[1] This does not mean the supervision of father and mother, but that
into colleges, universities, medical schools, and whatever educational
institutions may be named, the controlling and protecting influence of
both sexes should be carried. I believe that every university should
have a cultivated and elegant woman (not necessarily the _wife_ of any
of its officers), whose duty it should be to preside over its social
life, and offer such allurements to virtuous pleasure that
gambling-houses and worse shall lose their present fascinations. If
young men could associate with virtuous and lovely women, under
suitable sanction, in their college life, they would not, in general,
go out of it in search of the vicious and unlovely. No one who lives
within three miles of a large university need doubt the meaning of
this paragraph. An age and a religious faith which discards the
cloister, should discard a cloisteral fashion, wherever it exists.
[2] "Society offered her no welcome." I am very well aware that this
statement, taken with what I shall elsewhere indicate, will be
considered an exaggeration; but, with a somewhat wide and varied
experience of the United States and of Canada, I maintain it to be
true. I am not to say what is true in the eyes of others, but what is
true in my own. "What!" some one will exclaim, "education not a
passport to social honor! Where was there ever a country where the
teacher was respected as she is in New England?" Theoretically, this
is true; and I have known a few instances in New England, in which
teachers of private schools, of good family, successful in acquiring
wealth (not necessarily through their schools), kept an eminent social
position. Men generally keep a fair position; women, rarely. To test
the truth of this, let me press the question. To whom do we all, to
whom does the Commonwealth, owe a sacred debt, if not to the teachers
of the primary and the grammar schools? Among these women, I have
found some of the most delicate, high-bred, and cultivated women whom
I have ever known of the same age. Let any one who sees them collected
on public occasions glance at them, and judge; but, in cities at
least, these women are never in society. Their meagre salaries prevent
them from dressing as ladies must be dressed for a large company. For
the same reason, their boarding-places are obscure and lonely. The
middle class of artisans, &c., who send their children to the public
schools, seek no intercourse with those whose refinement seems to
isolate them; the upper class look down upon them very kindly, but
never think of inviting them to meet distinguished people, of showing
them rare books or pictures, of stimulating their worn-out faculties
in any way. Why do we not make these teachers our first care? Should
we not be more than repaid--if pay we must have--by the cheer and
comfort added to the schoolroom in which our children are to be
taught? I have tried the experiment of bringing these tired souls into
contact with those who ought to refresh them. It does marvellously
well, until the crucial question is asked, "Who is she?" If I answer,
"The teacher of a primary school," what a change of countenance, what
a fading of the cordial smile, what passive indifference! and this, in
cases where, in refinement and delicacy of manner, the young lady
might pass unchallenged anywhere. But let the subject of my experiment
be a girl of genius; with such cultivation only as a Normal School
could add to the education of a country home; deficient still in the
minor graces of deportment; too energetic and adventurous, perhaps, to
be elegant; and who will take a motherly interest in her, draw her
within the charmed circle where she shall learn to carry herself with
reserve and dignity, and to veil her flashing powers, that they may
warm where they have hitherto consumed?
No: I do not exaggerate. I believe we are all concerned to know in
what sort of homes, under what influences, with what helps to health
and happiness, these lonely and isolated girls pass the hours when
they are not engaged in teaching. It concerns us, in the first place,
of course, because theirs are the direct influences which mould our
children; but I scorn that argument. It concerns us far more because
they are the children of the same Father, engaged in the most trying
of human vocations, and entitled as women, especially as unprotected
women, to the sympathy of all mothers.
Some years ago, a lady not yet out of her teens, and suddenly reduced
in fortune, went to Virginia to teach. She had letters from persons of
distinction, who had known her in her early home. The letters were
delivered; but there the matter ended. But she was one of those
persons who make a place for themselves; and, after the neighborhood
grew proud of her, she was called down one day to meet the wife of a
lieutenant in the navy, to whom one of her letters had been addressed.
"I am sorry I have not called before," apologized the visitor; "but
there are so many of _these teachers_!" She had no time to say more:
the young girl's cheek kindled. "Madam," said she, springing to her
feet, "I desire no attention from you which would not under any
circumstances be accorded to your daughter's teacher;" and she left
the room. It is a matter of small importance, that, in this case, the
young teacher was soon placed in a position in which her good-will
became important to the lieutenant's wife.
"This," you will say, "was at the South. It grew out of that spirit of
'caste' which died with slavery." Is it indeed dead? Is there no
spirit of caste in Massachusetts?
[3] Un Passo Avanti nella Cultura Femminile Fesi e Progetto di Anna
Maria Mozzoni Mitano. 1866.
[4] I would gladly expunge the bitter reproof of these lines; but they
record a fact which occurred at a medical school, where such an
application was made, and must stand as history.
[5] The three parts of this book have been made to conform to the
census and statistics of the year 1850. To bring them up to the year
1860 would require a repetition of all the labor originally devoted to
the question. That would be unwise if it were possible, for it could
not alter the bearing of any statements; and it is not possible,
because we have now no certain values in America. I had from the first
intended to indicate in notes any important changes that had taken
place in this decade. I had earnestly hoped to be able to contradict
here the statements in the text in regard to medical opportunities for
women, and the proper training of sick nurses, in England. But my
English correspondents assure me that I have no occasion to change any
thing; that the facts remain substantially what they were when my
manuscript was written.
"But," says some watchful woman, "has not Miss Garrett taken her
degree from Apothecaries' Hall? and have not a few women at least been
trained as sick nurses?"
There is still no _institution_ for the training of sick nurses, as
the text asserts. Some few have been trained in hospitals and the
like, on conditions of service, or to supply the need of such
institutions themselves. How does the matter stand with Miss Garrett?
The press has made the most of her success: it lies with us to exhibit
the naked truth. After applying in vain to the various medical
colleges, Miss Garrett went to Apothecaries' Hall. Here they refused
her; but she looked up their charter. She found the word indicating to
whom degrees should be granted indeterminate, with no character of sex
attached to it. Lawyers told her the hall must grant her a degree, or
surrender its charter. She was wealthy, and in earnest. She pushed her
advantage. "The Apothecaries' Hall" prescribed certain courses of
instruction to be pursued and certified before the degree could be
granted. These she pursued in private, paying the most exorbitant
rates for her instruction. In one instance, for a course of lectures,
to which a man's fee would have been _five_ guineas, she paid _fifty_;
and I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory
steps must have amounted to two thousand pounds. All honor to Miss
Garrett! Should her genius as a physician equal her energy and her
wealth, she may gain something for the cause she has espoused, by the
honor and consideration she will win for her sex. Apart from this, it
will be seen, she has gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to
ordinary mortals; and the conditions of the degree, in the present
state of public feeling, would make it wholly impracticable.
The case, as it has been stated to us, is an exemplification, on a
gigantic scale, of all that we complain of; and proves our statement,
that women have not won an education for themselves, till they win
with it its legitimate results. For their opportunities as things now
stand, all over the world, women pay a premium on the terms offered to
men. Let them take these opportunities as tools, and try to win their
bread with them, and the wages offered are, as a rule, a large
discount on those offered to men. Political economy has nothing to do
with the exceptional cases in which this is most evident,--only the
common, habitual idea, that the wages of women must be kept down; and
that, to do it, the value of superior labor must not be recognized, as
in the case of the female teacher quoted in the text.
In the Report of St. Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children, in
Marylebone, I find Miss Elizabeth Garrett mentioned as the General
Medical Attendant. The Devonshire-square Nursing Institute,
established, I think, by Mrs. Fry, twenty years ago, sends out nurses
on the request of clergymen. Several sisters give their whole time to
it.
King's College pays one thousand pounds annually for nurses to St.
John's Home.
St. Thomas's Hospital, where nurses are being trained by the
Nightingale fund, rejected fifty applications in six months.
The excitement in England has had a wholesome effect upon colonial
action. The East-Indian Government has lately given Lady Canning
twenty thousand rupees, to assist in building a home for the Calcutta
Nurses' Institute; and a movement is making in India to educate native
women as physicians. See, in the Appendix, the account of Miss
Nightingale's School for Nurses in Liverpool.
Since the above was written, in January, 1867, three ladies have taken
their degrees at Apothecaries' Hall, having passed a good examination,
in Euclid, arithmetic, English history, and Latin. The _cost_ of these
degrees has not transpired.
[6] See Appendix.