…women should be kept out of classes in midwifery, because
they could not stand up to the revolting scenes of childbirth. (Wilkes,
1984, p.240)
He explains that women were seen as able to handle the birth of their own child, but unable to cope with the delivery of someone else’s. Dr. Henry Maudsley encapsulates similar arguments in an article titled “Sex and Mind in Education” (1874), printed in ‘Fortnightly Review’, where he says,
It will have to be considered whether women can scorn delights,
and live laborious days of intellectual exercise and production,
without injury to their functions as the conceivers, mothers, and
nurses of children.
Maudsley was a professor at University College, London, and it is hard to come to terms with such narrow-mindedness from a man of his medical standing. His view, that women entering the professions would harm their natural propensity for child rearing, was not untypical of the time. *WORK HARM CHILD-REAR*
In the month after Maudsley’s letter Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (whose daughter Louisa would go on to write about attitudes towards the education of girls) wrote a reply in which her presumed natural anger and frustration were mindfully tamed. She argued that far from the mental stress caused by studying in higher education, the real health issue for women was the hostile atmosphere they had to study in. Garrett Anderson went on to scorn the lives women had to lead, saying
There is no tonic in the pharmacopoeia to be 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. (Garrett Anderson, May 1874, Fortnightly Review)
Peter Gay helpfully introduces more properly the notion of a difference of ideology between men and women, the way Victorian perceptions of the sexes differed as radically in mind as in body (1995, p.290). He describes the ideology of men as “active, vigorous, and self-assertive, the warrior on the battlefield of life”, while that of women is less animated; “woman is passive, domestic, the soothing, healing, keeper of the home” (1995, p.291) Eliza Lynn Linton says, “the raison d’être of a woman is maternity” (Linton, 1891, cited in Jalland, P. and Hooper, J., p.25).
Let us turn now to the actual campaigns for women’s higher education. One name rings out as exceptionally significant; Emily Davies, the social reformer Josephine Kamm (1965, p.178) refers to as “the incisive, sharp-tongued prophetess”. Indeed, Davies was outspoken, but she was only able to be because of her editorship of ‘The Victoria Magazine’. One of the campaigns fought by Davies and those seeking a reform in education, was the campaign to enable women to take examinations in order to gain entry to Oxbridge. In 1866 the University of London offered something of a compromise in special examinations for women, which ran for the next decade. Emily Davies and her contemporaries considered this little advance at all. Trevor May (1995) says, “its separateness left it with no status in the academic world” (p. Davies wrote of her disdain to R. H. Hutton of the ‘The Spectator’, and she received the reply; “…you are so eager to be reckoned equal, that you will not hear of difference, even tho’ difference involves as much superiority as inferiority” (Barbara Stephen (1927), Emily Davies and Girton College, p. 103; cited in Kamm, 1965, p.202). The implication of this is that the campaigners were not willing to accept any half-measures or middle course. Kamm (1965) goes on to point out that Miss Beale, another pioneer of women’s education, welcomed the special examination (footnote, p.202).
Disappointing though the special examination was, it was the best the campaigners could expect before 1878. Holcombe (1973, p.48) provides a succinct history of women’s higher education; in 1869 Emily Davies founded Girton College, Cambridge, which was the first women’s college of university stature. In the same year, the university set up examinations and certificates for women over the age of eighteen (Kamm (1965, p.201) suggests the minimum age was seventeen). But it was London’s university that first granted degrees to women, in 1878. Cambridge wouldn’t follow suit for another sixty-nine years. Pool (1998, p.99) unwittingly offers a possible reason why;
Oxford and Cambridge…turned out future prime ministers,
distinguished physicians, would-be barristers, and countless
numbers of aristocrats and country squires.
Of course, an institution which turned out anything but what were essentially domestic servants was no place for women.
Henry Sidgwick was a professor at Cambridge, and although he did want women to have higher education, he encouraged them to take the new subjects like philosophy and economics (Bicinus, 1985, p.125). In that respect they were achieving higher education, but were studying different subjects to men and were therefore not really vying for the same educational status. It was because these new subjects held less prestige that Emily Davies encouraged women to take the Greek examinations, the Tripos examination and mathematics and classics. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the campaign would have been less successful (or as successful but over a far great length of time) without the aid of people [men] in high places.
