Woman in Science Part 6

It was not until 1865 that Matthew Va.s.sar, "recognizing in women the same intellectual const.i.tution as in man," founded the first woman's college in the United States. This was soon followed by similar inst.i.tutions in various parts of this country and Europe. In less than ten years thereafter Girton and Newnham colleges were founded at Cambridge, England, in order that women might be enabled to enter upon a regular university career.

In all the universities of England, Scotland and Ireland, except Oxford, Cambridge[86] and Trinity College, Dublin, women are now admitted to all departments, pa.s.s the same examinations as the men and receive the same academic degrees. Germany, whose inst.i.tutions for the higher education of men have so long been justly famous, was exceedingly slow to open its universities to women, and then only after the most stubborn opposition of those who still maintained that the studies of women should be limited to the three R's and their occupations confined to the four K's. But even in this conservative country the cause of woman has at length triumphed, and she now enjoys educational advantages that a few decades ago were deemed forever impossible.

And so it is in every civilized country. Woman's long struggle for complete intellectual freedom is almost ended, and certain victory is already in sight. In spite of the sarcasm and ridicule of satirists and comic poets, in spite of the antipathy of philosophers and the antagonism of legislators who persisted in treating women as inferior beings, they are finally in view of the goal toward which they have through so many long ages been bending their best efforts. Moreover, so effective and so concentrated has been their work during recent years that they have accomplished more toward securing complete intellectual enfranchis.e.m.e.nt than during the previous thirty centuries.

From the former home of the Vikings to the romantic land of the Cid, from the capital of Holy Russia to the fair metropolis of the Golden Gate, women are now welcomed to the very inst.i.tutions from which but a few years ago they were so systematically excluded. They attend the same courses as men, pa.s.s the same examinations and receive the same degrees and honors. Their s.e.x is no longer a bar to positions and employment that only a generation ago were considered proper only for the proud and imperious male. They have proved beyond cavil that genius knows not s.e.x, and that, given a fair opportunity, they are competent to achieve success in every department of human effort.

Thus, to speak only of Europe, there are to-day women professors in the universities of Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Greece and Russia, as there have been in Italy since the closing years of the Dark Ages.

They lecture on science, literature, law and medicine, and in a manner to extort the admiration of their erstwhile antagonists. In Germany and Hungary there are women chemists and architects, while it is a matter of record that the best construction work done on the trans-Siberian railroad was that in charge of a woman engineer.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the marvelous change which has been brought about during the last three-quarters of a century in the educational status of woman, I can do no better than transcribe a few pa.s.sages from a work by Sir Walter Besant describing the transformation of woman during the reign of Queen Victoria; for it applies to all civilized countries as well as to England.

"The young lady of 1837 has been to a fashionable school; she has learned accomplishments, deportment and dress. She is full of sentiment; there was an amazing amount of sentiment in the air about that time; she loves to talk and read about gallant knights, crusaders and troubadors; she gently touches the guitar; her sentiment, or her little affectation, has touched her with a graceful melancholy, a becoming stoop, a sweet pensiveness. She loves the aristocracy, even although her home is in that part of London called Bloomsbury, whither the belted earl cometh not, even though her papa goes into the City; she reads a deal of poetry, especially those poems which deal with the affections, of which there are many at this time. On Sunday she goes to church religiously and pensively, followed by a footman carrying her prayerbook and a long stick; she can play on the guitar and the piano a few easy pieces which she has learned. She knows a few words of French, which she produces at frequent intervals; as to history, geography, science, the condition of the people, her mind is an entire blank; she knows nothing of these things. Her conversation is commonplace, as her ideas are limited; she can not reason on any subject whatever because of her ignorance; or, as she herself would say, because she is a woman. In her presence, and indeed in the presence of ladies generally, men talk trivialities. There was indeed a general belief that women were creatures incapable of argument, or of reason, or of connected thought. It was no use arguing about the matter. The Lord had made them so. Women, said the philosophers, can not understand logic; they see things, if they do see them at all, by instinctive perception. This theory accounted for everything, for those cases when women undoubtedly did 'see things.'

Also it fully justified people in withholding from women any kind of education worthy the name. A quite needless expense, you understand."

