MRS. GARRETT-ANDERSON, M.D., ON WOMEN'S EDUCATION.
WE think it may be a good sign for the cause of the higher edu- cation of women that much the best known of the women- physicians, Mrs. Garrett-Anderson, who replies to Dr. Maudsley in the May number of the Fortnightly Review, shows a sobriety of judgment, a distaste for all extravagance of assertion, and an anti- pathy to anything like vagueness of assumption, even on her own side of the question, with which assuredly Dr. Clarke, the American physician, to whose work we referred on April 4, is not to be credited, and of which hardly even Dr. Maudsley, who took up the subject in the April Fortnightly in its relation to the education of English girls, can honestly boast. indeed, those who read Mrs. Garrett-Anderson's reply but hastily will hardly discover beneath the practised and skilful manner of the debater,—Mrs. Anderson has shown notable talents in debate, and in nothing more than in the cautious moderation of view she combines with very effective controversial speeches, — how guarded, wisely guarded as we believe, is the opinion she gives. In fact, the only rash statement she makes is in the last sentence but one of her essay :—" To those who share Dr. Maudsley's fears we may say that though under any system there will be some failures, physiological and moral, neither of which will be confined to one sex, yet that experience shows that no system will live from which failure in either of these directions as a rule results." We submit that experience shows nothing of the kind ; unless "live "is to mean, at the very least, "last for a thousand years or upwards," which is a large meaning to give it. Surely the system of which we are all complaining has lived and is even now, unfortunately, still living, and under it, unquestionably, there has been a great moral failure to produce the kind and degree of intelligence in women which is desirable. Surely, again, the conventual education of girls in France has lived for centuries, and with the mental results of that system, we suppose, our educational reformers are hardly contented. Surely in the East, again, systems have lived for thousands of years which every one regards as moral failures. And why, if systems have lasted which failed in one way, may not a new system last much too long for the benefit of those who are sub- jected to it, which, nevertheless, may fail seriously in another way. No one holds more strongly than we do that women's higher educa- tion has been grossly neglected, and ought to be neglected no longer. But not the less we think it quite possible that, while avoiding one error which has shown a sufficient capacity for being lasting, we may run into another error that may be at least equally lasting. But while Mrs. Anderson does not admit this, we freely admit that it will not be owing to any advice of hers if we do fall into it. She does not appear to advocate opening the full competitive strain of the University-honours system to women at present, if at all ; she distinctly advocates fixing the age at which women should take their degrees, or whatever is to be equivalent to degrees, so late as to prevent any intellectual strain coming upon girls of less than eighteen years of age ; she ex- plicitly objects to the daily rivalry of young women with young men in the course of their school and college education itself, though apparently she wishes to subject them to the same class of final examinations ; lastly, as we understand her, she explicitly admits as a "possibility,"—and this may be taken, we imagine, in an advocate of women's higher education, as an inclination to concede,—that "the physiological demand made" on the strength of young men during the period of school and college education "is lighter than that made upon young women at the correspond- ing age," though she maintains that there are sets-off against this relatively greater strain on the constitution of girls to be found in the less strictly regulated life of young men, which exposes them so much more to the dangers of various kinds of intemperance. What Mrs. Anderson forgets to count on the other side is the far greater barrier raised up by the animal vigour of lads and young men against anything like over-pressure on the part of their teachers ; and the immense bold which athletic games and sports have gained on the tradi- tions of masculine education, so that they take an equal rank with their studies. This is a kind of guarantee against the undue encroachments of mental work such as it is impossible to invent for women ; and the same is true also of the self-will and con- atitutional pugnacity of bays. We heard it remarked only a meek ago by.a distinguished surgeon, that the guarantees against overwork for girls need to be so much the more careful, that girls cannot be trusted to resist for themselves any encroachments on the part of their masters, as boys can. The fifth or sixth form in a good public school will make it as nearly impossible for the authorities to steal a good slice from the boys' play-time, as it was for King John to steal their rights from the Barons. But girls answer only too easily to the appeal for an intellectual spirt, and are more liable in general to yield to the intellectual and moral initiative of those who guide their studies. The absence, then,•in the case of girls, of any great traditions of active sport which the whole nation really respects, and the want of that splendid inertia and self-will which young men's teachers cannot overcome in the direction of intellectual encroachment on their energies, both constitute very grave reasons why Mrs. Garrett- Anderson's concessions should be interpreted in their fullest and not in ,their narrowest sense by those who may draw up the plan of young women's higher education. On the physiological ground, we confess that Mrs. Anderson seems to us to be much more sober and trustworthy than Dr. Clarke, if not than Dr. Mandalay ;—of course, we speak not as experts, but only as critics who have compared the authorities on the subject, and have taken some pains to cross-examine the witnesses on both sides. As far as we have been able to ascertain, —and we have carefully questioned some of the most eminent medical authorities of our day, themselves by no means favourable to the claims for intellectual equality made on behalf of women,— there is no scientific warrant at all for Dr. Clarke's startling asser- tion that " in the four years from fourteen to eighteen she [woman] accomplishes an amount of physiological cell-change and growth which Nature does not require of a boy in less than twice that number of years." English medical men say that they know of no facts whatever by which EC) exact and remarkable an assertion could be justified, and we suspect that Mrs. Garrett-Anderson's account of the matter is much nearer the truth With regard to mental work, it is within the experience of many women that that which Dr. Maudsloy speaks of as an occasion of weak- ness, if not of temporary prostration, is either not felt to bo such, or is even recognised as an aid, the nervous and mental power being in many cases greater at those times than at any other. This is confirmed by what is observed when this function is prematurely checked, or comes naturally to an end. In either case its absence usually gives rise to a condition of nervous weakness unknown while the regularity of the function was maintained. It is surely unreasonable to assume that the same function in persons of good health can be a cause of weakness when present, and also when absent. If its performance made women weak and ill, its absence would be a gain, which it is not. Probably the true view of the matter is this. From various causes, the demand made upon the nutritive processes is less in women than in men, while these pro- cesses are not proportionately less active; nutrition is thus continually a little in excess of what is wanted by the individual, and there is a margin ready for the demand 'made in child-bearing. Till this demand arises it is no loss, but quite the reverse, to got rid of the surplus nutri- tive material, and getting rid of it involves, when the process is normal, no loss of vigour to tho woman. As to the exact amount of care needed at the time when this function is active and regular, individual women no doubt vary very much, but experience justifies a confident opinion that the cases in which it seriously interferes with active work of mind or body are exceedingly rare ; and that in the case of most women of good health, the natural recurrence of this function is not recognised as causing anything more than very temporary malaise, and frequently not even that."
