|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 12
Women, as an inferior class, were especially restrained from learning.
Knowledge would breed discontent in them; it would make them question
the binding power of the conventions and beliefs which held them in
their place; and it would show them how to achieve their freedom, and
might even encourage them to assume leadership. Here and there,
individual women gained the training necessary for leadership, as in the
cases of Sappho, Aspasia or Hypatia; but the great mass of women was
sternly repressed. Eve leads a long line of women martyrs who, across
the ages, have paid a great price for their desire to eat of the tree of
knowledge. For herself, she might have paid the price but, with subtle
understanding of women, the penalty was made to involve all whom they
loved; the terrors of that price have held the sex in restraint ever
since. Eurydice, Pandora, Eve, Lot's wife and Bluebeard's wife have in
turn served as awful warnings. After a time it came to be understood by
women that they should fix their eyes on their husbands and never look
forward or backward, lest they lose their Eden and drag those whom they
loved after them to destruction.
Of course, if women could not learn they could not teach; at least, they
could not teach where it was necessary to impart knowledge; and so their
share in formal education has been slight, until our own time. Young
children have been considered their special charge, and the care and
culture of infancy and young childhood have always rested in the hands
of mothers, grandmothers, aunts and female servants. Beyond these early
years, however, woman's part has been restricted to emphasizing, mainly
with girls, the dogmas and practices of caste, kitchen and church.
These were the conditions which prevailed through early Oriental and
Classical times. Christianity brought women some degree of intellectual
freedom, but it also imposed new forms of restraint. Its fundamental
teachings, based as they were on a belief in individual values, were
favorable to the extension of knowledge and to the opening of
opportunity for all. The Church, however, shaped under the
half-civilized conditions of the Middle Ages, quickly took knowledge
into her own keeping, forbade its extension, and increasingly held
before woman, as her highest ideal, the negative virtues of the
cloister.
The humanistic and theological changes which came with the awakening of
the European mind at the close of the Middle Ages, did much to set free
the accumulated treasures of knowledge. Protestantism, by exalting
individual judgment and insisting on the necessity of each one reading
and judging the sacred records for himself, made it possible for even
women to enter into the heritage of the ages. At least, the key to
learning, reading, was given into her hands. Later Protestant sects
broke down the limits of sacerdotalism, until women found that they
could look forward a little way without losing their Edens, or could
even glance backward without being turned into pillars of reproach.
The political revolutions of the eighteenth century also affirmed in
their point of view the same intellectual freedom for women as for men.
It has taken a long time to make the practical adjustments, but they are
now well under way. Since 1870, women have had very great freedom in
their approach to knowledge; and having knowledge, they have been
allowed to impart it to others.
In America, freedom for women to study has moved more rapidly than in
Europe. Even in the colonial period, there were emancipated women, as
we have seen; and in the last half of the eighteenth century several
schools were opened for girls, which were more than polite finishing
schools. Notable among these institutions were the seminary at
Bethlehem, Pa., opened in 1753 by the Moravians, and the school
established by the Society of Friends, in Providence, R.I., in 1784. But
nearly all girl's schools before 1800 were limited to terms of a few
months, where girls attended to learn needle-work, music and dancing,
and to cultivate their morals and manners.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, the leaders of public opinion
universally recognized that their new experiment in government would
succeed only if the voters were intelligent. This statement of belief
became the major premise on which all arguments for free and compulsory
education were based; and while we have practically accepted a much
wider justification for education, in connection with the care of
defectives, industrial training, and other recent movements, we have not
yet changed our formulated philosophy concerning the relation of the
state to its children. Free and compulsory education is still mainly
justified on the ground that it produced good citizens.
But the women had not full citizenship and hence the argument for
general education did not apply to them. Had they been enfranchised
after the Revolution, all educational opportunities would have been open
to them at once as a matter of course; and an immense amount of
struggle, futile effort, and unnecessary friction would have been saved.
But this larger view of woman's rights and powers would have required an
adjustment in deep-seated ideas and prejudices, concerning her proper
position, too great to be undertaken by men facing a new form of
government and the material problems of a new world.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|