"Nothing is more neglected than the education of daughters," said Fenelon, in the first sentence of his noted work on the subject. This cannot be said with truth now, when so much time, thought and money, are given to their instruction in the most opposite quarters. Whilst thinking upon this topic, it seems to me as if every one of its leading aspects had sent a representation of itself to help our judgment. This month, even the stranger in our city must have had his attention attracted by the costume and speech-making of the somewhat brave champions of the Woman's Rights' party, who have been holding their conventions; and, as if to show up one extreme by another, the debates of radicalism have run parallel with the rites of superstition; and, on his way to the hall that rings with feminine voices that claim masculine honors, he may as he passes many churches catch the strains of those vesper hymns to the Virgin Mother, by which Romanism strives to make this beautiful Mary confirm its daughters in the faith, by that ideal of womanhood so deified in its own loveliness without need of any borrowed grace of man's.
In his next morning's walk, he will see in the many processions of boarding-school girls promenading with no very elastic step, quite another aspect of woman's destiny, and one that may give him mingled feelings as he meditates upon the future of American mothers and their posterity. If the stranger comes from a foreign country, he will be interested less in these three aspects of the subject, than in a fourth of far less assuming air. He will be more impressed with the looks of the daughters of the people, with cheery step on their way to the public schools, than with the champions of reform, the pupils of fashion, or the devotees of the ancient ritual. Surely the education of girls is not neglected among us; yet, whether it is wisely attended to, is one of the most serious and pressing questions of our day,--a question in which every family is vitally concerned. There are few readers who are not ready to give some thought to the true idea and method of female education.
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We must look for the true idea reverently, as under religious guidance, not according to our own caprices or opinions. Nothing surely should awe our wilful conceits into docile attention, more than the effort to find the calling and the place of the being beyond all others dependent upon our care. Where but in the school of the Creator and Preserver himself, shall we learn what our daughters are called to be under his Providence? Where but therein shall we learn to decipher that fair and wonderful hieroglyph which God himself carved out in the person of Eve, and which remains to this day the most expressive cipher of heaven's grace and care.
The language of the Psalmist, so often quoted, is sufficient to define the idea of female education when freely interpreted. If our daughters, according to his prayer, should be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace, it is clear that their education is to have accomplishment and solidity such as to fit them for their place as the main supports of social life. They are to be polished stones. Does not this expression bring the sanction of Holy Writ against the too frequent notion that woman is made only to be the servant of man, and that her chief destiny is to be the drudging underling of his will; not like the polished stone of a palace wall, but the rough rock at the foundation,--useful, indeed, but buried under the dust. This idea exists not merely in savage countries, where woman is actually man's slave, and reared to be such from childhood, so that a thoughtful mother mourns when a daughter is born; but our own Christendom reads its own darkest chapter in the condition of woman, so often forced to drudge for scanty bread and raiment, perhaps abused by the very man upon whose bidding she waits, and who dements himself in drunkenness whilst she plies her thankless tasks. In many quarters where such abominations would be condemned, views radically the same are held, and an idea of woman's destiny prevails which takes her from her rightful place as the equal of man, which sinks her into his drudge, without time for intellectual and spiritual culture, with little of the leisure and conversation that beguile care of its sting, and toil of its weariness. Nay, how often is this destiny unconsciously entailed upon daughters by thoughtless, yet not consciously unkind, parents, who train up their girls without high aims and enlarged views, sending them into new homes so poorly endowed with commanding motives and practical knowledge, as to sink down into the dull monotony of domestic drudgery. Though the hands may not be overtasked, if the soul is weighed down to a servile routine, without sentiment or spirituality, woman is the slave of man,--the neglected rock beneath his dwelling, and not the polished stone of his home.
