Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

WOMAN AND HER WISHES.

"EVERY book of knowledge which is known to Oosana or to Vreehaspatee, is by nature implanted in the understandings of women." This is the creed gallantly announced in that wise book of Oriental lore, the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma. Probably it is from an extreme reliance on this inward illumination that we have from the same quarter of the globe the valuable suggestion-- "Daughters should be made emulous of acquiring the virtues of their sex, but should be altogether forbidden to read and write." But we have changed all that, beneath our western star of empire. Those who once could not with propriety learn their letters, now have those letters conferred upon them as honorary appendages; and the maidens who once must not know A from B, may now acquire not only their A. B., but their A. M., their M. D., their F. R. S., and their A. A. S.; and are still grasping for more.

It must be confessed, however, that most of us look with distrust upon these feminine suffixes, as grammatical innovations, and are not yet prepared to go beyond the simpler combinations of the alphabet. But we all go thus far. It is a point conceded that girls shall be "educated," which is our convenient synonyme for going to school. The most conservative grant this. And the sole question now open between these and the most radical is not-- Shall a woman have schooling? --but, What shall she do with her schooling when she has it?

I do not mean to say that the facilities of tuition allowed to girls as yet equal those extended to boys; but they are evidently being equalized.

As regards our Massachusetts school system, there appears to be no difference, out of Boston, in the opportunities given to the sexes, while the use made of those opportunities by female pupils is in most towns greater, because they have more leisure than the non-collegiate portion of the boys. Everywhere but in Boston, there is the same High School course open for the daughters as for the sons of the people. At public examinations, I have seen contests of male and female intellect, on the bloodless field of the black-board, which it tried men's souls to watch. I have seen delicate girls, whose slight fingers could scarcely grasp the huge chalk bullet with which the field was won, meet and vanquish the most staggering propositions in Conic Sections, which would (crede experto) scatter a Senior Class at some colleges, as if the chalk bullet were a bombshell. Let no one henceforward deny that our plans of school tuition, such as they are, have been fairly extended to girls also.

Beyond this, however, the equality has hardly reached. The colleges of Massachusetts are all masculine. The treasures and associations of Cambridge, to which so many young men have owed the impulse and enlightenment of their whole lives, are inaccessible to a woman, save as the casual courtesy of librarian or professor may give her a passing glance into Gore Hall. And it is a remarkable fact, that simultaneously with the establishment of Antioch College in Ohio, which opens an equal academical provision for women, -- (under the Presidency of the father of our Massachusetts school system,) --we see in our own State the first instance of unequal educational legislation, in the proposed bill establishing male scholarships in colleges. The merits of the measure in other respects I do not disparage, but it is certainly liable to this objection. It is estimated that, even now, every graduate of Harvard has received a gratuity of about $1000, chiefly from private endowments, over and above his bills for tuition; and it is now proposed that the public shall vote, to a portion of these, $100 per annum in addition; thus still farther increasing the disproportion already created.