Mrs. Anderson goes on to admit that in early womanhood there certainly should be special care not to overstrain the organisation in any way. But she adds that in good modern English girls' schools this care is much more likely to be provided than in ordinary English homes, where fathers especially are often very inconsiderate in the expectations they form of their daughters' equal capacity for physical exercise at all times and seasons. In Mrs. Anderson's opinion, physical over-straining is more dangerous even than mental effort in the case of young women whose organisa- tion is rapidly developing, and she believes that that steady distrac- tion of attention from the condition of the physical constitution which is implied in easy, regular study, is an indefinite advantage to that physical constitution, instead of a disadvantage. And this is un- questionably one of the strongest points of Mrs. Anderson's case. It would be very difficult, we imagine, to answer this :— " In estimating the possible consequences of extending the time spent in education, and oven those of increasing somewhat the pressure put upon girls under eighteen, it should be borne in mind that even if the risk of overwork, pure and simple, work unmixed with worry, is more serious than we are disposed to think it, it is not the only, nor oven the most pressing danger during the period of active physiological development. The newly developed functions of womanhood awaken instincts which are more apt at this ago to make themselves unduly prominent than to ho hidden or forgotten. Even were tho dangers of continuous mental work as great as Dr. Mandalay thinks they are, the dangers of a life adapted to develope only the specially and consciously feminine side of the girl's nature would be much greater. From the purely physiological point of view, it is difficult to believe that study much more serious than that usually pursued by young men would do a girl's health as much harm as a life directly calculated to over-stimu- late the emotional and sexual instincts, and to weaken the guiding and controlling forces which these instincts so imperatively need. The stimulus found in novel-reading, in the theatre and ball-room, the excitement which attends a premature entry into society, the competi- tion of vanity and frivolity, these involve far more real dangers to the health of young women than the competition for knowledge, or for scientific or literary honours, over has done, or is over likely to do. And even if, in the absence of real culture, dissipation be avoided, there is another danger still more difficult to escape, of which the evil physi- cal results are scarcely less grave, and this is dullness. It is not easy for those whoso lives are full to overflowing of the interests which accu- mulate as life matures, to realise how insupportably dull the life of a young woman just out of the schoolroom is apt to be nor the powerful influence for evil this dullness has upon her health and morals. There is no tonic in the pharmacopceia to ho compared with happiness, and happiness worth calling such is not known where the days drag along filled with make-believe occupations and dreary sham amusements."
On the.w.hole, we think the results of the controversy may be very fairly summed up as follows,—(l), that between the ages Of 14 and
18, young women are probably less capable of strain of any kind than young men, and certainly less protected from mental strain by the traditions of English life, and by the constitutional self-will of scholastic esprit de corps ; (2), that for this reason it is very desirable that the school and college system for women should be very care- fully guarded, and that the principle we have heard appealed to, "caveat puella," is not a wise or even a just one to apply to a generation of girls which has inherited no Bill of Rights from previous generations which the race of teachers would respect ; (3), that for these reasons, girls' school - lessons should be strictly limited to "six hours a day, including the time given to music and needlework ;" (4), that the stage ordinarily called that of college education should not begin till eighteen at least, and should not be compressed within less than four years, if it is to carry on the girl to the stage equivalent to that of a University degree ; (5), that the less the artificial excitements of competition, to the unhealthy stimulus of which, perhaps from the comparative dullness of their amusements, girls seem peculiarly open, are pressed to any intense point the better,—and that especially competition with young men, at all events during their ordinary college career, 1B very undesirable. Indeed we are inclined to think that the proper general inference from all these conclusions, at least if we are to keep on the cautious side, is this,—that while there is very good reason for opening both the matriculation and the final University exami- nations to girls, the minimum age at which they should be admitted to them should be a clear two years higher than the minimum age prescribed for boys, and that there should be no further direct competition between the sexes than is implied in requiring the same absolute standard of excellence for each sex, so that a girl's pass and a boy's pass shall mean the same thing. At present at all events, and until the new system has been far more carefully tried, we would not open any honours' examinations in which the candi- dates are arranged in the order of individual merit, to girls, and still leas would we admit them to contest their place in the same honours' list with young men. There have always been those who have maintained—we are inclined to think, very wisely—that the Oxford system of grouping even young men in classes without dis- tinguishing between the individual members of each class is the beat and wisest. And whether it be so or not for the male sex, we are pretty sure it is so for the female sex, in whom none of us probably wish to see the conditions of the "conflict of existence" developing the special qualities which fit for distinguished success in the general scramble of life. 'Whatever be the proper value of the much prized principle of competition, there can be no doubt that it leads to many very unlovely qualities, and that few people desire to see the women of England possessing themselves of those unlovely qualities, any more than they, in all probability, desire such qualities for themselves.
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