John Hughes Bennett

“ It is true that there have been some noble and illustrious women who have proved themselves of the highest mental capacity, and who have risen to the first rank in various departments of intellectual culture, but it must be admitted that these are rare exceptions, and that even they in every particular have been enormously outnumbered and surpassed by men. It may then be reasoned that the female has hitherto not had the opportunities or education necessary to fit her to place herself on an equality with the other sex. ”

“ For the frivolous and luxurious so-called duties of fashionable life, although exhausting and fatiguing, can not be said to constitute that healthy exercise of mind or body which is desirable for young women to stave off disease and maintain sound health. Study and occupation, at the same time positive, useful, and attractive, are the best correctives of an imagination ardent and disordered, of a nervous system susceptible and hypersensitive. These considerations being made patent, many women, with the impulse characteristic of their sex, have rushed to the opposite extreme. ”

“ This fundamental difference between the sexes, we have seen, is not due to education or special cultivation, but to a primary development of the system, each having those peculiarities best fitted for the part it has been born to fulfill. There can therefore be little doubt that the most natural and healthy condition for a woman is a properly assorted marriage, in which she has children, with whom she has useful and congenial occupation, and by whom all her sympathies and best instincts are developed. ”

“ Sage philosophers may speculate what ages may effect by evolution, but, taking woman as we find her, we believe that her welfare is to be consulted, not by encouraging her to take an independent position in life and by fostering a contempt for marriage, which is now the professed tendency of the strong-minded young lady, but by educating her in such a judicious and sensible manner as will make her a good wife, mother, and useful member of society, which is unfortunately not the inclination of the present age. ”

“ She feels more than she thinks. A man forces his way by power of body and intelligence. She acts on him by tact and by all those weaknesses in which with him lies her chief power. Her flexibility of character gives rise to caprice which consists of a brusque passage from one sentiment to another totally opposed. ”

“ We may, then, assert as a fact that the nervous system of the average woman is more susceptible and impressionable than that of the average man, that it is in consequence more readily unhinged by mental and physical distress or fatigue, and that when thus disordered it reacts upon the system, so as to cause permanent disease. ”

“ Woman dislikes and avoids that hard work which requires long and profound meditation, her character being adverse to the study of abstract science. Her thoughts wander, she becomes impatient, and her too mobile imagination is unable to rivet the attention on the dry details of a practical subject. She enters with enthusiasm and often with unnecessary vigor at first into any new project, philanthropic, educational, or otherwise, but rarely carries it steadily out to a successful termination. ”

“ Wise women—the so-called blue-stocking—as a rule know nothing profoundly. Their natural acuteness of perception enables them to seize a number of details and isolated particulars, they fancy they understand them thoroughly, they confound theory with fact, the real difficulties they do not surmount, they can not fix the attention long and deeply, or persevere in overcoming obstructions, and they feel no pleasure in habits of profound meditation. ”

“ We can not here enter at length into this very important subject, but merely indicate that the whole sexual system of woman has a profound influence on her physical nature, which does not exist to the same extent in man, and, although for conventional reasons such questions are usually suppressed in public controversies on the advancement of her sex, there can be no doubt that they should not be forgotten, having, as they do, a most important and practical influence on the subject. ”

“ In women there is less nervous capacity and vigor, diminished power of control, and a greater readiness to break down under physical and mental strain. It is notorious that the conditions termed nervous and hysterical are almost entirely confined to the female sex, in which they are extremely common. Every physician at a hospital who treats out-door patients knows that for every hundred men he prescribes for he is called upon to treat at least five hundred women. On the other hand, the male wards are always full, while many of the female beds may be vacant. ”

“ Thus women from their earliest days are constantly subjected to the yoke of prejudices, are under the necessity of a perpetual state of acting and deception, of dissembling their desires and real inclinations for the sake of propriety, of keeping to themselves the most powerful passions and the strongest propensities, and of feigning a calmness and indifference when they are devoured by a burning fire. ”

“ We have, however, seen that both the woman's body and mind are inferior in vigor and power to those of the man, and accordingly, if pitted against one another in a physical or mental race, she, to use a sporting phrase, would be heavily handicapped. She will not, as a rule, reach his standard, and, if she endeavors to do so, it will be at the expense of her health. The brain and nervous system, like other organs, if overworked, become the centers of activity, and are fatigued ”

“ It is unquestionable that suitable occupation and education are of the highest importance to the well-being of women, and that all due encouragement should be given to those who endeavor to provide for them an intelligent interest in life. But in avoiding Scylla care must be taken not to drift into Charybdis. To say that the majority of women are fit to cope successfully with men in the intellectual world would, we believe, for the preceding reasons, be a most injurious doctrine, and lead to disastrous results. Our text, the pupil teacher, is an example. ”

“ Such, if the most primitive, is probably the healthiest and happiest condition for the female. Her sympathetic and susceptible nature has here every scope for action without being shaken by rude and oft repeated shocks. In civilized life, especially among the upper classes, everything seems combined to foster and increase the natural affectability of woman's nature, and society renders her, already unfortunate by organization, the victim of the most painful and varied series of moral and corporeal affections. ”

“ Her habitual feebleness and deficient vigor inspire her with less confidence; and, as a woman can not therefore act directly, she employs indirect measures to effect her ends. Hence the natural desire to please inherent in the sex, the artfulness, the dissimulations, the little managements and intrigues, the graces, the coquetry, and other seductive ways, which, to a certain extent, have always been ceded to by intellectual and physical force. ”