But this is not the chief danger now, but an opposite extreme equally degrading. The danger is not that the daughter shall lack polish, but that she will have but little else; and, instead of being a polished stone, shall be a polished vanity with no substance at all. Nothing can be more false and fatal than the notion that a daughter is to be educated for show, whilst the son is to be trained for usefulness. In her own way, the sister has quite as much strength of character as the brother has in his way, and she is cruelly treated when regarded only as a graceful toy. Sometimes this extreme meets the other, and she who in her girlhood was a dainty plaything, becomes in womanhood a plodding drudge, without a particle of worthy spirit or elevated thought to retain the love won by her beauty, or to replace the fervor lost with her youth. It is very wrong to make accomplishments the main thing in female education. Accomplishments are poor tricks, unless their polish is but the smoothness of substantial knowledge and judgment. A showy girl who can dance, sing, and prattle two or three foreign languages, without being able to speak and write sensibly in her own tongue, is one of the most lamentable of counterfeits, and may chance to blight the peace and dignity of more hearts than one by her shams. She is the product of that flashy system of training, which is doing more mischief in America than any where else, and making society a tawdry Vanity Fair instead of a companionship of hearts and homes. Not a few of our daughters seem taught to think that distinction in society is graduated by clothes and confectionery, and to measure their social honor or obscurity by their ability to follow the silly code of extravagance. If the folly were confined to those who have such affluence as craves prodigality in expense to reduce the overplus, it might be comparatively harmless, but it bears most severely upon families of limited means, where mothers and daughters are in a fever to ape the extravagance that they ought to pity. Why all this infatuated excess in dress? What do our daughters, in their tender years, need for their grace and dignity beyond the simplest costume that good taste dictates as the fit robing of girlish innocence? Even a pure French taste, which, in other respects favors such excess, teaches an almost Christian simplicity in this respect; and the spectacle, so common with us, of school girls bedizened with costly dresses of all colors, and loaded with jewels, would be ludicrous in a Parisian drawing-room, as a walking, jingling toy-shop attached to a human creature. It is a fine remark of Fenelon in rebuking the foolish passion for dress, that if daughters were educated in a purer classic taste, and would study the beautiful in the schools of painting and sculpture, they would shun many excesses in costume on account of their deformity, as well as their extravagance. What judgment the good archbishop would have passed upon our present mode of sweeping the dusty sidewalks with costly robes of silk and velvet, we have no means of judging, for this folly seems a recent invention. What a recent French moralist, who claims to walk in the path of Fenelon, says of France, is doubly true of America: "The great care," says L'Aimé Martin, "is to please the world, rather than to resist it: the wish is to shine, to reign:--vanity, that is the end to which tender mothers do not cease to point their daughters, and upon which the world that pushes them on sees them wrecked with indifference! Vanity in accomplishments! vanity in dress! vanity in learning! This show covers all: to seem, not to be, makes the sum and substance of education." These strong words must have cost the bland French moralist some pain; but does not their strength come from their truth? Do they not apply, with fearful truth, to American society? Does not the prevalent code of feminine ostentation bear with cruel weight upon our domestic life, making almost a social necessity of the merest conventional artificiality, and raising up a generation of listless imbeciles, who measure their social salvation by the magnitude of their exactions and the littleness of their achievements? in short, setting up a code of dignity, in which utter uselessness not seldom bears the highest honor. It would be, probably, a somewhat peculiar revelation, if the young women who go from boarding-schools into our gay society were to submit to a thorough catechizing as to what they expect to receive in the world, and what they expect to do in return. The statistics thus gathered might shed some light upon our social and political economy, and disclose a standard of empty extravagance, not very common among the titled nobility of the Old World. Away with the error upon which the whole mischief rests,--the error that our daughters are not rational creatures, and that the very strength of their character is not the best reason and rule of their accomplishment. Let them be polished stones, not tinsel, with a refinement and solidity worthy their endowments.
