1.—“... _in jealousy_ ...”
The male conceit and jealousy of sex, existent among the majority of
meaner men, has been perceived and censured or satirised by higher
masculine minds both in ancient and modern literature. To take a few
scattered instances from the latter, Shakespeare says:—
“... however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won
Than women’s are.”
—(“Twelfth Night,” Act II., Sc. 4.)
Goethe says pungently (in “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”): “People
ridicule learned women and dislike even women who are well informed,
probably because it is considered impolite to put so many ignorant men
to shame.”
As our own plain-spoken Sydney Smith has said, in his essay on Female
Education:—“It is natural that men who are ignorant themselves, should
view, with some degree of jealousy and alarm, any proposal for improving
the education of women.”
A ludicrously pitiful modern-day instance of the jealous ignorance or
ignorant jealousy to which Goethe and Sydney Smith make reference, is
afforded by a seriously-written leading article in No. 545 of the
_Christian Commonwealth_, a London weekly newspaper, under date of 24th
March, 1892:—
“The Woman question will not down. She is asserting herself in every
direction, and generally with considerable force. In America she is
positively alarming the lords of creation by her rapid progress in
educational matters. She is actually outrunning the men in the race
for intellectual attainments. And this fact is becoming so evident,
and so prominent, that a new problem is being evolved from it. This
is, how are the finely educated young women of America to find
congenial husbands? It is assumed by some writers that already there
is a great disparity between the culture of the young men and young
women, and that every year the chasm between them is becoming deeper
and wider. This is a truly lamentable state of things, but the woman
movement in this country is likely to take a more practical course.
The agitation of the question of Woman Suffrage may bring about a
reaction against her excessive culture. If woman is permitted to enter
the cesspool of politics, it is probable she will not be very long
distressed with an overplus of those qualities which are just now
endangering her conjugal felicity in the United States....”
It is refreshing and consolatory to revert from such verbiage to what
Sir Humphrey Davy said (“Lectures, 1810 and 1811”): “It has been too
much the custom to endeavour to attach ridicule to the literary and
scientific acquisitions of women. Let _them_ make it disgraceful for men
to be ignorant, and ignorance will perish.”
To Shakespeare and Goethe may be added the corroboration of French
intellect:—
“N’est-il pas évident que Molière, dans ses _Femmes Savantes_ n’a pas
attaqué l’instruction, l’étude, mais le pédantisme, comme, dans son
_Tartuffe_, il avait attaqué non la vraie dévotion, mais l’hypocrisie?
N’est-ce pas Molière lui-même qui a écrit ce beau vers: “Et je veux
qu’une femme ait des clartés _de tout_?”—Monseigneur Dupanloup, Evêque
d’Orléans (“Femmes Savantes et Femmes Studieuses,” 1868, p. 8).
“C’est à Condorcet et non pas à Jean Jacques, comme on le croit
généralement, qu’appartient l’initiative des réformes proposées dans
l’éducation et la condition des femmes.”—Daniel Stern (“Hist. de la
Révolution de 1848,” Vol. II, p. 185).
“Quand la loi française”—(shall we not say also every other?)—“déclare
la femme inférieure à l’homme ce n’est jamais pour libérer la femme d’un
devoir vis-à-vis de l’homme ou de la société, c’est pour armer l’homme
ou la société d’un droit de plus contre elle. Il n’est jamais venu à
l’idée de la loi de tenir compte de la faiblesse de la femme dans les
différents délits qu’elle peut commettre; au contraire, la loi en
abuse.”—A. Dumas fils (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” etc., p. 204).
Mill says:—“There is nothing which men so easily learn as this
self-worship; all privileged persons, and all privileged classes have
had it.” And he also speaks of a time—“when satires on women were in
vogue, and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what
men made them.”—(“Subjection of Women,” pp. 76, 77).
We have seen (Note XLV., 5) how Professor Huxley postulates scientific
training equally for girls and boys; he has also said:—“Emancipate
girls. Recognise the fact that they share the senses, perceptions,
feelings, reasoning powers, emotions of boys, and that the mind of the
average girl is less different from that of the average boy, than the
mind of one boy is from that of another; so that whatever argument
justifies a given education for all boys, justifies its application to
girls as well.”—(“Emancipation, _Black and White_.”)
Balzac asserted: “A woman who has received a masculine education
possesses the most brilliant and fertile qualities, with which to secure
the happiness of her husband and herself.”—(“Physiologie du Mariage,”
Méditation XI.).
