WOMEN AND WORK.*
WE confess that in moments of cynicism and depression, we have felt doubts whether any woman of the present generation could state a case on which she felt strongly, with calmness and dignity. Such doubts must be set at rest in the most prejudiced mind by this book of Mrs. Pfeiffer's. Every one who has read it, or has read her other writings, will admit that she feels strongly about the freedom of woman to command her own fate. But the most temperate of men could not have stated the case of the working woman, or the woman who wishes to work, more temperately; and we will venture to say that few men could have stated it more ably. Mrs Pfeiffer has the gift of a dignified and refined style, and knows how to express shades of meaning in rhythmical sentences and with telling effect. Nor does she attempt to maintain any exaggerated theory of the sphere which women can expect to occupy. She disposes in a few quiet words of the idea that men and women are or can ever be made the same in mind, any more than they are the same in body. Equality with men she does not claim for women. We have often main- tained in this journal that the only sort of equality which can be admitted to exist between them, is one which can never imply similarity, but only that their different qualities compensate each other. In a word, Mrs. Pfeiffer maintains that the work of men and women must necessarily be largely divergent; but, on the other hand, she maintains, and, as we believe, successfully main- tains, that a career is open to nearly every woman if she chooses to pursue it, and, in fact, is pressed upon many women whether they choose or not. That this is so, can hardly be denied by any one who will look facts in the face. To a woman without independent means (and they must always be the overwhelming majority), there are only three courses open ; the first is marriage, the second is work, and the third is degradation. The only question that remains is,—Shall women be compelled to work without preparation or fitness for it ? Shall they compete with men bound in the shackles of an education neglected and a mind run to waste ? Shall they regard life as a game of chance, and determine their fate on one cast of the die, marriage or no marriage ? Or shall they regard it as a game of skill, in which chance, indeed, must always have an influence, but which can be played successfully only by a mind trained and prepared for the trial ? Finally, shall they regard marriage as a career that needs no preparation, and imagine that, having first caught your hare, cookery comes by nature ? We do not doubt the sort of answers that sensible parents would give to these ques- tions, and we think that Mrs. Pfeiffer's book disposes of the idea, which is founded on panic only, that preparation for mental work, sensibly pursued, can damage a girl's happiness in life, or her physical health and, efficiency in the married state, if she adopts it.
This being the case, we are the more concerned at the folly which is still apparent in the mode of training girls. The old accomplishment schools are fast dying a natural death; but the new system has inherited many traditions of the old one, and is carried on in a way which, if persisted in, will completely falsify the hopes of the best women of our generation. We are as far as possible from pressing women to follow too closely the scheme of men's education. Nothing could be more disastrous and absurd from the point of view above stated. We regret, indeed, that in many respects it has been followed so closely. In starting girls' education afresh, there was an opportunity of improving on old traditions derived from men's education which, we fear, can never occur again. But though we do not advocate any imitation by women of men's education, we must protest that no boy or man was ever supposed to be capable of what is now forced upon some girls. The system of examinations run mad has been adopted wholesale from boys' education by the educators of girls. That is bad enough, and we are glad to see that Mrs. Pfeiffer and her correspondents make some protest against it. But no boy, however crammed, was ever deprived of exercise as girls are. No boy was ever allowed to sit up to work till 12 or 1 at night, as some girls are, to the present writer's own knowledge. Fortunately, boys would not stand it, and the educators of girls should open their eyes to the fact that they are taking what a boy would call "a mean advantage" of the docility and eagerness of some of their pupils, and of the traditions of an unhealthy scheme of life, to further the end of gaining prizes and distinctions, to the ruin of their pupils' health and the ultimate ruin of the cause they themselves have at heart.
• Wonwn and Work. By Emily Pfeiffer. London : Ttaliner and CO.
This is not the case in the best schools and colleges, doubtless ; but a generation which is reorganising the education of women has a responsibility cast upon it which makes protest needful. We believe that the sedentary life led by girls of the last genera- tion was always very unhealthy. Its traditions still surviving are responsible for ten times more cases of hysteria and break- down than higher education. But in the old days such a system was, at any rate, possible. Combined with real intellectual work, it is simply ridiculous. If women are to use their brains, even in less degree, as men do theirs, they must nourish them in some degree as men do. At one school, not long since a thing of the past, exercise was taken after dinner on damp days, walking two- and-two round the dining-room with the windows shut, on the ground that it was unfit to go out. Even now the real exercise, the free and trained use of young limbs as a part of education, is neglected to an unwarrantable degree. Our girls want more fresh air. The walk to school is still the only exercise in some institutions which take the highest honours. One celebrated school near London has no playground whatever, and the walk two-and-two three times a week is what serves there to supply circulation to the brain. No child under sixteen should work more than two hours at a stretch ; but an interval at the end of every two hours is of no use whatever, unless girls are encouraged (and why not, like boys, compelled ?) to take real exercise in gymnasium or playground, if it is only for a quarter of an hour. There is also an unfortunate tendency in mistresses to make compulsory on the pupil a number of subjects which the examiners, with the intention of giving everybody a fair chance, have made optional. Nothing, we are afraid, can alter this but the abolition of optional subjects. We have before us the regulations of the Cambridge Local Examinations for girls under sixteen, which we wish we could print in extenso. We can only say that we believe no boy under sixteen is put through such a mill as this. To show how the system works, we know of one school in which all religious subjects are carefully kept for Sunday, to save time in the week, with the consequence that there is more work done on that day than any other. Again, boys would not and could not stand it, and why should girls?
Nevertheless, with all its dangers, we hold that Mrs. Pfeiffer has proved that higher education has done little harm and much good to women, not only mentally but physically. It is all very well for gentlemen at the top of a well-paid profession to make hasty generalisations as to the tendency of the intel- lectual culture of women to deteriorate the race. But in doing so they are laying a weight upon women's lives which they themselves would not touch with one of their fingers. Surely they have not considered "to what poverty, poor feeding, mean employment unmercifully prolonged, and, worse than all, to what temptation they would consign them in hopeless thousands." Why is it that these men tell us nothing of the cases which abound in our great cities of women suffering not from over- education, but from over-work and under-pay, caused in very many cases by their being allowed no education at all, or in others, by their being artificially excluded from more lucrative employment? We are also heartily glad that Mrs. Pfeiffer makes another protest against that Philistine idea, supported lately by at least one person who ought to know better, that higher educa- tion is wasted unless it can be made to pay, and that for the role of wife and mother it is useless. Such persons seem to have grasped the highest purposes of education as little as they have grasped the notion that, for a woman as well as for a man, there is an individual life and character which are precious posses- sions, to be cultivated for themselves apart from any gain or any vile. To make money is not, after all, the be-all and end- all of human existence, and there is a duty in self-culture, where it is possible, which is not taken away by becoming somebody's wife or somebody's mother, any more than it is by becoming somebody's husband or somebody's father.
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