large privileges which are now open to them. It is hard for mothers who
did not go to college themselves, and who have still lived what seemed
to them to be happy lives, to feel that something different is desirable
for their daughters; but may there not be fathers who, having tasted the
pleasures of intellectual activity for themselves, will be minded to
lead their daughters into the same fields which they have found to be
attractive?
THE SEMI-COLLEGES.
I give in Appendix C, Table II., the list of semi-colleges, as
determined from their catalogues. Of course, it cannot be inferred from
the fact that the course is a good one that it is well carried out: but
if the course is very limited, if the text-books used are poor, if there
is no indication that the school has any library nor any scientific
apparatus, it can be inferred that the school is not of a high grade;
the above list may therefore be taken as a superior limit of the
semi-colleges in the South. On the other hand, it may happen that the
teachers of the classics and of English literature are persons of
culture and of wide learning, and that a greater number of authors are
read than the course laid down demands.
In the Mary Sharp College (Winchester, Tenn.), in 1887–88, four young
ladies completed the following post graduate course in the first half
year[26]: Seneca’s Essays, Œdipus Tyrannus, Dindorf’s Metres, Colloquia
in Latin, etc.; in the second half year two of them read Lycias’
Orations,—against Eratosthenes, concerning the sacred olive, and the
funeral oration,—the Panegyric of Isoscrates, Xenophon’s Symposium,
Lucian’s Charon, and Plutarch’s Delay of the Deity; and one of them,
Miss Ada Slaughter, read, in addition, the Ajax of Sophocles, Plato’s
Apology and Crito, Iliad (three books), Lucian’s Dream, Seneca’s
Epigrammatica, Seneca’s Letters, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (nine books),
Cicero de Officiis, Pliny’s Letters, Sallust’s Jugurtha, and Eutropius.
This college was founded in 1850, and for many years “it maintained a
course of study, a method of instruction, and plan of government far in
advance of any college in America for women.”[27] From the beginning it
has required both Latin and Greek for graduation, and a very respectable
amount of both; it thus deserves, more than the Georgia Female College,
the name of the first college exclusively for women in the country. It
has over three hundred graduates, and in 1887–88 it had 182 pupils.
The Nashville College for Young Ladies seems to be one of the most
important of the colleges of this grade in the South. It has frequent
lectures from the professors of Vanderbilt University, and students in
the scientific department attend lectures in the laboratories and
cabinets of that university. A teacher of the school is present, and
examines the class afterward. The professor quizzes in the daily lecture
course, but is not responsible for the examinations. The president of
the school writes me:
“Until I began here in 1880, the thought of arresting the graduation of
a girl was not entertained. If she went through the curriculum without
preliminary tests or without any intermediate or final examinations, the
diploma followed as a matter of implied contract. Pupils were received
to be graduated within a specified time. This sounds incredible, I know,
and yet I have the best proof of the fact. When I announced that no
pupil would be graduated in my institution without sufficient tests of
her scholarship, it was freely predicted that such an innovation would
destroy the patronage of the school. I am glad to say that the
vaticination was false, but I allude to the facts to throw light upon
the status among us.”
THE OTHER FEMALE COLLEGES.
The schools for women which are of a higher grade than the ordinary high
school, but not so high as the college, the Bureau of Education
classifies under the head of Superior Instruction. It will be seen from
Appendix C, Table III., that the State of Kentucky has nineteen of these
female colleges, and that six of the Southern States have an average of
fourteen each. They are of all possible degrees of excellence. Such
schools as the Hollins Institute and the Norfolk College for Young
Ladies in Virginia, and Caldwell College at Danville, Ky., have every
mark of being thoroughly good schools. The difficulty with nearly all
these schools is, of course, that they are private and money-making
enterprises, and do not care to incur large expenses for teachers or for
the proper appliances for instruction, nor to make the course of study
so rigid as to drive away pupils. It is remarkable to see how soon the
character of the course, and especially the character of the text-books,
is changed as soon as the majority of the teachers are graduates of
Northern colleges. On the other hand, it is the lack of intelligence and
care on the part of parents that permits the poorest of these schools to
continue to exist. If the worst half of these schools could be starved
out of existence, and if their patronage could be transferred to the
better half, the quality of the instruction which women receive in the
South would be completely changed. It is a duty which parents owe to the
public, no less than to their daughters, to discriminate carefully
against the thoroughly worthless schools.[28]
In one of these so-called colleges no foreign language is taught; in
another, the senior class takes a whole year to complete plane geometry;
in very many of them Steele’s text-books in the sciences are used. In
the Chickasaw Female College, Latin is optional, no other language and
very little mathematics is taught, and the president says: “An
experience of very many years proves to me that this course is not too
far extended.” In many of these small colleges the subjects of study
constitute separate schools, following the plan of the University of
Virginia. In the Marion Female Seminary, “the schools being distinct,
the student may become a candidate for graduation in one or all of them
at once.” There are sometimes thirteen distinct schools; in the
Huntsville Female Seminary there are ten, all carried out, as far as
appears from the catalogue, by a single instructor, the president.
