Victorian Men and Women's Fears of Educating Women
Summary:
Victorian fears of educating women were realized, they might not have all been proven or falsified but they were certainly legitimate fears believed by many. Whether they were fears instilled by men or women they were mostly fears of either the outcome of women's education for men and women or the lack of outcomes for women through education.
Victorian fears of educating women were addressed in Martha Vicinus' novel, Independent Women. However I think that one very important issue not discussed in by Vicinus was the joint and separate fears of men and women of educating women. I also think that these fears were not realized entirely in her book and during the Victorian period. In order to determine if their fears were realized we need to look at the individual fears and also apply whose fears they were. I will examine the three view points that I think had the greatest fears and realizations of educating women; men and women together, then men and women's separate fears.
After reading Vicinus' book and attending lectures I realized that many Victorian fears of educating women were simply absurd. However they were widely believed by both men and women. While this might have been the result of a lack of education on women's part I could only hope that these ideas were not as widely believed by men as historians say they were. I think that men often played off of women's fears and that women backed these ideas because they were afraid of the alternative. For example the idea that educating women would cause them too much mental excursion and could cause them to become sterile seems almost laughable today. However it was something that was believed by both sexes during the Victorian period. Along with mental strain causing sterilization in women it was also believed that too much learning would unsex a woman. This idea was widespread, fanned by Social Darwinists concerned about "the decline of the species" and by doctors convinced that time spent studying would drain maternal energy. So by educating a woman you would have been unsexing her, draining her of her maternal energy and sterilizing her. During this time being a mother was one of the very few privileges that a woman could have, so without that opportunity what else would she have to live for? With these ideas floating around it was a wonder that women were even allowed to think for themselves, because who knows what harm that could have caused them. While many women pursued careers it came with a price. Vicinus used the example of Constance Maynard to articulate this. Maynard opened her own college in 1882, which had been a dream of hers for a long time. However upon the opening of her school she wept because she knew that she no longer had the option of having a family. Maynard had wanted to open a women college all her life but she realized as soon as it was opened that she had condemned herself to a childless and marriage-less life. The idea that women couldn't have a family because they were educated and working was commonly believed by men and women. Men often used this reasoning to scare women into not pursuing an education. However it was not only men that discouraged women from higher education. Often time's women discouraged themselves and others from growing academically.
While women didn't intentionally discourage themselves or others from pursuing their education it often times was just a back lash of women's progress in education. Many of the fears that came from women in education were results of accepting the inequalities of education to excel their education. For example women were allowed to go to colleges but they were not allowed the same rights as the men that attended the same colleges. Women were given separate tests to test them then men were. Vicinus used Emily Davies' fears of accepting a lesser exam to represent what many women believed. Emily Davies was afraid that accepting an inferior and separate examination would cut women off from the opportunities available to men. Davies was not alone in this fear however it was better then the alternative, no exam at all. So women accepted it while still trying to equal their playing field. It wasn't until 1876 that women were allowed to take the same exams as men. While this was a great advancement for women's education it too came at a price. If women failed the Oxford or Cambridge honors examinations, they might confirm beliefs about women's intellectual inferiority. It was a double edged sword, women were thrilled to be able to take the same tests as men but at the same time they were concerned that if they didn't do as on them as men did that they would prove their inferiority. Even when women did overcome this barrier they were still treated as separate-but-equal. How can anyone be separate-but-equal? Isn't that just another way of saying unequal? For example when women started going to men's and women's colleges they were still compared to men. Males of colleges were usually under less pressure to prove themselves and could rely on past models and traditions. Most principals accepted the separate-but-equal model, working within the constraints imposed upon them by a male university and female respectability. Women had the pressure of going to school and the pressure of academically excelling over the men to prove that they belonged. Women had to be tough and persistent but they also had to ladylike and put on a persona that they still had the virtues of a Victorian woman. Women were held back by the idea of maintaining womanly qualities in education. There was the overlying idea that women should carry the virtues of the home into the wider world, to raise the moral tone of the workhouse, hospital, school, or other public institutions. Instead of having women at school to excel their education they were seen as being there to merely overshadow education with their domesticity and motherly manner. Perhaps the fears that were most realized by women's education were those of Victorian men.
Victorian men fought women's pursuit of higher education as hard as they could for as long as they could. Men either forbid their wives and daughters from furthering their education; or they simply discouraged it and reminded the women in their lives what could and would happen. Men told women that if they went to school and then got jobs that they would become undesirable to men and would lose the natural instincts of a mother and wife. Unmarried women who worked in these jobs (teaching, nursing, and social work) had lost the richly nurturing women's subculture of the past without gaining access to an aggressively married and heterosexual world. Men also feared that if women received higher educations that they would be in direct competition for work with them. While this should have been true it often times was not. The idea that without access to all levels of formal education that women could never enter the professions, train other women and girls. Personally I feel that Victorian men created these fears in women in hopes that it would scare them away from pursuing any education outside the home. If they were educated much more beyond that they would have discovered that they were just as smart and capable as men. Not only did men worry about their jobs but also that their manliness and their total dominance over women would be discovered to be a lie. While it was never clearly stated in Vicinus' book that women realized this through education I think it would have only been natural. This might not have been spoken outright by women but was something that was definitely in the back of their minds and the minds of men.
Victorian fears of educating women were realized, they might not have all been proven or falsified but they were certainly legitimate fears believed by many. Whether they were fears instilled by men or women they were mostly fears of either the outcome of women's education for men and women or the lack of outcomes for women through education. Despite the fears of women's education the end result was still the same. Without those fears women wouldn't have been pushed to achieve as much as they did and still do today. Without those fears I wouldn't even be writing this paper, I would probably be married with three kids and staying at home trying not to think so that I wouldn't affect my ability to reproduce. As cenacle as that may sound I truly believe that without the fears instilled into Victorian women about educating themselves that they would not have been as successful at breaking down barriers of inequalities for women. Regardless of of the source of the fears the outcome was the same, women are just as capable of higher education as men and in some cases even more capable.
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