Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

I cannot deny the truth of this. I have too often been asked, almost with tears, by young and well-taught girls, to suggest to them some employment that should fill the demands of heart and intellect; something to absorb their time and thoughts. A pupil in a School of Design once told me that in her opinion the majority of the scholars sought the occupation, not as a means of support, nor to gratify an artistic taste, but solely for the sake of an interesting employment. And in seeing the imperfect attempts to invent such employments, and the results, good in their way, but so wholly inadequate, I have almost sighed, with these discontented ones, over the one-sided benevolence of society; and felt that to give "education," without giving an object, was but to strengthen the wings of a caged bird.

Nothing can hide from me the conviction that an immortal soul needs for its sustenance something more than visiting, and gardening, and novel-reading, and a crochet-needle, and the occasional manufacture of sponge-cake. Yet what else constitutes the recognized material for the life of most "well-educated"young ladies from eighteen to twenty-five -- that "life so blameless and aimless." Some, I admit, are married; some teach school, --the one miserably-underpaid occupation left open for the graduates of our high schools -- the Procrustes-bed of all young female intellect. A few remarkable characters will, of course, mark out an independent path for themselves, in spite of discouragement. A few find ready for them, in the charge of younger brothers and sisters, a noble duty. A few have so strong a natural propensity for study, that they pursue it by themselves -- though without any ulterior aim. Some enter mechanical occupations, which are at least useful, as employing their hands and energies, if not their intellects.

But for most of those of average energy, "to this complexion must they come at last." "It is a sad thing for me," said an accomplished female teacher, in my hearing, "to watch my fine girls after they leave school, and see the expression of intellect gradually fade out of their faces, for want of an object to employ it."

I do not claim that all young women share these dissatisfactions. They are confined to the thoughtful and the noble. The empty and the indolent find such a life satisfactory enough. "Why do you dislike to leave school?" said one young lady once, within my knowledge, to another. "Because I shall then have nothing to do," she answered. Nothing to do!"was the astonished reply; "why, there is plenty to do; cannot you stay at home and make pretty little things to wear, as other girls do?" "But I don't care for that," pleaded the spirited and thoughtful maiden; "I don't think I was created and educated merely to make pretty little things to wear." But the protest was of no avail.

With the exclusion of women from intellectual employments, comes an accompanying exclusion from other of the more lucrative occupations, upon which I will not now dwell, "not because there is so little to be said upon it, but because there is so much." This prohibition extends even to the employments peculiarly fitted for woman, as the retail dry goods trade in our cities, which employs tens of thousands. The new Schools of Design open an admirable field for them, but one in which they already find opposition, on the ground that the introduction of female labor will create a reduction of wages in the profession;an explanation yet more discreditable to the community than the fact which it explains. In Lowell, the average wages of women are estimated at $2.00 per week, (deducting board); those of men at $4.80, for toils not longer, and often no more difficult. In some of our towns, female grammar-school teachers are paid $175 per annum,--and male teachers $500, for schools of the same grade, and of smaller size. The haunts of sin and shame in our great cities can tell some of the results of these criminal irregularities.