The rules and regulations in many of these colleges are extremely minute
and harassing; they are largely copied from one catalogue to another; in
several instances the pupils are not allowed to read any book nor any
newspaper without the express permission of the president; in nearly
all, the discipline will be “mild, but, if necessary, firm.” In one
catalogue only, it is said that “there are no rules and but few
regulations; ladylike conduct is the one thing required.”
A uniform dress must be worn in many of these colleges. The Sunday suit
is frequently “of navy blue, made fashionably, but with no trimmings of
either silk or satin, no ruffles, and no beads.” In one of these
schools, a uniform dress was at first required only for Sundays, but the
week day dressing was found to be so extravagant that it became
necessary to restrict the material worn to a black and white check
gingham. In the catalogue of the Suffolk Female Institute, it is stated
that “the uniform dress usually prescribed by other institutions is not
required here”; and, in that of another school, that “uniformity is not
needful or wise.”
The cost of board and tuition in these schools (exclusive of music and
painting and fancy work) is most frequently about two hundred dollars.
Parents who can afford it usually send their daughters North, or at
least as far North as to Virginia or Tennessee, as it is considered that
a few years passed in a colder climate have a good effect in
establishing their health. Only a small number have as yet taken the
college courses that are offered in the North. The following table gives
the results of my inquiries:
SOUTHERN GRADUATES OF NORTHERN COLLEGES.
Vassar College 42
Wellesley College 16
Smith College 10
Swarthmore College 5
Boston University 5
Bryn Mawr College 2
Cornell University 1
Syracuse University 0
Kansas University 0
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 0
——
Total 81
The president of Michigan University is able to recall from six to ten
women graduates from Southern States, and the number from the University
of Wisconsin has been “not large.”
SECONDARY INSTRUCTION.
From the statistics for secondary instruction in the Southern States, it
may be discovered that there are more than twice as many girls as boys
in attendance upon public high schools. There are three times as many
girls as boys throughout the whole country, it will be remembered, who
complete the high school course. I do not find that a single Southern
city provides a high school for boys without providing one for girls
also, and usually it is the same school for both (though the
recitation-rooms may be separate). Where the schools are distinct, the
girls’ school is usually much inferior to the boys’. This is notably the
case in Baltimore, where the boys’ high school (it is called the City
College) fits admirably for the Johns Hopkins University, and where the
two girls’ high schools are of an extremely low grade. Throughout the
entire South there are only forty-one high schools, while there are
seventy-six in Massachusetts alone, but it must be remembered that any
system of public schools has hardly existed in the South previous to the
war.
An important feature in secondary education in the South is the
establishment of the Bryn Mawr Preparatory School in Baltimore. In 1884
five ladies formed themselves into a committee and appointed a secretary
and six teachers (science, classics, mathematics, history, French, and
German), all college graduates, and a drawing teacher. The school opened
with forty pupils, and in the third year it met all its expenses. A very
handsome building, containing a thoroughly well-equipped gymnasium, is
now (1889) being erected by Miss Mary Garrett (one of the directors) for
the future accommodation of the school. For this building the directors
expect to pay a fair rent—if not on the actual cost, yet on the price of
a building that would have met the needs of the school. They are anxious
to prove that a school of this grade can be made to pay.[29] They
intend, out of the earnings of the school, to pay the college expenses
for four years of the two best students of each year’s graduating class.
The distinguishing mark of the school is that it requires each child who
enters to take the subjects required for entrance to college (the Bryn
Mawr College entrance examinations are given in the sixth and seventh
years) and at the same time a continuous course in drawing, science, and
history, in order that a satisfactory course of study may be offered to
girls who do not intend to go to college. The number of pupils is
limited to 150.
NORMAL SCHOOLS AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.
In the great advance which has been made in the South since the war in
the establishment of systems of public schools, the managers of the
Peabody Fund have played a very important part. It has been said, and
without exaggeration, that no two millions of dollars ever did so much
good to the cause of education. Normal schools, in particular, have been
the object of their special care. In accordance with the express wishes
of the founder, the fund has offered aid proportionate to what a State
might do in order to secure the establishment of such schools; and the
initiative steps in every State included in its administration have been
taken under the suggestion and stimulus of its managers. There are now
thirty-two normal schools in the South; Alabama has seven, Georgia and
North Carolina have none. The Normal College at Nashville is not only a
normal school for Tennessee, but for the whole South as well; the
trustees of the Peabody Fund distribute 114 free scholarships annually
among ten Southern States. They have also established recently the
Winthrop Training School for white girls in South Carolina, and that
State has for the first time made an appropriation especially for the
higher education of girls.[30]
Industrial training on any important scale has existed throughout the
country only since 1862. In that year Congress granted large bodies of
public lands to each of the States for the establishment of agricultural
and mechanical colleges. The law permitted the introduction of a
moderate college curriculum into these institutions. Gradually the
returning Southern States accepted this gift, and all of them have made
some endeavor to utilize it, either by attaching a department to the
existing State university, or, as in Virginia, Texas, Mississippi,
Kentucky, and Alabama, by maintaining a separate agricultural and
mechanical college.
Women ought, of course, to have had a share in these government grants,
and the statistics for the whole country show that of the thirty-two
colleges to which they have been given, no less than twenty report
students of both sexes.[31] But in the Southern States, with the
exception of Arkansas and Kentucky, none but colored women have received
any benefit from these grants. The Arkansas Industrial University is an
admirably administered institution; the literary course, which forms the
ground-work for the industrial training, is only a year behind a good
college course. The first class was graduated in 1875, and consisted of
seven women and one man. The Kentucky Agricultural and Mechanical
College has at present twenty-four women in the college course.
The Legislature of Georgia passed a bill last year (1889) appropriating
$200,000 for the establishment of an industrial school for girls. In
Mississippi an admirable industrial school for girls has been in
existence since 1885,—the Industrial Institute and College, at Columbus.
The entire income of this school is derived from State appropriations;
tuition is free to all girls of Mississippi, and board is also free to
300 girls apportioned among the several counties of the State. Other
pupils are furnished board at cost, usually about nine dollars a month,
including washing. The industrial subjects taught are phonography,
telegraphy, type-writing, decorative and industrial art, répoussé and
art needlework, printing, dressmaking, designing, engraving, modeling,
cooking, laundry-work, housekeeping (in a separate cottage), and
book-keeping. There are 113 students in the collegiate course and 275 in
the business course. The collegiate course shows a marked advance upon
the usual course of study in girl’s colleges, especially in the elements
of a solid education, in the mathematical and scientific studies.
Analytical geometry, Juvenal, Livy, and Horace, Hamilton’s metaphysics,
and political economy, are among the required studies, and the calculus,
descriptive geometry, quantitative analysis, and Ueberweg’s History of
Philosophy are among the subjects offered in post graduate courses. The
standard of scholarship is high: 75 per cent. must be obtained in
examinations in order to advance from one class to another. The
laboratories are fitted up with the best modern appliances. The students
in turn do the work of the dining-room and the sleeping apartments. Many
of the former pupils are already earning good salaries in telegraphy,
phonography, book-keeping, etc. It is plain that this industrial school
of Mississippi presents a model which other States, both North and
South, would do extremely well to copy.
CONCLUSION.
On the whole, the outlook for the education of women in the Southern
States is not discouraging. The difficult first step has been
taken,—there are women college graduates here and there, and it is no
longer necessary to look upon them as monstrosities. In many a Southern
family, the question whether a girl shall go to college or not has
become, at least, a question to be discussed. It rests largely with
existing college graduates to determine whether a sentiment in favor of
the higher education for women shall grow rapidly or slowly, and whether
schools for “superior instruction” shall be or shall not be improved in
quality. It is not necessary that every girl should go to college, but
it is necessary that some should go, for there is absolutely no other
way of keeping up the standard of the lower schools except by making
sure that they give such instruction as will stand the test of the
college entrance examinations. No more important work could be done for
women than to establish a dozen preparatory schools throughout the
South, similar to the Bryn Mawr school in Baltimore, for the purpose of
giving Southern mothers a standard of comparison, and enabling them to
exterminate, by loss of patronage, those girls’ schools which are
thoroughly unfitted for the performance of their work.
V.
WOMAN IN LITERATURE.
BY
HELEN GRAY CONE.
“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
That says my hand a needle better fits.
· · · · ·
Men can do best, and women know it well.
Pre-eminence in each and all is yours,
Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours.”
—ANNE BRADSTREET, 1640.
“Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will.
Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take
what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or
woman.”
—MARGARET FULLER, 1844.
It is difficult to disengage a single thread from the living web of a
nation’s literature. The interplay of influences is such, that the
product spun from the heart and brain of woman alone must, when thus
disengaged, lose something of its significance. In criticism, a
classification based upon sex is necessarily misleading and inexact. As
far as difference between the literary work of women and that of men is
created by difference of environment and training, it may be regarded as
accidental; while the really essential difference, resulting from the
general law that the work of woman shall somehow, subtly, express
womanhood, not only varies widely in degree with the individual worker,
but is, in certain lines of production, almost ungraspable by criticism.