Her amus.e.m.e.nts, we are told, were "those of an amateur--a few pieces on the guitar and the piano and some slight power of sketching or flower painting in water-colors." The literature she read "endeavored to mold woman on the theory of recognized intellectual inferiority to man. She was considered beneath him in intellect as in physical strength; she was exhorted to defer to man; to acknowledge his superiority; not to show herself anxious to combat his opinions....

"This system of artificial restraints certainly produced faithful wives, gentle mothers, loving sisters, able housewives. G.o.d forbid that we should say otherwise, but it is certain that the intellectual attainments of women were then what we should call contemptible, and the range of subjects of which they knew nothing was absurdly narrow and limited. I detect the woman of 1840 in the character of Mrs. Clive Newcome, and, indeed, in Mrs. George Osborne, and in other familiar characters of Thackeray."

Then Sir Walter, turning to the young Englishwoman of 1897, thus describes her:

"She is educated. Whatsoever things are taught to the young man are taught to the young woman; the keys of knowledge are given to her; she gathers of the famous tree; if she wants to explore the wickedness of the world she can do so, for it is all in the books. The secrets of nature are not closed to her; she can learn the structure of the body if she wishes. The secrets of science are all open to her if she cares to study them.

"At school, at college, she studies just as the young man studies, but harder and with greater concentration. She has proved her ability in the Honors Tripos of every branch; she has beaten the senior wrangler in mathematics; she has taken a 'first-cla.s.s' in cla.s.sics, in history, in science, in languages. She has proved, not that she is a man's equal in intellect, though she claims so much, because she has not yet advanced any branch of learning, of science, one single step, but she has proved her capacity to take her place beside the young men who are the flower of their generation--the young men who stand in the first cla.s.s of honors when they take their degree....

"Personal independence--that is the keynote of the situation. Mothers no longer attempt the old control over their daughters; they would find it impossible. The girls go off by themselves on their bicycles; they go about as they please; they neither compromise themselves nor get talked about; for the first time in man's history it is regarded as a right and proper thing to trust a girl as a boy insists upon being trusted. Out of this personal freedom will come, I dare say, a change in the old feelings of young man to maiden. He will not see in her a frail, tender plant which must be protected from cold winds; she can protect herself perfectly well. He will not see in her any longer a creature of sweet emotions and pure aspirations, coupled with a complete ignorance of the world, because she already knows all that she wants to know....

"Perhaps the greatest change is that woman now does thoroughly what before she only did as an amateur."[87]

Yes, the world is beginning at last to realize the truth of the proposition which the learned Maria Gaetana Agnesi so eloquently defended nearly two centuries ago--to wit, that nature has endowed the female mind with a capacity for all knowledge, and that, in depriving women of an opportunity of acquiring knowledge, men work against the best interests of the public weal.[88]

We are at the long last near that millennium which Emerson had in mind when, in 1822, he predicted "a time when higher inst.i.tutions for the education of young women would be as needful as colleges for young men"--that millennium for which women have hoped and striven ever since Sappho sang and Aspasia inspired the brightest, the n.o.blest minds of Greece.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Demosthenes _In Neaeram_, 122. [Greek: Tas men gar hetairas hedones henek' echomen, tas de pallakas tes kath' hemeran therapeias tou somatos, tas de gynaikas tou paidopoieisthai gnesios kai ton endon zylaka pisten echein].

As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment:

"More than a thousand women is one man Worthy to see the light of life."

[2] [Greek: Tes te gar, hyparchouses zuseos me cheirosi genesthai hymin megale e doxa' kai hes an ep' elachiston aretes peri e psogou en a.r.s.esi kleos e.] Thucidides, _History of the Peloponnesian War, II_, 45.

"Phidias," Plutarch tells us in his _Conjugal Precepts_, "made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot on the sh.e.l.l of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband or by her husband."

[3] Ariosto, referring to the undying fame of Sappho and Corinna, expresses himself in words as beautiful as they are true, as witness the following couplet:

Saffo e Corinna, perche furon dotte, Splendono ill.u.s.tri, e mai non veggon notte.

--ORLANDO FURIOSO, Canto XX, strophe I.

