Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

We are apt to felicitate ourselves, however, on the great progress achieved in female education. Perhaps we are too indiscriminate in the rejoicing. There never was a time when there were not highly educated women, according to the standard of their age.

Isis and Minerva show the value set upon feminine intellect by the ancients. We forget the noble tribute of Plato to the genius of woman, in his Banquet. We forget the long line of learned and accomplished English women, from Lady Jane Grey to Elizabeth Barrett. We forget that wonderful people, the Spanish Arabs, among whom women were public lecturers and secretaries of kings, while Christian Europe was sunk in darkness. Let me aid in rescuing from oblivion the name of Ayesha, daughter of Ahmed ben Mohammed ben Kadim, of Cordova, who was reckoned the most learned woman of her age (the tenth century) in poetry, mathematics, medicine and the other sciences which then and there flourished. In the words of the Moorish historian, "She was beautiful like a rising sun, fine and slender like a young aloe bending its head to the Southern breezes; if she ran, she looked like an antelope disappointing the sportsmen by her rapid flight; and if occupied in study or meditation, her eyes resembled the soft and melting eyes of the gazelle, looking from the top of the rock upon the burning sands of the desert. She was a well of science, a mountain of discretion, an ocean of learning." This was the Arab definition of what enlightened and chivalrous Anglo-Saxons would call facetiously a "blue-stocking," or, more seriously, "an unsexed woman."

Following the Arab practice, there were female professors of the classics and of rhetoric at Salamanca and Alcala, under Ferdinand and Isabella. At the revival of letters in Italy, the intellectual influence of Lucrezia Borgia is classed by Roscoe with that of his hero, Leo X. Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica Gambara ranked as the equals and friends of Bembo and Michael Angelo; and Tiraboschi declared the Rimatrice, or female poets, of the 15th century, to be little inferior, either in number or merit, to the Rimatori, or male poets. A Pope of some eminence, Benedict XIV., bestowed on Maria Agnezi, a celebrated mathematician, the place of Apostolical Professor in the University of Bologna, in 1758. And Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) wrote, in 1763, to a lady who had sent him her translation of Locke, expressing his satisfaction that the succession of learned women was still maintained in Italy.

These I cite merely as specimens of the abundant facts to be had for the asking. If I had at hand the once renowned work of Peter Paul de Ribera, entitled, "The Immortal Triumphs and Heroic Enterprises of 845 Women," or if I had the privilege of consulting the library of Count Leopold Ferri, sold at Padua in 1847, consisting solely of the works of female authors, and amounting to 30,000 volumes, I would go more thoroughly into this branch of the subject.

From: "Woman and Her Wishes" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1853.

This etext has been edited by Jone Johnson Lewis from a pamphlet published around 1853. The titles of the sections are my own, not in the original, and are included to make it easier to follow Higginson's argument.