worthily under such difficult
circumstances as have been created, a great self-restraint to walk
without swerving or losing the track, without the controlling machinery
of university rules and traditions, without experience, at the most
adventurous age of life, and except in preparation for professional work
without the steadying power of definite duties and obligations. A few
could do it, but not many, and those chosen few would have found their
way in any case. The past bears witness to this.
But the past as a whole bears other testimony which is worth considering
here. Through every vicissitude of women's education there have always
been the few who were exceptional in mental and moral strength, and they
have held on their way, and achieved a great deal, and left behind them
names deserving of honour. Such were Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was
invited by the Pope and the university to lecture in mathematics at
Bologna (and declined the invitation to give herself to the service of
the poor), and Lucretia Helena Gomaro Piscopia, who taught philosophy
and theology! and Laura Bassi who lectured in physics, and Clara von
Schur-man who became proficient in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldaic
in order to study Scripture "with greater independence and judgment,"
and the Pirk-heimer family of Nuremberg, Caritas and Clara and others,
whose attainments were conspicuous in their day. But there is something
unfamiliar about all these names; they do not belong so much to the
history of the world as to the curiosities of literature and learning.
The world has not felt their touch upon it; we should scarcely miss them
in the galleries of history if their portraits were taken down.
The women who have been really great, whom we could not spare out of
their place in history, have not been the student women or the
remarkably learned. The greatest women have taken their place in the
life of the world, not in its libraries; their strength has been in
their character, their mission civilization in its widest and loftiest
sense. They have ruled not with the "Divine right of kings," but with
the Divine right of queens, which is quite a different title, undisputed
and secure to them, if they do not abdicate it of themselves or drag it
into the field of controversy to be matched and measured against the
Divine or human rights of kings. "The heaven of heavens is the Lord's,
but the earth He has given to the children of men," and to woman He
seems to have assigned the borderland between the two, to fit the one
for the other and weld the links. Hers are the first steps in training
the souls of children, the nurseries of the kingdom of heaven (the
mothers of saints would fill a portrait gallery of their own); hers the
special missions of peace and reconciliation and encouragement, the
hidden germs of such great enterprises as the Propagation of the Faith,
and the trust of such great devotions as that of the Blessed Sacrament
and the Sacred Heart to be brought within the reach of the faithful. The
names of Matilda of Tuscany, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Blessed Joan
of Arc, of Isabella the Catholic, of St. Theresa are representative,
amongst others, of women who have fulfilled public missions for the
service of the Church, and of Christian people, and for the realization
of religious ideals: true queens of the borderland between both worlds.
Others have reigned in their own spheres, in families or solitudes, or
cloistered enclosures--as the two Saints Elizabeth, Paula and Eustochium
and all their group of friends, the great Abbesses Hildegarde, Hilda,
Gertrude and others, and the chosen line of foundresses of religious
orders--these too have ruled the borderland, and their influence, direct
or indirect, has all been in the same direction, for pacification and
not for strife, for high aspiration and heavenly-mindedness, for faith
and hope and love and self-devotion, and all those things for want of
which the world is sick to death.
But the kingdom of woman is on that borderland, and if she comes down to
earth to claim its lowland provinces she exposes herself to lose both
worlds, not securing real freedom or permanent equality in one, and
losing hold of some of the highest prerogatives of the other. These may
seem to be cloudy and visionary views, and this does not in any sense
pretend to be a controversial defence of them, but only a suggestion
that both history and present experience have something to say on this
side of the question, a suggestion also that there are two spheres of
influence, requiring different qualities for their perfect use, as there
are two forces in a planetary system. If these forces attempted to work
on one line the result would be the wreck of the whole, but in their
balance one against the other, apparently contrary, in reality at one,
the equilibrium of the whole is secured. One is for motor force and the
other for central control; both working in concert establish the harmony
of planetary motion and give permanent conditions of unity. Here, as
elsewhere, uniformity tends to ultimate loosening of unity; diversity
establishes that balance which combines freedom with stability.