Associating thus the attribute of polish with that of solidity, in our idea of the education of daughters, we complete the definition by maintaining, that the two qualities should be so combined as best to fit the daughter for her providential position as the equal of man; not his rival, nor his slave, nor his toy. We claim for the daughter entire mental, moral, and religious equality with the son, yet find in the law alike of nature and revelation a distinction between their gifts and spheres. It would be merely beating the air to argue either point,--to try to prove that woman has all the faculties of human nature, and if, in her case, they are otherwise adjusted than with man, the difference is such as to forbid boasting on either side, and to favor mutual help instead of selfish rivalry. Nor need we couch our lance against the reform school that claims for woman a masculine position, and asks to have all offices open to her ambition or zeal. We are little in danger of such extravagances, and our daughters are more likely to slight the high moral influence now within their sphere, than to hanker after the notoriety of professional life or anniversary platforms. Our current modes of society are so lenient towards those who unsex themselves on the stage, or in the ball-room, that the moralist need trouble himself very little with the loquacious sisterhood, that seems determined to have the public ear upon most exciting questions. The most discouraging thing in their prospect is in the indifference of their own sex to their appeals. Men prefer to hear women talk in a less obtrusive manner; and women seem likely to follow their time-hallowed precedent, and to have men for their orators, leaders, physicians, and preachers. The freest system will not alter the divine order, and whatever worthy reforms may come, the end will be the reconsecration of woman in her true sphere--as the equal, not the rival, of man. Hers will still be full half the world, and the best half of it too. To be the polished corner-stone in the palace which the ruling heart makes royal, is honor and responsibility enough. To carry out this idea of the education of daughters by a just method, is a work second to none other to be done or meditated in this world.
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What have we to say of such a method? Nothing but simply to appeal to God's own will as shown in the daughter's faculties and in the spheres in which she is called to move. Let the method be such as best developes her powers and fits her for her position.
How great a thing it is to understand a soul, said Theresa of Spain, in view of the young hearts committed to her care after all her own trials of faith. How great a thing it is to understand a daughter's mind in which sensibility, that demands sympathy, has so much larger a place than logic, that needs only to be reasoned out. We believe that there is sex in mind, and that the essential type of womanhood appears equally in the example of the highest culture and genius, as in the average standard. Every page shows the woman's guiding pen, no matter whether a De Staël or a Godwin ranges into the bolder realms of thought, or an Edgeworth or Hemans walks among the daily affections and cares of life. A true culture must be based upon this fact, and the mind must be trained in accordance. Little may be gained by persisting in making a dry logician of a school girl, for abstract reasoning is rarely a woman's forte, but precisely on that account, the reason must be appealed to by the living truth, which will find a ready response from perceptions so quick and intuitive as often to see at a glance what the logical understanding will with difficulty argue out.
It is a great mistake to try to train a girl to be a man in cast of mind or way of life. We can never slight the hint of nature without bringing down her retribution, and temporary success but delays the evil day. What better instance of this error have we than in the memoirs of that gifted woman so well known to most of our readers, and probably a personal friend to not a few of them, Margaret Fuller Ossoli? Her mental career is now made public property by able and congenial biographers; and who of us does not see the unconscious cruelty of the stern discipline which sought to mould her mind after the masculine standard, and which so repressed the springs of feminine power, until Providence took the noble woman into its own school, and the wife and mother learned a wisdom and a peace that classic letters and metaphysical theories never taught her; nay, far beyond the stature of the "Muse," and the "Minerva," that were once her chosen types of female dignity? Honor to her name, alike for the mistakes and the excellencies illustrated by her eventful life?
Truly trained, the girl will have as much
reason as the boy; and hers will be more intuitive, whilst his may be more formal and severe in its
reasoning. Strength of character will be hers, not, perhaps, so much the stern sense of justice that most marks the masculine conscience, as the full and earnest affection that adds mercy to justice and love to duty. Force of will shall be hers, not perhaps the iron will of man, but what is quite as well, and in its place better, the heroic patience that conquers evil by enduring it. The result shall be a disciplined, sagacious intellect without masculine hardness, delicate sensibility without imbecile listlessness, active energy without moping drudgery, a combination of powers and graces that wins homage from every heart.
