Anxious Care: Examining the Modern State of Education and Women's Roles

Question

After thinking about the sweep of history and viewing the present world with anxious care, I fifind my spirits depressed by the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation. I have had to admit, sadly, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized. I have looked into various books on education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but all this has given me is a deep conviction that the neglected education of my fellow creatures is the main source of the misery I deplore, and that •women in particular are made weak and wretched by a number of co-operating causes, originating from one hasty conclusion .

The conduct and manners of women, in fact, show clearly that their minds are not in a healthy state; as with flflowers planted in soil that is too rich, strength and usefulness are sacrifificed to beauty; and the flflamboyant leaves, after giving pleasure to viewers, fade on the stalk, disregarded, long before it was the time for them to reach maturity. This barren blooming is caused partly by a false system of education, gathered from the books on the subject by men. These writers, regarding females as women rather than as human creatures, have been more concerned to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and this homage to women’s attractions has distorted their understanding to such an extent that almost all the civilized women of the present century are anxious only to inspire.

1. love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of getting respect for their abilities and virtues. In a book on female rights and manners, therefore, the works written specififically for their improvement mustn’t be overlooked; especially when the book says explicitly •that women’s minds are weakened by false refifinement.

2. That the books of instruction written by men of genius have been as likely to do harm as more frivolous productions; and that—when improvable reason is regarded as the dignity that raises men above the lower animal and puts a natural sceptre [see Glossary] in a feeble hand—those ‘instructive’ works regard woman (in true Moslem fashion) as beings of a subordinate kind and not as a part of the human species. But don’t think that because I am a woman I mean stir up violently the debated question about the equality and inferiority of the ·female· sex; but that topic does lie across my path, and if I sidle past it I’ll subject my main line ofvreasoning to misunderstanding. So I shall pause here in order to give a brief statement of my opinion about it. In the government of the physical world—·as distinct from the governments of the social or political world·—it is observable that the female is, so far as strength is concerned, inferior to the male.

This is the law of nature; and it doesn’t seem to be suspended or repealed in favour of woman. This physical superiority can’t be denied—and it is a noble privilege! But men, not content with this natural pre-eminence, try to sink us lower still, so as to make us merely alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration that men (under the inflfluence of their senses) pay them, don’t try to achieve a permanently important place in men’s feelings, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who fifind amusement in their society.