[4] The nine "Terrestrial Muses" were Sappho, Erinna, Myrus, Myrtis, Corinna, Telesilla, Praxilla, Nossis and Anyta.

The Greek poet Antipater embodies the names of the "Terrestrial Nine" in an epigram which is well rendered in the appended Latin translation:

Has divinis linguis Helicon nutrivit mulieres Hymnis, et Macedon Pierias scopulus, Prexillam, Myro, Anytae os, foeminam Homerum, Lesbidum Sappho ornamentum capillatarum.

Erinnam, Telesillam n.o.bilem, teque Corinna, Strenuum Palladis scutum quae cecinit.

Nossidem muliebri lingua, et dulsisonam Myrtin, Omnes immortalium operatrices librorum.

Novem quidem Musas magnum coelum, novem vero illas Terra genuit hominibus, immortalem laet.i.tiam.

[5] Cf. _Poetriarum octo, Erinnae, Myrus, Mytidis, Corinnae, Telesillae, Praxillae, Nossidis, Anytae fragmenta et elogia_, by J. C. Wolf Hamburg, 1734. See also the charming memoir "Sappho" by H. T. Wharton, London, 1898, and _Griechische Dicterinnen_, by J. C. Poestion, Vienna, 1876.

[6] See _Mulierum Graecarum quae oratione prosa usae sunt fragmenta et elogia Graece et Latine_, by J. C. Wolf, London, 1739, _Historia Mulierum Philosopharum_, scriptore aegidio Menagio, Lugduni, 1690, _Griechische Philosophinnen_, by J. C. Poestion, Norden, 1885, and _Le Donne alle Scuole dei Filosofi Greci_ in _Saggi e Note Critiche_, by A. Chiappelli, Bologna, 1895.

[7] _Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome and Among the Early Christians_, pp. 58 and 59, by James Donaldson, London, 1907.

[8] There were several hetaerae named Lais. One of them, apparently a native of Corinth, was celebrated throughout Greece as the most beautiful woman of her age.

[9] For information respecting the hetaerae the reader is referred to the _Letters_ of Alciphron, to Lucian's _Dialogues_ on courtesans, and more particularly to the _Deipnosophists_ of Athenaeus, Chap. XIII. See also _The Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers_, by Diogenes Laertius, Bohn Edition, London.

[10] Donaldson, op. cit., pp. 61 and 62.

Adolph Schmidt, one of the late biographers of Aspasia, accepts these statements as true and credits to Aspasia the making of both Pericles and Socrates. His views are also shared by other modern writers who have made a special study of the subject.

According to some writers an indirect allusion to Aspasia's intellectual superiority is found in the _Medea_ of Euripedes in the following verses of the women's chorus:

"In subtle questions I full many a time Have heretofore engaged, and this great point Debated, whether woman should extend Her search into abstruse and hidden truths.

But we too have a Muse, who with our s.e.x a.s.sociates to expound the mystic lore Of wisdom, though she dwell not with us all."

[11] It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit that Aspasia was ever an hetaera in the sense of being a courtesan. After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. According to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry foreign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her n.o.bility of character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great statesman's heart.

The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch's _Pericles_, Xenophon's _Memorabilia_ of Socrates and Plato's _Menexenus_. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject is _Aspasie de Milet_, by L. Becq de Fouquieres, Paris, 1872.

Cf. also _Aspasie et le Siecle de Pericles_, Paris, 1862; _Histoire des Deux Aspasies_, by Le Comte de Bievre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt's _Sur l'Age de Pericles_, 1877-79.

[12] Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony. It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul.

[13] _The Dialogues of Plato, Laws_, VII, 805, Jowett's translation, New York, 1892.

[14] Op. cit., _The Republic_, V, 451 et seq. and 466.

[15] It was the boast of the Emperor Augustus that all his clothes were woven by his wife, sister or daughter. Suetonius, in his _Lives of the Twelve Caesars_, informs us that this great master of the world _filiam et neptes ita inst.i.tuit ut etiam lanificio a.s.suefaceret_.

[16] This type of the old Roman schoolmaster is alluded to in the following well known verses of Martial:

"Quid tibi n.o.bisc.u.m est, ludi scelerate magister, Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?

Nondum cristati rupere silentia Galli Murmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas."