Emily Davies

“ The absence of sympathy between youth and age is traceable to the same want. Old people have either forgotten their own youth, or they remember it too well, and fall into the not less fatal mistake of supposing that the new youth is like their own. Young people, on their part, are equally at a loss to understand what it is to be old. In all the relations of life, the want of imagination produces defective sympathy, and defective sympathy brings in its train all sorts of vague and intolerable evils. ”

“ Of course, a merely literary education will not give this power. Knowledge of the world and of human nature, only to be gained by observation and experience, go farther than mere knowledge of books. But the habit of impartiality and deliberation—of surveying a wide field of thought—and of penetrating, so far as human eye can see, into the heart of things—which is promoted by genuine study even of books alone—tends to produce an attitude of mind favourable for the consideration of complicated questions of any sort. ”

“ And clearly 'the education of a lady' ought to mean the highest and the finest culture of the time. The accurate habits of thought and the intellectual polish by which the scholar is distinguished, ought to be no less carefully sought in the training of women than in that of men. This would be true, even if only for the sake of the charm which high culture gives to social intercourse, a charm attainable in no other way. But apart from this consideration, the duties of women of the higher class are such as to demand varied knowledge as well as a disciplined mind and character. ”

“ All these, and many others, are relics of the old system of mund for women; and that system has, I verily believe, succeeded. It has called out, as no other system could have done, chivalry in the man. It has made him feel it a duty and an honour to protect the physically weaker sex. It has made the woman feel that her influence, whether in the state or in the family, is to be not physical and legal, but moral and spiritual; and that it therefore rests on a ground really nobler and deeper than that of the man. ”

“ The advocates of this view usually hold in connexion with it certain doctrines, such as, that the man is intended for the world, woman for the home; man’s strength is in the head, woman’s in the heart; the man’s function is to protect, woman’s to soothe and comfort; men must work, and women must weep: everywhere we are to have a sharply marked division, often honestly mistaken for the highest and most real communion. Closely connected with these separatist doctrines is the double moral code, with its masculine and feminine virtues, and its separate law of duty and honour for either sex. ”

“ The higher class of workers would acquire larger sympathies, more living interests, increased aptitude for affairs, and an exhilarating sense of usefulness—of having a place in the world from which they would be missed if they were withdrawn from it. The lower class would, on their part, be elevated by the contact with a genuine refinement, not too 'fine' to be useful. They would see that a lady is a lady, not in virtue of her costly dress and luxurious habits, but in the gentleness, the truthfulness, and the sensitive sympathy, which are among the most precious fruits of high culture. ”

“ For the case of the modern girl is peculiarly hard in this, that she has fallen upon an age in which idleness is accounted disgraceful. The social atmosphere rings with exhortations to act, act in the living present. Everywhere we hear that true happiness is to be found in work—that there can be no leisure without toil—that people who do nothing are unfruitful fig-trees which cumber the ground. ”

“ What is really wanted in a woman is, that she should be a permanently pleasant companion. So far as education can give or enhance pleasantness, it does so by making the view of life wide, the wit ready, the faculty of comprehension vivid.’
One authority, delightfully contented with things as they are, assures us that, ‘humanly speaking, the best sort of British young lady is all that a woman can be expected to be—civil, intelligent, enthusiastic, decorous, and, as a rule, prettier than in any other country. ”

“ There is no point on which schoolmistresses are more unanimous and more emphatic than on the difficulty of knowing what to do with girls after leaving school. People who have not been brought into intimate converse with young women have little idea of the extent to which they suffer from perplexities of conscience. 'The discontent of the modern girl' is not mere idle self-torture. Busy men and women—and people with disciplined minds—can only, by a certain strain of the imagination, conceive the situation. ”

“ Is there any reason, in the nature of things, why the moral tone of a factory should be less pure and elevating than that of the home? Is it not rather that we want, in our modern workshops, the influence conveyed by daily intercourse between women to whom wealth has given the means of culture and refinement, and the labourers whom poverty obliges to work with their hands, but who need not therefore part with any essential feminine attribute? ”

“ Evil now appears in a subtle, intangible shape, against which physical strength is of little avail. But the generosity and the courage which constituted the true beauty and worth of chivalry can never become obsolete. The chivalrous spirit now shows itself in the abandonment of unjust privileges, in the enactment of equal laws, and in facing ridicule, opposition, and discouragement in behalf of unpopular ideas. The great battle between good and evil is for ever going on. ”

“ It may here perhaps be argued on the other hand, that to give wives professions would tend to separate them from their husbands by throwing them into a society of their own, and leading them to set up a distinct set of independent interests,—that whereas a wife now throws herself into her husband's concerns, losing sight of herself in her sympathy with him, she would, if she had a pursuit of her own, be led astray by ambition, occupied with her own aims, absorbed in a current of life apart from his. ”

“ In the most recent writers, the tendency to regard general theories of education as applying exclusively to that of men, is quite as strongly marked.
It seems, therefore, that in attempting to treat of female education, it is necessary once more to ask what we are aiming at, and to obtain, if possible, a clear understanding and agreement as to the end in view. What ought the educators of girls to be trying to make of them? What is the ideal towards which they ought to direct their efforts, the end to be desired as the result of their labours? ”

“ Writers in newspapers and magazines are fond of talking about the nursery, as if every household contained a never-ending supply of young children, on whom the grown-up daughters might be practising the art of bringing up. Others have a great deal to say about the kitchen, assuming it to be desirable that the ladies of the house should supersede, or at least assist, the cook. In that case, where there is a mother with two or three daughters, we should have four or five cooks. The undesirableness of such a multiplication of artists need scarcely be pointed out. ”

“ No education can be relied upon as infallibly securing these rare gifts; but it may be assumed that extensive reading of the best books tends to cultivate imagination and refinement, and that a life of active exertion tends to bring out the qualities which go to make up the governing and administrative faculty; and if so, a liberal education and the pursuit of a profession are perhaps, on the whole, the best training that the conditions of modern society can supply for the special functions of the mistress of a household. ”

“ Thoroughly to carry out the Christian theory would no doubt lead to some startling consequences; but the theory itself is intelligible and workable. Can the same be said of any other of the standards or tests by which educators might shape their work? The only intelligible principle on which modern writers show anything like unanimity, is that women are intended to supply, and ought to be made, something which men want. What that may be, it is not easy to discover. We are met at the outset by a difficulty as to the nature of the want. ”

“ Her relations and friends—her world—are quite satisfied that she should 'hang about upon life, merely following her own'—or their own—'caprices and fancies.' The advice given, so easy to offer, so hard to follow, presupposes exactly what is wanting, a formed and disciplined character, able to stand alone, and to follow steadily a predetermined course, without fear of punishment, or hope of reward. Ought we to wonder if, in the great majority of cases, girls let themselves go drifting down the stream, despising themselves, but listlessly yielding to what seems to be their fate? ”

“ Every now and then some one recommends mathematics for girls as a curb to the imagination. It might be as well first to ascertain whether the imaginations of commonplace girls want to be curbed; whether, on the contrary, they do not want rather to be awakened and set to work, with something to work [Pg 138] upon. The business of the imagination is not merely to build castles in the air, though that is, no doubt, a useful and commendable exercise; it has other and most important duties to perform. For, manifestly, an unimaginative person is destitute of one of the main elements of sympathy. ”

“ Women have ‘general ideas,’ which interest and occupy their minds, but produce little fruit, owing to their incompleteness and uncertainty. Of course, it would be absurd to recommend examinations as an infallible cure for this or any other mental defect. The familiar objections, that there are many things which no examination can test; that they sometimes encourage cram and check originality; and that, when abused, they foster ambition, and cause overexcitement and overwork—no doubt have some truth in them. But the question is whether, on the whole, examinations work for good or for evil ”

“ On the other hand, it would be at least as easy for a husband to enter into interests somewhat akin to his own, as into the small domestic worries which fill so large a space in the thoughts and imaginations of women who have nothing else to occupy them. There are many wives who really have very little to talk to their husbands about, except the virtues or the crimes of servants, and the little gossip of the neighbourhood. If their husbands will not listen to what they have to say on these subjects, they are obliged to take refuge in silence. ”

“ The easy solution, that it is their nature to do what men cannot do, or cannot do so well, has never been adopted in practice, inasmuch as everything in the world that there is to do, the care of infants alone excepted, men are doing; and there is nothing that a trained man cannot do better than an untrained woman. Literature and art, teaching, nursing, cooking, sewing—these are the recognised feminine occupations, and they are all shared by men. The pursuit of them does not turn men into women, or women into men. ”