Once more it must be said that only the Catholic Church can give perfect
adjustment to the two forces, as she holds up on both sides ideals which
make for unity. And when the higher education of women has flowered
under Catholic influence, it has had a strong basis of moral worth, of
discipline and control to sustain the expansion of intellectual life;
and without the Church the higher education of women has tended to
one-sidedness, to nonconformity of manners, of character, and of mind,
to extremes, to want of balance, and to loss of equilibrium in the
social order, by straining after uniformity of rights and aims and
occupations.
So with regard to the general question of women's higher education may
it be suggested that the moral training, the strengthening of character,
is the side which must have precedence and must accompany every step of
their education, making them fit to bear heavier responsibilities, to
control their own larger independence, to stand against the current of
disintegrating influences that will play upon them. To be fit for higher
education calls for much acquired self-restraint, and unfortunately it
is on the contrary sometimes sought as an opening for speedier
emancipation from control. Those who seek it in this spirit are of all
others least fitted to receive it, for the aim is false, and it gives a
false movement to the whole being. Again, when it is entirely
dissociated from the realities of life, it tends to unfit girls for any
but a professional career in which they will have--at great cost to their
own well-being--to renounce their contact with those primeval teachers of
experience.
In some countries they have found means of combining both in a modified
form of university life for girls, and in this they are wiser than we.
Buds of the same tree have been introduced into England, but they are
nipped by want of appreciation. We have still to look to our
foundations, and even to make up our minds as to what we want. Perhaps
the next few years will make things clearer. But in the meantime there
is a great deal to be done; there is one lesson that every one concerned
with girls must teach them, and induce them to learn, that is the lesson
of self-command and decision. Our girls are in danger of drifting and
floating along the current of the hour, passive in critical moments,
wanting in perseverance to carry out anything that requires steady
effort. They are often forced to walk upon slippery ground; temptations
sometimes creep on insensibly, and at others make such sudden attacks
that the thing all others to be dreaded for girls is want of courage and
decision of character. Those render them the best service who train them
early to decide for themselves, to say yes or no definitely, to make up
their mind promptly, not because they "feel like it" but for a reason
which they know, and to keep in the same mind which they have reasonably
made up. Thus they may be fitted by higher moral education to receive
higher mental training according to their gifts; but in any case they
will be prepared by it to take up whatever responsibilities life may
throw upon them.
The future of girls necessarily remains indeterminate, at least until
the last years of their education, but the long indeterminate time is
not lost if it has been spent in preparatory training of mind, and
especially in giving some resistance to their pliant or wayward
characters. Thus, whether they devote themselves to the well-being of
their own families, or give themselves to volunteer work in any
department, social or particular, or advance in the direction of higher
studies, or receive any special call from God to dedicate their gifts to
His particular service, they will at least have something to give; their
education will have been "higher" in that it has raised them above the
dead level of mediocre character and will-power, which is only
responsive to the inclination or stimulus of the moment, but has no
definite plan of life. It may be that as far as exterior work goes, or
anything that has a name to it, no specified life-work will be offered
to many, but it is a pity if they regard their lives as a failure on
that account.
There are lives whose occupations could not be expressed in a formula,
yet they are precious to their surroundings and precious in themselves,
requiring more steady self-sacrifice than those which give the stimulus
of something definite to do. These need not feel themselves cut off from
what is highest in woman's education, if they realize that the mind has
a life in itself and makes its own existence there, not selfishly, but
indeed in a peculiarly selfless way, because it has nothing to show for
itself but some small round of unimpressive occupations; some perpetual
call upon its sympathies and devotion, not enough to fill a life, but
just enough to prevent it from turning to anything else. Then the higher
life has to be almost entirely within itself, and no one is there to see
the value of it all, least of all the one who lives it. There is no
stimulus, no success, no brilliancy; it is perhaps of all lives the
hardest to accept, yet what perfect workmanship it sometimes shows. Its
disappearance often reveals a whole tissue of indirect influences which
had gone forth from it; and who can tell how far this unregistered,
uncertificated higher education of a woman, without a degree and with an
exceedingly unassuming opinion of itself, may have extended. It is a
life hard to accept, difficult to put into words with any due proportion
to its worth, but good and beautiful to know, surely "rich in the sight
of God,"