I would not adopt any definition of woman's powers less generous than the hint of nature and the will of God. Rather allow the largest scope to the development of every gift, and trust the feminine instinct to vindicate its own prerogative, whatever be the talent called into requisition. Marked cases show that the feminine mind may sometimes have the faculty for the severest mathematical reasoning, and England and America have been taught this fact by the philosophical achievements of women who are an honor alike to the delicacy and the intellect of their sex. Full well do I remember a visit to William Mitchell the Nantucket astronomer, years ago, when I saw that the father and the daughter had each a station and a set of instruments for taking simultaneous observations of the heavens. Since that day a gold medal from the king of Denmark has marked the daughter's triumph as the discoverer of a new comet. I am not ashamed to say, that at the time of the visit I had been several days puzzling over a difficult sum in algebra, and that, with a few touches of her pencil, the young lady made clear as day what I had but suspected, that the difficulty was in an error of the text-book. She evidently understood Arbogast's polynomial theorem better than I did.
But the great difficulty in this whole matter is not so much in a proper definition of characteristics to be cherished, as in the application of proper motives to bring out those characteristics. With boys the motive is near at hand, for the world speaks to them with its imperious voice and bids them prepare for some specific post of profit or ambition. Without such practical spur, our sons would be a languid generation, since self-culture merely for its own sake, as an amateur pursuit without any specific object, is a dull affair, that very feebly goes. Even those young men who have had a thorough collegiate education are very apt to forget their learning, and to lose their literary gift unless they carry out the work of education in actual affairs and keep their attainments by using them. What shall take the place of such motive in the education of our daughters? What aim shall we place before them in their early studies and keep before them in after years? Serious indeed is the question, and too frivolously answered by the hosts of bright girls who go from school into a career of folly and dissipation.
There can be but one answer, and that the most Christian word. It is simply this:--"Daughter, you are under God's rule, and all your gifts and acquisitions are sacred trusts. Consecrate them by a true service. Look upon your life as folly and nothingness, until you regard it as a solemn charge and resolve to use its opportunities faithfully. Choose in the first bloom of your hope the true, the Christian standard of character, and give religion the grace and power of your youthful enthusiasm. You have from Heaven itself a sacred commission, large as the sphere of your sex, specific as the compass and aim of your own individual talents and position." Take this ground, and it will appear that the daughter will find in her own religious susceptibility, and in the Divine grace, a motive to self-culture as efficient as the son finds in the spur of business and competition. Both indeed need the same religious discipline, but the one needs it more as an impelling, the other more as a restraining motive.
Let the motive spirit be just and fervent, it remains a question with daughters what shall be the chosen purpose of their after lives. Circumstances must in some measure influence their choice, for with a large portion, not merely taste, but the necessity of securing a livelihood, is to be consulted. But in either case the law of fitness is to be the guide; and all, without exception, make a sad mistake, who do not train themselves to some pursuit capable alike of adorning their affluence and of guarding them against need. It is very clear that there is some fatal error in the physical education of girls that needs correcting before they can be sure of any independence of position. "Very few girls that I know are well," said a lady some time ago in speaking of the large circle of scholars under her observation. As American boys are not wanting in robust health, there must be some radical error in the training of the other sex, that they are so fragile, and that they fade and languish so prematurely. It is obvious that the power of the free air, generous exercise, and wholesome hours and diet, is too little understood, whilst the confectioner's trash often takes the place of substantial food, and the delicate nerves that the fresh breezes of heaven, the cold water of the spring, are so ready to soothe and brace with genial health, are sometimes insanely dosed with brandy or opium at caprice to an extent that might be too much for the constitution of a Goliath of Gath. There is no reason to believe that our daughters are doomed by nature to be less healthy than our sons, or less fitted for a field of usefulness congenial with their gifts. Small indeed in comparison with the field opened to sons, is the sphere at present for the talents of daughters. But small as it may seem, it has