wisdom, especially argumentative wisdom, is at fault as to results,
while accident, prejudices, or common sense seem to light upon truths
which reason feels after without finding. It appears as though _à
priori_ reasoning, human nature being the subject, is like a skilful
piece of mechanism, carefully and scientifically put together, but which
some perverse and occult trifle will not permit to act. This is
eminently true of many questions regarding education, and precisely the
state of the argument concerning the position and duties of women. The
facts of moral and intellectual equality being established, it seems
somewhat irrational to condemn women to obscurity and detail for their
field of exertion, while men usurp the extended one of public
usefulness. And a good case may be made out on this very point. Yet the
conclusions are false and pernicious, and the prejudices which we now
smile at as obsolete are truths of nature's own imparting, only wanting
the agency of comprehensive intelligence to make them valuable, by
adapting them to the present state of society. For, as one atom of
falsehood in first principles nullifies a whole theory, so one
principle, fundamentally true, suffices to obviate many minor errors.
This fundamentally true principle, I am prepared to show, exists in the
established opinions concerning the true sphere of women, and that,
whether originally dictated by reason, or derived from a sort of
intuition, they are right, and for this cause: the one quality on which
woman's value and influence depend is the renunciation of self; and the
old prejudices respecting her inculcated self-renunciation. Educated in
obscurity, trained to consider the fulfilment of domestic duties as the
aim and end of her existence, there was little to feed the appetite for
fame, or the indulgence of self-idolatry. Now, here the principle
fundamentally bears upon the very qualities most desirable to be
cultivated, and those most desirable to be avoided. A return to the
practical part of the system is by no means to be recommended, for, with
increasing intellectual advantages, it is not to be supposed that the
perfection of the conjugal character is to consult a husband's palate
and submit to his ill-humour--or of the maternal, to administer in due
alternation the sponge and the rod. All that is contended for is, that
the fundamental principle is right--"that women were to live for
others;" and, therefore, all that we have to do is to carry out this
fundamentally right principle into wider application. It may easily be
done, if the cultivation of intellectual powers be carried on with the
same views and motives as were formerly the knowledge of domestic
duties, for the benefit of immediate relations, and for the fulfilment
of appointed duties. If society at large be benefited by such
cultivation, so much the better; but it ought to be no part of the
training of women to consider, with any personal views, what effect they
shall produce in or on society at large. The greatest benefit which they
can confer upon society is to be what they ought to be in all their
domestic relations; that is, to be what they ought to be, in all the
comprehensiveness of the term, as adapted to the present state of
society. Let no woman fancy that she can, by any exertion or services,
compensate for the neglect of her own peculiar duties as such. It is by
no means my intention to assert that women should be passive and
indifferent spectators of the great political questions which affect
the well-being of community; neither can I repeat the old adage, that
"women have nothing to do with politics." They have, and ought to have
much to do with politics. But in what way? It has been maintained that
their public participation in them would be fatal to the best interests
of society. How, then, are women to interfere in politics? As moral
agents; as representatives of the moral principle; as champions of the
right in preference to the expedient; by their endeavours to instil into
their relatives of the other sex the uncompromising sense of duty and
self-devotion, which ought to be _their_ ruling principles! The immense
influence which women possess will be most beneficial, if allowed to
flow in its natural channels, viz. domestic ones,--because it is of the
utmost importance to the existence of influence, that purity of motive
be unquestioned. It is by no means affirmed that women's political
feelings are always guided by the abstract principles of right and
wrong; but they are surely more likely to be so, if they themselves are
restrained from the public expression of them. Participation in scenes
of popular emotion has a natural tendency to warp conscience and
overcome charity. Now, conscience and charity (or love) are the very
essence of woman's beneficial influence; therefore every thing tending
to blunt the one and sour the other is sedulously to be avoided by her.
It is of the utmost importance to men to feel, in consulting a wife, a
mother, or a sister, that they are appealing _from_ their passions and
prejudices, and not _to_ them, as imbodied in a second self: nothing
tends to give opinions such weight as the certainty that the utterer of
them is free from all petty or personal motives. The beneficial
influence of woman is nullified if once her motives, or her personal
character, come to be the subject of attack; and this fact alone ought
to induce her patiently to acquiesce in the plan of seclusion from
public affairs.
It supposes, indeed, some magnanimity in the possessors of great powers
and widely extended influence, to be willing to exercise them with
silent, unostentatious vigilance. There must be a deeper principle than
usually lies at the root of female education, to induce women to
acquiesce in the plan, which, assigning to them the responsibility, has
denied them the _éclat_ of being reformers of society. Yet it is,
probably, exactly in proportion to their reception of this truth, and
their adoption of it into their hearts, that they will fulfil their own
high and lofty mission; precisely because the manifestation of such a
spirit is the one thing needful for the regeneration of society. It is
from her being the depository and disseminator of such a spirit, that
woman's influence is principally derived. It appears to be for this end
that Providence has so lavishly endowed her with moral qualities, and,
above all, with that of love,--the antagonist spirit of selfish
worldliness, that spirit which, as it is vanquished or victorious, bears
with it the moral destinies of the world! Now, it is proverbially as
well as scripturally true, that love "seeketh not its own" interest, but
the good of others, and finds its highest honour, its highest happiness,
in so doing. This is precisely the spirit which can never be too much
cultivated by women, because it is the spirit by which their highest
triumphs are to be achieved: it is they who are called upon to show
forth its beauty, and to prove its power; every thing in their
education should tend to develop self-devotion and self-renunciation.
How far existing systems contribute to this object, it must be our next
step to inquire.
EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
"The education of women is more important than that of men, since that
of men is always their work."[108]
We are now to consider how far the present systems of female education
tend to the great end here mentioned--the truth of which, reflection and
experience combine to prove. Great is the boast of the progress of
education; great would be the indignation excited by a doubt as to the
fact of this progress. "A simple question will express this doubt more
forcibly, and place this subject in a stronger light: 'Are women
qualified to educate men?' If they are not, no available progress has
been made. In the very heart of civilized Europe, are women what they
ought to be? and does not their education prove how little we know the
consequences of neglecting it?"[109] Is it possible to believe, that
upon their training depends the happiness of families--the well-being of
nations? The selfishness, political and social; the forgetfulness of
patriotism; the unregulated tempers and low ambition of the one sex,
testify but too clearly how little has been done by the vaunted
education of the other. For education is useless, or at least neutral,
if it do not bear upon duty, as well as upon cultivation, if it do not
expand the soul, while it enlightens the intellect.
How far expansion of soul, or enlightenment of intellect, is to be
expected from the present systems of female education, we have seen in
effects,--let us now go back to causes.
It is unnecessary to start from the prejudice of ignorance; it is now
universally acknowledged that women have a right to education, and that
they must be educated. We smile with condescending pity at the blinded
state of our respected grandmothers, and thank God that we are not as
they, with a thanksgiving as uncalled for as that of the proud Pharisee.
On abstract ground, their education was better than ours; it was a
preparation for their future duties. It does not affect the question,
that their notion of these duties was entirely confined to the physical
comfort of husbands and children. The defect of the scheme, as has been
argued, was not in rationality, but in comprehensiveness,--a
fundamentally right principle being the basis, it is easy to extend the
application of it indefinitely.
Indiscriminate blame, however, is as invidious as it is useless; if the
fault-finder be not also the fault-mender, the exercise of his powers
is, at best, but a negative benefit. Let us, therefore, enter into a
calm examination of the two principal ramifications, into which
education has insensibly divided itself, as far as the young women of
our own country are concerned; bearing in mind that women can only
exercise their true influence, inasmuch as they are free from
worldly-mindedness and egotism, and that, therefore, no system of
education can be good which does not tend to subdue the selfish and
bring out the unselfish principle. The systems alluded to are these:--
1st. The education of accomplishments for shining in society.
2d. Intellectual education, or that of the mental powers.
What are the objects of either? To prepare the young for life; its
subsequent trials; its weighty duties; its inevitable termination? We
will examine the principles on which both these educations are made to
work, and see whether, or how far, they have any relation to those most
called for, by the future and presumed duties of the educated. The
worldly and the intellectual, alternately objects of contempt to each
other, are equally objects of pity to the wise, as mistaken in their
end, and deceived as to the means of attaining that end.
The education of accomplishments, (especially as conducted in this
country,) would be a risible, if it were not a painful subject of
contemplation. Intense labour; immense sums of money; hours, nay, days
of valuable time! What a list of sacrifices! Now for results. Of the
many who thus sacrifice time, health, and property, how few attain even
a moderate proficiency. The love of beauty, the power of self-amusement
(if obtained) might, in some degree, justify these sacrifices; they are
valuable ends in themselves, still more valuable from contingent
advantages. There is a deep influence hidden under these beautiful
arts,--an influence far deeper than the world in its thoughtlessness, or
the worldly student in his vanity, ever can know,--an influence
refining, consoling, elevating: they afford a channel into which the
lofty aspirings, the unsatisfied yearnings of the pure and elevated in
soul may pour themselves. The perception of the beautiful is, next to
the love of our fellow-creatures, the most purely unselfish of all our
natural emotions, and is, therefore, a most powerful engine in the hands
of those who regard selfishness as the giant passion, whose castle must
be stormed before any other conquest can be begun, and in vanquishing
whom all lawful and innocent weapons should, by turns, be employed.
Let us consider how we employ this mighty ally of virtue and loftiness
of soul. Into the cultivation of the arts, disguised under the hackneyed
name of accomplishments, does one particle of intellectuality creep?
Would not many of their ablest professors and most diligent
practitioners stare, with unfeigned wonder, at the supposition, that the
five hours per diem devoted to the piano and the easel had any other
object than to accomplish the fingers? The idea of their influencing the
head would be ridiculous! of their improving the heart, preposterous!
Yet if both head and heart do not combine in these pursuits, how can the
cultivators justify to themselves the devotion of time and labour to
their acquisition: time and labour, in many cases, abstracted from the
performance of present, or preparation for future duties,--this is
especially applicable to the middle classes of society.
Let us now turn to the issues of this education! The accomplishments
acquired at such cost must be displayed. To whom? the possessor has no
delight in them,--her immediate relatives, perhaps, no taste for
them;--to strangers, therefore. It is not necessary to make many
strictures on this subject; the rage for universal exhibition has been
written and talked down: in fact, there are great hopes for the world
in this particular; it has descended so low in the scale of society,
that we trust it will soon be exploded altogether. The fashion,
therefore, need not be here treated of, but the spirit which it has
engendered, and which will survive its parent. This, as influencing the
female character--especially the maternal--bears greatly upon the point
in view;--to live for the applause of the foolish _many_, instead of the
approbation of the well-judging _few_; to rule duty, conscience, morals,
by a low worldly standard; to view worldly admiration as the aim, and
worldly aggrandizement as the end of life; these are a few,--a very few,
indications of this spirit, and these have infected every rank, from the
highest to the middle and lower classes of society. To every thing
gentle or refined, to every thing lofty or dignified in the female
character, this spirit is utterly opposed. Refinement would teach to
shun the vulgar applause which almost insults its object,--dignity would
shrink from displaying before heartless crowds those emotions of the
soul, without which all art is vulgar,--and how can women, who have
neither refinement nor dignity, retail that influence which, rightly
used, is to be so great an engine in the regeneration of society? How
can the vain and selfish exhibitor of paltry acquirements ever mature
into the mother of the Gracchi, the tutelary guardian of the rising
virtues of the commonwealth? It is in vain to hope it.
Before making any strictures on intellectual education, it is necessary
to enter into a short explanation; for it is not denied that
rightly-cultivated mental power is a great good. The kind of cultivation
which is here decried is open to the same objections as the last
mentioned. It is the cultivation of power, with a view, not to the
happiness of the individual, but to her fame; not to her usefulness, but
to her brilliancy. We have only to look round society, and see that
intellect has its vanity as well as beauty or accomplishments, and that
its effects are more mischievous. It has a hardening, deadening kind of
influence; the more so, that the so-called mental cultivation frequently
consists only of a pedantic heaping up of information, valuable indeed
in itself, but wanting the principle of combination to make it useful.
Stones and bricks are valuable things, very valuable; but they are not
beautiful or useful till the hand of the architect has given them a
form, and the cement of the bricklayer has knit them together. It is a
fine expression of Miss Edgeworth, in speaking of the mind of one of her
heroines, "that the stream of literature had passed over it was apparent
only from its fertility." Intellectual cultivation was too long
considered as education, properly so called. The mischief which this
error has produced, is exactly in proportion to the increase of power
thereby communicated to wrong principles.
What, then, is the true object of female education? The best answer to
this question is, a statement of future duties; for it must never be
forgotten, that if education be not a training for future duties, it is
nothing. The ordinary lot of woman is to marry. Has any thing in these
educations prepared her to make a wise choice in marriage? To be a
mother! Have the duties of maternity,--the nature of moral
influence,--been pointed out to her? Has she ever been enlightened as
to the consequent unspeakable importance of personal character as the
source of influence? In a word, have any means, direct or indirect,
prepared her for her duties? No! but she is a linguist, a pianist,
graceful, admired. What is that to the purpose? The grand evil of such
an education is the mistaking means for ends; a common error, and the
source of half the moral confusion existing in the world. It is the
substitution of the part for a whole. The time when young women enter
upon life, is the one point to which all plans of education tend, and at
which they all terminate: and to prepare them for that point is the
object of their training. Is it not cruel to lay up for them a store of
future wretchedness, by an education which has no period in view but
one; a very short one, and the most unimportant and irresponsible of the
whole of life? Who that had the power of choice would choose to buy the
admiration of the world for a few short years with the happiness of a
whole life? the temporary power to dazzle and to charm, with the growing
sense of duties undertaken only to be neglected, and responsibilities
the existence of which is discovered perhaps simultaneously with that of
an utter inability to meet them? Even if the mischief stopped here, it
would be sufficiently great; but the craving appetite for applause once
roused, is not so easily lulled again. The moral energies, pampered by
unwholesome nourishment,--like the body when disordered by luxurious
dainties,--refuse to perform their healthy functions, and thus is
occasioned a perpetual strife and warfare of internal principles; the
selfish principle still seeking the accustomed gratification, the
conjugal and maternal prompting to the performance of duty. But duty is
a cold word; and people, in order to find pleasure in duty, must have
been trained to consider their duties as pleasures. This is a truth at
which no one arrives by inspiration! And in this moral struggle, which,
like all other struggles, produces lassitude and distaste of all things,
the happiness of the individual is lost, her usefulness destroyed, her
influence most pernicious. For nothing has so injurious an effect on
temper and manners, and consequently on moral influence, as the want of
that internal quiet which can only arise from the accordance of duty
with inclination. Another most pernicious effect is, the deadening
within the heart of the feeling of love, which is the root of all
influence; for it is an extraordinary fact, that vanity acts as a sort
of refrigerator on all men--on the possessor of it, and on the observer.
Now, if conscientiousness and unselfishness be the two main supports of
women's beneficial influence, how can any education be good which has
not the cultivation of these qualities for its first and principal
object? The grand objects, then, in the education of women, ought to be,
the conscience, the heart, and the affections; the development of those
moral qualities which Providence has so liberally bestowed upon them,
doubtless with a wise and beneficent purpose. Originators of
conscientiousness, how can they implant what they have never cultivated,
nor brought to maturity in themselves? Sovereigns of the affections, how
can they direct the kingdom whose laws they have not studied, the
springs of whose government are concealed from them? The conscience and
the affections being primarily enlightened, all other cultivation, as
secondary, is most valuable. Intelligence, accomplishments, even
external elegance, become objects of importance, as assisting the
influence which women have, and exert too often for unworthy ends, but
which in this case could not fail to be beneficial. Let the light of
intellect and the charm of accomplishments be the willing handmaids of
cultivated and enlightened conscience. Cultivate the intellect with
reference to the conscience, that views of duty may be comprehensive, as
well as just; cultivate the imagination still with reference to the
conscience, that those inward aspirations which all indulge, more or
less, may be turned from the gauds of an idle and vain imagination, and
shed over daily life and daily duty the halo of a poetic influence;
cultivate the manners, that the qualities of heart and head may have an
additional auxiliary in obtaining that influence by which a mighty
regeneration is to be worked. The issues of such an education will
justify the claims made for women in these pages; then the spirit of
vanity will yield to the spirit of self-devotion: that spirit
confessedly natural to Women, and only perverted by wrong education.
