No Sex in Education/Chapter 6

"Mr. Brooks wondered and felt that women were an inexhaustible subject of study, since even he, at his age, was not in a perfect state of scientific prediction about them."—George Eliot.

IF we wish to see the capabilities of a healthful woman who has been untrammeled by false social customs, let us look at the peasant-woman of Germany, whom even Dr. Clarke respects, and whom a recent traveler describes as "strong-handed and strong-minded." This traveler says:

"They are strong-handed and strong-minded, and can take care of themselves, and of their husbands also when necessary. They are evidently the 'lords of creation' outside of the cities, and need no one to take care of them. ​There is no labor too hard for them to undertake and perform a full day's work at."

Then there is the German girl whom the doctor himself describes as "yoked with a donkey and dragging a cart," in contrast to the American girl "yoked with a dictionary and laboring with the catamenia." The doctor utterly ignores the fact that this German girl is "yoked with a donkey and dragging a cart," and "laboring with the catamenia" besides, and that these "strong-minded and strong-handed" German and Swiss women are subject to womanly "periodicities" equally with American women. True, in their case there is no mental labor to waste brain tissue; but as I am a woman, and know, I think I may safely say that severe physical effort is quite as inimical to the perfect exercise of womanly functions as a student's life—not to put the case any stronger. At least, carrying hods, wielding the axe and hoe and dragging carts in fellowship with donkeys must be quite as severe upon the female constitution as walking a short distance each morning at the summons of the college ​bell and standing through prayers, or even recitations.

It seems to have escaped Dr. Clarke's observation that in all ages and in all nations, except the most civilized (and even these latter are not entirely exempt from the rule), all the most irksome and degrading labor has been imposed upon woman, without any thought of providing for her "periodicity;" nor has it seemed to impair in the least her sexual and maternal functions. The women of savage tribes pass through the trials incident to their sex with far greater impunity than their civilized sisters. Nowhere, in fact, has "periodicity" been recognized except in the brain of our doctor, because nowhere has unperverted nature intimated any such need. I do not recommend the putting of women to servile labor, but so long as I find them there, and see them in possession of brawny arms, iron muscles and robust health, suffering far less in maternity than most other women, I do not see why I should not take advantage of the argument afforded by the fact. Even the chivalrous doctor does not anywhere hint in the ​pages of his book that women can be in any way sexually injured by the wear and tear of housewifery, though our lunatic asylums show a frightful record of the evil effects of this kind of labor upon them. No doubt the death-rate would show an equally disproportionate list of farmers' wives and daughters. Does Dr. Clarke recommend husbands to be patient while their wives play the invalid for three or four days in the month, and leave dinners uncooked and children uncared for? I think a concerted action among women in this direction would bring men who are inclined to agree with the doctor to their senses sooner than anything else, and put an end to this theory of separate education founded on "periodicity." Yet the tried and worn mother needs this far more than the young girl. Not exactly "periodicity," perhaps, in her rest, but something akin to it which shall give recreation and relaxation to body and spirit.

Does Dr. Clarke himself insist upon his maid-servants respiting their womanhood for the allotted period and forego their attention to the ​comforts and necessities of himself and family, whatever the exigences of washing, ironing, baking, housecleaning or hospitality? He must do so in order to be consistent, for he declares that a fully developed and perfected womanhood, capable of its best work, "in order to do its best, must obey the law of periodicity."

The author's conscience evidently troubles him concerning the broadness and unqualifiedness of the statements upon which his book is founded, for in the conclusion of one of his chapters he says:

"It is not asserted here that improper methods of study and a disregard of the reproductive apparatus and its functions, during the educational life of girls, are the sole causes of female diseases; neither is it asserted that all the female graduates of our schools and colleges are pathological specimens. But it is asserted that the number of these graduates who have been permanently disabled to a greater or less degree, or fatally injured, by these causes, is such as to excite the gravest alarm and to demand the serious attention of the community."

If the doctor had omitted the word "female" in the extract quoted, there would be a show of ​reason in what he says. That our systems of education are not perfect we all know, whether we turn our attention to the public schools, the female seminaries, the academies or the colleges. There is certainly cause for serious attention, if not for "grave alarm."

The requirements of the sexes in common he sets down as follows:

"The three common to both—the three to which both are subjected and for which wise methods of education will provide in the case of both—are, 1st. A sufficient supply of appropriate nutriment. This of course includes good air and good water and sufficient warmth as much as bread and butter, oxygen and sunlight as much as meat. 2d. Mental and physical work and regimen so apportioned that repair shall exceed waste, and a margin be left for development. This includes out-of-door exercise and appropriate ways of dressing as much as the hours of study and the number and sort of studies. 3d. Sufficient sleep. This includes the best time for sleeping as well as the proper number of hours for sleep. It excludes the 'murdering of sleep' by late hours of study and the crowding of studies as much as by wine or tea or dissipation. All these guide and limit the education of the two sexes very much alike."

​When we admit this, and when we still further admit that in matters of fresh air, exercise and dress girls almost invariably labor under disadvantages which boys do not feel, I think. there has been sufficient admitted to account for all failures (supposing there to be any) of girls in keeping healthful as well as mental pace with boys. It is pernicious habits in these respects. which need looking after and correcting—these and the further and to my mind still more important fact that at the close of her school-days is removed a girl's mental stimulus, and she is left to collapse. Set these things right, and let girls find a "career" open to them, and education will take care of itself.

If there is really a radical mental difference in men and women founded upon sex, you cannot educate them alike, however much you try. If women cannot study unremittingly, why then they will not, and you cannot make them. But because they do, because they choose so to do, because they will do so in spite of you, should be accepted as evidence that they can, and, all other things being equal, can with impunity. ​Instead of our race dying out through these women, they are the hope of the country—the women with broad chests, large limbs and full veins, perfect muscular and digestive systems and harmonious sexual organs, who will keep pace with men either in a foot or an intellectual race, who know perfectly their own powers and are not afraid to tax them to their utmost, knowing as they do that action generates force. These are to be the mothers of the coming race, not the weak, puny girls who cannot stand on their feet during prayers, who go to bed and read Rhoda Broughton three days in every month, who undergo the dissipations of a city winter or a watering-place summer without a murmur, yet who sink down inertly at any mention of useful occupation. Let this race die out. I would not give it the advantages of a modified system of education to save it. The result will be truly "the survival of the fittest," though Dr. Clarke, owing probably to his peculiar ideas concerning womanhood, does not seem to think so.

Although Dr. Clarke points with approval ​to the systems of education for girls employed in Europe, I hope it may be long before we shall be ready to adopt such systems here. The European type of woman does not seem to be the type, whether we consider it intellectually or morally, which we, with our American ideas, would care to see transplanted to our hearths. He has reached almost as unfortunate a conclusion in this matter as in the cases of the Syrian girls who had no education whatever, and the Nova Scotia women who never went to public school. It sounds as though he wished to be understood: "If you will not be content to fulfill your perfect womanhood without any education whatever, as you undoubtedly could best do, then follow the example of your German cousins, and leave school at the age of fifteen." To be sure he says something about private masters, but that amounts to nothing, as it is wholly impracticable, except in the case of the very few, in this country.