But the instances are innumerable where the intellect of higher men
expressly or unconsciously rebukes the jealous sexual conceit of their
less intelligent brethren. Dr. Bonavia says, very tersely:—“The fact is,
many men don’t like the idea of being surpassed or even equalled by
women. They stupidly feel their dignity wounded. This jealousy, however,
is not only extremely contemptible and unjust, but disastrous to the
true interests of the race, for men have mothers _as well as women_, and
imbecility—the result of atrophied frontal lobes—is just as likely to be
transmitted to the one sex as to the other, as far as we yet know. Just
see the injustice of men’s jealousy in matters of intellect. Only
recently the talent of Miss Ormerod—an entomologist who can hold her own
_anywhere_ on earth—was kept under by the Royal Agricultural Society.
_She_ did the entomological work, and made the discoveries, while _they_
took the credit. In their reports they did not even mention _her_ name
in connection with her own work!—A more contemptible proceeding, it
would appear, has never been brought to light, in the struggle of the
sexes, if that case has been correctly reported.”—(“Woman’s Frontal
Lobes.”)
Bebel treats this jealousy with a fine irony in his exposition of “the
motives which induce most medical professors, and indeed the professors
of every faculty, to oppose women students:”—“They regard the admission
of women as synonymous with the degradation of science (!) which could
not but lose its prestige in the eyes of the enlightened (!) multitude
if it appeared that the female brain was capable of grasping problems
which had hitherto only been revealed to the elect of the opposite
sex.”—(_Op. cit._, p. 132.)
Had Bebel recorded masculine mercenary considerations, rather than sham
misgivings as to the interests of science, his sarcasm would have been
very grim truth. Indeed, what is sometimes called the “loaves and
fishes” argument is at the root of most of this masculine jealousy which
cloaks itself under a pretension of tender consideration for woman’s
delicacy. To cite Bebel again: “Another objection is that it is unseemly
to admit women to medical lectures, to operations, and deliveries, side
by side with male students. If men see nothing indecent in studying and
examining female patients in the presence of nurses and other female
patients, it is difficult to understand why it should become so through
the presence of female students.”—(_Op. cit._, p. 132.) And as to the
actual fitness of women for exercising the profession of medicine or
surgery:—
“‘Women always improve when the men begin to show signs of failing,’
were the words of a distinguished physician and surgeon, who had seen
years of service on a remote wintry station of the army. ‘I have had
fellows brought to me to have the leg amputated—perhaps both—close to
the body, and never anywhere in Paris, London, or New York, saw I better
surgeon’s assistants than some of our women made, especially the Sisters
of Charity, of whom we had a few at the post, for three or four years.
Heads as clear as a silver bell; hands steady and unshrinking as a
granite rock, yet with a touch as light as a spring leaf; foot quick and
indefatigable, whether the time was noonday or midnight; memory perfect;
tenderness for the sufferer unfailing. Talk about love, courage,
fortitude, and endurance in your sex! I tell you,’ he added, with a
needless affirmation at this point, ‘they seem to be nothing else, when
these are most wanted, and the man who doubts them is an ass.’”—Eliza W.
Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 157). See also Note XXIX., 8.
_Id._ ... Here may fittingly follow the report of a trained masculine
judgment as to woman’s ability in yet a further profession—that of the
law:—
At the recent opening of the Southern California College of Law, at Los
Angeles, John W. Mitchell, the president, in his lecture upon “The Study
of the Law,” spoke of the utility of women studying law, in the
following language:—
“This part of this discourse it is believed would be radically
incomplete without calling attention to one other and particular class
of persons who need an insight into the rudiments of law—which class,
it seems, has also been neglected by those occupying a like position
to my own—I mean the women. He is, indeed, blind to the signs of the
times who does not recognise the expanding field of women’s work, and
their increased influence in the professions as well as in the fine
arts. That women are entering the lists with men, in behalf of
themselves and womankind, is well; for they must make up their minds
to take up the task of urging the reforms they need, and must solve
the woman problem in all its bearings. Women are doing this. They are
becoming competitors with men in the pursuits of life, it is true; but
it is as much from necessity as choice. But it is not only the women
who have to labour and earn their own living who need legal knowledge
to aid them. It is more needful to the woman of property, be her
possessions but an humble home or a colossal fortune; whether she be
married or single. Women want this experience to make them cautious of
jeopardising their rights, and less confiding in business matters. The
courts are full of cases showing how women have been wrongly stripped
of their belongings. And, perhaps, if one woman had known the legal
effect of some of her acts, one of the largest fortunes ever amassed
in this State of Crœsus-like wealth would not have been carried to
distant States, and there scandalously distributed amongst scheming
adventurers and lawyers, making a little Massachusetts county-seat the
theatre of one of the most remarkable contests for a fortune in the
whole annals of probate court law.
“As to the professions: women were for a long time barred from them,
but now the barriers to all of them have been removed, and there is
not a profession in which women are not distinguished. They have
graduated in the sciences from most universities with the highest
honours, and have stood the same tests as the men. The law was about
the last to admit them within its precincts, and there they are
meeting with an unexpected measure of success. Not only in this, but
in other countries, there are successful women practitioners. And in
France, where the preparatory course is most arduous, and the term of
study longest, a woman recently took the highest rank over 500 men in
her graduating examinations, and during the whole six years of class
study she only lost one day from her work—an example that is commended
to you students. Undoubtedly, the weight of the argument is in favour
of women studying law.”—(_Women’s Journal_, Boston, U.S., 6th
February, 1892.)
_Id._... Even the vaunted politeness and gallantry of the Frenchman is
not proof against the far more deeply-bedded masculine jealousy. M. de
Blowitz, the erudite correspondent at Paris of the _Times_, reports
that—
“The law students yesterday hooted down Mdlle. Jeanne Chauvin, 28
years of age, who was to have argued a thesis for a legal degree. She
had chosen as her theme, ‘The Professions accessible to Women and the
Historical Evolution of the Economic Position of Woman in Society.’
The uproar was such that the examiner postponed the ceremony _sine
die_. Mdlle. Chauvin is the first Frenchwoman who has sought a legal
degree, but two years ago a Roumanian lady went through the ordeal
without obstruction.”—(The _Times_, July 4, 1892.)
To revert to the “loaves and fishes” argument, an incident now to be
given will show that medicine and the law are not the only professions
in which the objections to the equal status of the sexes are largely
prompted by a “jalousie de métier” of a selfish and mercenary
character:—
“The following letters have been received at Auckland from the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in relation to the
memorial lately sent from New Zealand in favour of the opening of
degrees to women:—
“‘DEAR PROFESSOR ALDIS,
“‘Your very interesting memorial reached me yesterday. I still await
the explanatory letter and analysis. After receiving I will write
again.
“‘Yours etc.,
JOHN PEILE,
Vice-Chancellor.
Christ’s College Lodge,
‘Cambridge, Nov. 2nd, 1891.’
“‘MY DEAR PROFESSOR ALDIS,
“‘The petition of the memorial received by me from Miss Lilian Edger
and yourself, respecting degrees for women at the University of
Cambridge, and the analysis of the signatures to that memorial, have
been printed by me in the _University Reporter_, the official organ of
communication of any kind of business to the members of the Senate.
The memorial itself will be preserved in the Registry of the
University. Immediate action on this question by the Council of the
Senate—the body, with which, as you are aware, all legislation in the
University must begin—is not probable. The question was raised about
three years ago; and it became at once plain that, if persevered in,
it would produce a very serious division in the ranks of those members
of the University who had all shown themselves, in the past, friends
to the highest education of women. Many of those who had earnestly
supported the admission of women to Tripos examinations, _would not
support their admission to the B.A. degree_. Into their—mostly
practical—reasons I cannot fully enter: One was the belief that
admission to B.A. must lead, in the end (in spite of any provisions
which might be introduced), to admission to M.A., and consequently to
_a share in the management of the University_; it was also apprehended
that difficulties would arise in the several colleges _with respect to
fellowships_, _etc._ I do not mention these difficulties as
insuperable. But they are felt by so many that there is, I am
persuaded, no prospect of successful action in this matter at the
present time. I shall, therefore, not myself propose anything in the
Council, nor so far has any other of the friends of women’s education,
of whom there are many on the Council, given notice of any motion. At
any future time, when such a motion is made, your most influential
memorial will certainly have its due weight with the members of the
Council, and if they decide to take action, I hope also, with members
of the Senate.
“‘I am, etc.,
JOHN PEILE,
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
Christ’s College Lodge,
Cambridge, Nov. 20th, 1891.’”
—(_New Zealand Herald_, 5th Jan., 1892.)
6.—“... _potency_ ...”
“The Brain is different from all other organs of the body. It is often a
mass of structural potentialities rather than of fully-developed nerve
tissues. Some of its elements, viz., those concerned with
best-established instinctive operations, naturally go on to their full
development without the aid of extrinsic stimuli; others, however, and
large tracts of these, seem to progress to such developments only under
the influence of suitable stimuli. Hence natural aptitudes and potencies
of the most subtle order may never be manifested by multitudes of
persons, for want of the proper stimuli and practice capable of
perfecting the development and functional activity of those regions of
the brain whose action is inseparably related to the mental phenomena in
question.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 374).