“ Medical philosophers have declaimed, and will long continue to do so, in vain, against the whole system of the education and bringing up of women, which is directed solely to the purpose of making them personally attractive, and subsequently securing for them brilliant settlements for life, at the expense of their health. ”

“ As to education, we have already pointed out the general unsatisfactory nature of the intellectual studies of most women. That idleness and the absence of suitable and substantial occupation for the mind which so commonly exists in the higher ranks of society are the sources of great evils no one will deny. ”

“ All other circumstances being alike, the size of the brain appears to bear a general relation to the mental power of the individual. There are doubtless exceptions to this rule, but unquestionably the general axiom holds good in large averages; therefore, as the organ of intellect in the female is smaller and lighter than that in the male, we may fairly assume that it is less capable of such high and extended mental powers. ”

“ At every age, in every country and climate, and under every circumstance, we find that in the highest qualities of mind, of reason, judgment, genius, inventive power, capacity for acquiring and utilizing knowledge, man stands preeminent. ”

“ She feels pain, grief, and anxiety acutely. To these she readily gives way, and as rapidly revives from their effects. Sensations of all kinds act on her powerfully. These she can not control, but exaggerates into extremes, and manifests by violent demonstrations. If she feels acutely it is not for long, her sentiments at the time being easily replaced by new ones, and her mental distress, if rapidly induced, is more poignant than deep. Woman is essentially impulsive and emotional; her sensitive and changeable nature is necessary for the part she has to play in life. ”

“ If she has not children, frequently recurring periodic processes take place, which, under the best circumstances, render her specially liable to derangement of her general health, and under adverse conditions she is almost certain to fall a victim. This was demonstrated in the days of slavery, when the owners, either not knowing or caring about these physiological laws, forced their women to labor continuously in the fields, in consequence of which thousands of them died of those numerous ills to which female flesh is heir. ”

“ Their nervous system and mental faculties are also affected. They are irritable, nervous, depressed, and melancholic; they do not sleep at night, partially lose their memories, they suffer from violent headaches, and can not settle to work; they have all kinds of nervous and subjective pains, hysterical symptoms, and, in short, all the phenomena of nervous and mental as well as of physical exhaustion and debility. If our patients be asked the cause of these ailments, they will with one accord say that it is the hard and constant brain-work, combined with worry and perpetual anxiety. ”

“ A young girl, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, the most anxious and important period in her whole life, when her mental and physical constitution is undergoing development, is put under a severe intellectual strain. ”

“ From the lowest to the highest species, the general structure of the male differs from that of the female in the size and strength of his bones and muscles, the form of his head, thorax, and limbs, and in the possession of special weapons of offense and defense. ”

“ We are informed by energetic and doubtless well-meaning speakers from the platform, that women have hitherto been under subjection, that they should emancipate themselves, that their intellect is as good as if not better than that of men, and that they are as capable as men are of the highest mental culture, and of profiting and distinguishing themselves thereby. ”

“ Owing to his conformation, the man is capable of performing and of enduring more physical labor and fatigue, and hence on him, from time immemorial, has fallen the share of manual toil, and of supporting and protecting the other and weaker sex. ”

“ These facts show that the difference in size and weight is obviously a fundamental sexual distinction, and not one which can be explained on the hypothesis that the educational advantages enjoyed either by the individual man or by the male sex generally, operating through a long series of generations, have stimulated the growth of the brain in one sex more than in the other. ”

“ Such a career does not as a rule break down the young man, but in a large number of cases it completely unhinges the woman. She, in fact, is compelled to perform the work of a man without having his organic basis to depend on, and hence, as a consequence, her entire system suffers. ”

“ She enters into society, and there her whole mode of life further contributes to her unfortunate condition. The competitions, disappointed affection and vanity, the artificial excitements of balls, public entertainments, late hours, and all the frivolities and pleasures of fashion, tend in the same direction. The cultivation of music, poetry, novels, and other inflammatory literature nourish illusions contrary to the actual state of society. ”

“ Burning the midnight oil, contending, it may be, with difficulties, harassed with doubt and anxiety, debilitated from want of rest and bodily fatigue, they struggle on, their circumstances or their enthusiasm impelling them, but at last they, like the pupil-teachers, give way and succumb from sheer exhaustion. The objects of this paper are to endeavor to explain why this deterioration of health should so frequently take place in women when subjected to bodily and mental strain, in distinction from men, in whom, under the same circumstances, it is comparatively unusual ”

“ Our aim has been to point out that in controversies on the question the medical aspect of the case is frequently lost sight of, and it is forgotten that, in the competition for life, woman is the weaker vessel, and liable to be broken when too roughly handled. ”

“ The brains of different races vary greatly in size, but whether it be in the most highly civilized nations, or in the lowest savages, the encephalon of the female is always comparatively and relatively smaller than that of the male. ”

“ The conclusion, then, to be drawn from this section is that, in addition to the natural affectability of her character, this condition in woman is fostered and augmented by the artificial exigencies of civilized life; that, whereas idleness and want of occupation are the greatest sources of many diseases peculiar to the sex, the opposite extreme of mental strain is equally prejudicial. ”

“ In modern times great and laudable efforts are being made to effect an improvement in the higher education of women, and, as there are many who either from choice or circumstances can not occupy that position which it is the pride of most to possess, a movement has been made whereby they may earn an independent livelihood by the exercise of their mental faculties. ”

“ The Effects of Social Life and Education on Woman.—There can be little doubt that social manners, education, and an infinity of circumstances may affect the qualities woman derives from her material organization, and even efface the original character which nature has given her. In the simplest condition, the man labors with his hands and with his wits for mutual support and protection ”