We cannot rear walls which shall separate literature into departments,
upon a principle elusive as the air. “It is no more the order of nature
that the especially feminine element should be incarnated pure in any
form, than that the masculine energy should exist unmingled with it in
any form.” The experiment which, Lowell tells us, Nature tried in
shaping the genius of Hawthorne, she repeats and reverses at will.
In practice, the evil effects which have followed the separate
consideration of woman’s work in literature are sufficiently plain. The
debasement of the coin of criticism is a fatal measure. The dearest foe
of the woman artist in the past has been the suave and chivalrous
critic, who, judging all “female writers” by a special standard, has
easily bestowed the unearned wreath.
The present paper is grounded, it will be seen, upon no preference for
the Shaker-meeting arrangement which prevailed so long in our American
Temple of the Muses. It has seemed desirable, in a historical review of
the work of women in this country, to follow the course of their effort
in the field of literature; to note the occasional impediments of the
stream, its sudden accessions of force, its general tendency, and its
gradual widening.
The colonial period has of course little to give us. The professional
literary woman was then unknown. The verses of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet,
called in flattery “the tenth Muse,” were “the fruit but of some few
hours, curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments.” The negro girl,
Phillis Wheatley, whose poetical efforts had been published under
aristocratic patronage in England, when robbed of her mistress by death
“resorted to marriage”—not to literature—“as the only alternative native
of destitution.” Mrs. Mercy Warren was never obliged to seek support
from that sharp-pointed pen which copied so cleverly the satiric style
of Pope, and which has left voluminous records of the Revolution. She
too wrote her tragedies “for amusement, in the solitary hours when her
friends were abroad.”
Miss Hannah Adams, born in Massachusetts in 1755, may be accepted as the
first American woman who made literature her profession. Her appearance
as a pioneer in this country corresponds closely in time with that of
Mary Wollstonecraft in England. She wrote, at seventy-seven, the story
of her life. Her account sets forth clearly the difficulties which, in
her youth, had to be dealt with by a woman seriously undertaking
authorship. Ill-health, which forbade her attending school, was an
individual disadvantage; but she remarks incidentally on the
defectiveness of the country school, where girls learned only to write
and cipher, and were, in summer, “instructed by females in reading,
sewing, and other kinds of work.... I remember that my first idea of the
happiness of heaven was of a place where we should find our thirst for
knowledge fully gratified.” How pathetically the old woman recalls the
longing of the eager girl! All her life she labored against odds;
learning, however, the rudiments of Latin, Greek, geography, and logic,
“with indescribable pleasure and avidity,” from some gentlemen boarding
at her father’s house. Becoming interested in religious controversy, she
formed the plan of compiling a “View of Religions”; not at first hoping
to derive what she calls “emolument” from the work. To win bread she
relied at this time upon spinning, sewing, or knitting, and, during the
Revolutionary War, on the weaving of bobbin lace; afterward falling back
on her scant classical resources to teach young gentlemen Latin and
Greek. Meanwhile the compilation went on. “Reading much religious
controversy,” observes Miss Adams, “must be extremely trying to a
female, whose mind, instead of being strengthened by those studies which
exercise the judgment, and give stability to the character, is
debilitated by reading romances and novels.” This sense of disadvantage,
of the meekly accepted burden of sex, pervades the autobiography; it
seems the story of a patient cripple. When the long task was done, her
inexperience made her the dupe of a dishonest printer, and although the
book sold well, her only compensation was fifty copies, for which she
was obliged herself to find purchasers, having previously procured four
hundred subscribers. Fortunately she had the copyright; and before the
publication of a second edition, she chanced to make the acquaintance of
a clerical good Samaritan, who transacted the business for her. The
“emolument” derived from this second edition at last enabled her to pay
her debts, and to put out a small sum upon interest. Her “History of New
England,” in the preparation of which her eyesight was nearly
sacrificed, met with a good sale; but an abridgment of it brought her
nothing, on account of the failure of the printer. She sold the
copyright of her “Evidences of Christianity” for one hundred dollars in
books.
This, then, is our starting-point: evident character and ability, at a
disadvantage both in production and in the disposal of the product;
imperfect educational equipment; and a hopeless consciousness of
inferiority, almost amounting to an inability to stand upright mentally.
Susanna Rowson, who wrote the popular “Charlotte Temple,” may be classed
as an American novelist, although not born in this country. She appears
also as a writer of patriotic songs, an actress, a teacher, and the
compiler of a dictionary and other school-books. “The Coquette, or the
History of Eliza Wharton,” by Hannah Webster Foster, was another prime
favorite among the formal novels of the day.