not yet been fully occupied, and it will be sure to enlarge when its capacities are faithfully tested. Certainly the saddest limitation of feminine competence comes from overdoing some few branches of labor, and there are great departments of the useful and the beautiful arts little resorted to by their skill. For ourselves, we have no fear of harming the delicacy of our daughters by opening to them any honorable field of culture or industry to which their tastes and talents call them. It is a sacred duty to employ well every faculty given by the Creator, and full and fair opportunity to develop all their gifts should be afforded. If young women wish to be lawyers, preachers, physicians, or merchants, we would put no harsher obstacle before them than our honest opinion that such is not their providential career, whilst we would do every thing in our power to throw open to their pursuit those spheres of action most congenial with their nature. In the industrial arts who shall number the departments in which the quick perception and ready fingers and instinctive neatness of girls would fit them for success more than the other sex? Who shall limit the range of beautiful arts open to their taste and genius? What may they not do with the pen, voice, pencil and chisel? Who shall begin to unfold the future of woman as the Providential teacher of mankind? Who shall adequately measure her present power over the young? Honor to the teacher, whether with or without a mother's motive! Honor to the host of teachers who are now bearing to every border of our own land, the seeds of sound learning and social refinement. The school-mistress--not the crone whom Shenstone once painted--but the earnest, hopeful, high-minded daughter of a worthy home, is one of the ruling powers of our land, and at her approach barbarism yields and civilization reigns. I know well what I am talking about, and from years of pastoral experience I have learned to bless her work and worth.
But without dwelling more on this topic of employment, or expatiating upon the gifts of daughters for teaching in its various branches, and the demand for a higher order of teachers than are now easily found, may we not say that society among us is sadly crude and imperfect, from the inadequate culture of those especially called to be its light and joy? What art among those called beautiful or useful, can rank above the art of guiding the economy of the home, ruling its prosaic abilities so aptly, that they too shall wear an ideal expression, and the peace of God shall go with the goods his bounty hath provided? Who shall exaggerate the worth of the conversational power so congenial with the natural eloquence of women, and so apt for want of culture or high purpose to degenerate into the poorest gossip? Who shall over-estimate the power of her who, from a full and ready mind bears to every circle the charm of an apt, sparkling, and kindly utterance, making beauty a spiritual benediction where it exists, and where beauty is denied, making up for its absence by a grace that no loveliness of feature can rival? Blessed indeed this ministry, when deep and holy faith completes the consecration, and our daughters employ for the solace of the afflicted, or the light of the benighted, the gifts and attainments which make their name so blessed among friends and in homes.
Polished corner-stones of the temple, they are then builded upon Him who is the chief corner-stone, and parents with all their solicitude for beings so tenderly framed, and so exposed to the vicissitudes of the world, may leave them in perfect faith in guardianship of a heavenly goodness that cannot fail them. Great wrong we do them, unless, by the most decided precept and example, we lead them to the Heavenly Father, through the Gospel and the Church of Him, who is the Way and the Life. What miserable folly it is that looks upon feminine piety as a weakness, coming from an understanding too feeble to doubt, or a will too infirm to be self-relying! The daughter's strength and wisdom are in her faith and love. The mind is most illuminated when most opened to the light that God sheds upon the confiding, and there is many a house in which the wife and daughter's piety rises into a wisdom far beyond the husband and brother's hard worldly understanding. Bless God for the mission of Him whose deepest truth and inmost life were revealed to the sisters of Bethany, when hid from the Scribes and the Pharisees, and who found in their spiritual sympathy a solace which did not desert him, when his foremost disciple denied his name. It is the recipient soil, tender and watered by gentle dews, that nurtures the acorn into the oak by an alchemy that the flinty rock knows nothing of. Thus has it been with the mighty seed of the Word. What would have become of it, had there been no feminine faith and love to receive and nurture it into the tree of life? May that grace which has so worked upon the heart of woman, and raised her from bondage, and given her a new throne on earth, work among us, and redeem our daughters from the snares of the world.
Week of Religious Anniversaries. [The end]
Samuel Osgood's essay: Education Of Daughters