Content with the sphere of usefulness assigned her by Nature and
Nature's God, viewing that sphere with the piercing eye of intellect,
and gilding it with the beautiful colours of the imagination, she will
cease the vain and almost impious attempt to wander from it. She will
see and acknowledge the beauty, the harmony of the arrangement which has
made her physical inferiority (the only inferiority which we
acknowledge) the very root from which spring her virtues and their
attendant influences. Removed from the actual collision of political
contests, and screened from the passions which such engender, she brings
party questions to the test of the unalterable principles of reason and
religion; she is, so to speak, the guardian angel of man's political
integrity, liable at the best to be warped by passion or prejudice, and
excited by the rude clashing of opinions and interests. This is the true
secret of woman's political influence, the true object of her political
enlightenment. Governments will never be perfect till all distinction
between private and public virtue, private and public honour, be done
away! Who so fit an agent for the operation of this change as
enlightened, unselfish woman? Who so fit, in her twofold capacity of
companion and early instructor, to teach men to prefer honour to gain,
duty to ease, public to private interests, and God's work to man's
inventions? And shall it be said that women have no political existence,
no political influence, when the very germs of political regeneration
may spring from them alone, when the fate of nations yet unborn may
depend upon the use which they make of the mighty influences committed
to their care? The blindness which sees not how these influences would
be lessened by taking her out of the sphere assigned by Providence, if
voluntary, is wicked--if real, is pitiable. As well might we desire the
earth's beautiful satellite to give place to a second sun, thereby
producing the intolerable and glaring continuity of perpetual day. Those
who would be the agents of Providence must observe the workings of
Providence, and be content to work also in that way, and by those means,
which Almighty wisdom appoints. There is infinite littleness in
despising small things. It seems paradoxical to say that there are no
small things; our littleness and our aspiration make things appear
small. There are, morally speaking, no small duties. Nothing that
influences human virtue and happiness can be really trifling,--and what
more influences them than the despised, because limited, duties assigned
to woman? It is true, her reward (her task being done) is not of this
world, nor will she wish it to be--enough for her to be one of the most
active and efficient agents in her heavenly Father's work of man's
regeneration,--enough for her that generations yet unborn shall rise up
and call her blessed.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] Aimé Martin.
[109] Ibid.
LOVE--MARRIAGE.
The conventual and monastic origin of all systems of education has had a
very injurious influence, on that of women especially, because the
conventual spirit has been longer retained in it.
If no education be good which does not bear upon the future duties of
the educated, it follows that the systematic exclusion of any one
subject connected with, or bearing upon, future duties, must be an evil.
The wisdom of employing those who had renounced the world to form the
minds of those who were to mix in it, to be exposed in all its
allurements, to share in all its duties, was doubtful indeed; and the
danger was enhanced by the fact, that the majority of recluses were any
thing but indifferent to the world which they had renounced. The convent
was too often the refuge of disappointed worldliness, the grave of
blasted hopes, or the prison of involuntary victims; a withering
atmosphere this in which to place warm young hearts, and expect them to
expand and flourish. The evil effects would be varied according to the
different characters submitted to its influence. The sensitive entered
upon life oppressed with fears and terrors; with a conscience morbid,
not enlightened; bewildered by the impossibility of reconciling
principles and duties. The ardent and sanguine, longing to escape from
restraint, pictured to themselves, in these unknown and untried
regions, delights infinite and unvaried; and, seeing the incompatibility
of inculcated principles and worldly pleasures, discarded principle
altogether. It is needless to pursue this subject further, because a
universal assent will (in this country, at least,) await the remarks
here made; their applicability to what follows may not at first be so
apparent. The conventual spirit has survived conventual
institutions,--in the department of female education especially.
In the first place, the instructors of female youth are considered
respectable and trustworthy only in proportion as they cease to be
young, or at least in proportion as they appear to forget that they ever
were so. Any touch of sympathy for the follies of childhood, or the
indiscretions of youth, would blast the prospects of a candidate for
that honourable office, and, in the opinion of many, render her unfit
for its fulfilment. The unfitness is attached to the opposite
disposition; for the very fact of its existence is as effectual an
obstacle to her being a good trainer of youth, as if she had taken a vow
never to see the world but through an iron grating. Experience can never
benefit youth, except when combined with indulgence. The instructor who,
from the heights of past temptations and subdued passion, looks down
with cool watchfulness on the struggles of his youthful pupil, will see
him lie floundering in the mire, or perishing in the deep water. He must
retrace his own steps, take him by the hand, and sustain him, till he is
passed the dangerous and slippery paths of youth. He must become as a
little child to the young and frail being committed to his care, and
whose welfare and safety depend (in great measure) upon him. A cold and
unloving admiration never will produce imitation: it is like the
hopeless love of poor Helena:--
'Twere all as one as I should love a bright particular star!
Here, then, the conventual spirit has been in injurious operation;--no
less so on other points.