But with the proliferation of exams for women, the dismissiveness of men for women’s intellectual capacity only assumed a new visage. Women were previously too domestic and feeble-minded to manage in higher education, and since their central function in society was maternity, they were unfit to do anything else. But when women began to do as well as men in exams, male pride was dented. A volley of hitherto uncharted realms of unjustifiable denigration rained down. Harrison says the arguments that ensued suggested that women had a facility for reproducing facts they had stored away, not at all that they had the same grasp and understanding for the subject that men had. Even more desperate was the claim that their answers were less original than those from the men, owing no doubt from the regurgitated facts and figures, and that all the geniuses in human nature were male (1990, p.158). Indeed, Gay (1995) cites Hegel, who remarked that no woman made an epoch in world history and never produced anything great (p.292). This points to the belief of medical doctors and Eugenicists that women’s reproductive role dominated the female character, which pseudo-scientific arguments were “little more than rationalizations of male prejudice” (Harrison, 1990, p159). Against the will of men, women did start to become doctors.
An article in the British Medical Journal dated April 9, 1859 (, titled ‘Room for the Ladies!” discusses news of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s arrival in Great Britain. The article seems to salute her achievement, up to the point of her arrival on these shores. Then we see a change of tone. We learn that she is in this country to deliver lectures about the desirability of qualifying women in medicine, to ‘replace’ male doctors; not in existing hospitals but in purpose-built institutions for lady doctors, determined to take over the profession (for, as the article says, if one woman can get in, there will be no end to this infringement). The author asks, “is not the idea of a female practitioner, such as we have outlined, lamentably ridiculous?” A common idea was that “too much thinking…interferes with the punctual discharge of household duties” (The Englishwoman, November 1919, p.16, cited in Oakley, 1990, p.84). The British Medical Journal goes on to say,
Is it compatible with the attributes of woman, that she should
arm herself with a medical education and medical diplomas, and
put herself forward to practise medicine? Certainly not.
There is detectable gender bias in the article. Far worse is the ridiculous assertion that the mission of the lady doctors is “one of arrogance and self-glorification” – directed in particular at Florence Nightingale. If this edition of the ‘British Medical Journal” were issued in this day and age, it would be regarded as comical. But in its actual place in history, it is a fascinating primary document.
We have seen the indisputable success of the movement for women’s higher education. Harrison states that at the end of the nineteenth century there were as many as one million more women than men (1990, p.165), and that collective mutiny surely forced men to at least partially reform the society they had cultivated to their own needs and desires. There were strong sexual divisions in society at this time. Harrison (1990, p.157) says challenging them was to challenge the certainties of the age; certainties accepted as “natural” by many women as well as men. Women’s education was certainly no exception, being as it was laden with inequality; Ann Oakley (1990, p.84) points out that the history of education is generally divided two ways, general education and women’s education, and one might regard her reference to women’s education as particularly provocative if we contextualise it into its place in history. In a time when women didn’t have an education to speak of, they instead had a clearly defined gender role; housewife, mother, domestic servant. Gillian Scott defines the ideology as women belonging in the domestic or private sphere (1998, p.67). They were no more capable of functioning in the outside world than men were capable of bearing children (1998, p.73). Harrison talks about feminine human nature, referring to frailty, passivity, “submissiveness, silence and desexualised affection” (1990, p.158). And these so-called ‘facts’ were reinforced by scientific orthodoxy, with Darwinian ideology hypothesising that women were possessed of qualities that rendered them more like children than men; qualities such as dependence and timidity. Gay (1995) even talks about arguments to the tune of relating things back to Eve and the fall of Man – women being superior would ruin humanity (p.291).
Historians can follow the changes in opinion by reading such contemporary publications as Punch. A Punch article from 1852 talks about women doctors, and says, “a doctor must be made of sterner stuff than the material of her heart and brain” (‘Doctors in Pettiloons’, Punch 22, 1852: 208). An article ten years later (‘Physicians in Stays’) states that “There is no reason why a lady learned in medicine should be refused a doctor’s degree” (Punch 43 (1862): 10). A little later we read that “the constitution of the female mind is not adapted to the cultivation of medical science” (‘Physicians of the Fair Sex’, Punch 54 (1868): 81). We can see that in the sixteen years between Punch 22 and 54, opinions aren’t changing too quickly. The articles are patronising and derisive, remaining positive by not ruling women out of the profession, but still hinting that men have more to offer the medical arena.
We have seen some outrageous accounts of attitudes towards women in the nineteenth century; the man as “warrior on the battlefield of life” and the woman as the less exciting “keeper of the home” (Gay, 1995, p.291). Harrison cited Hegel, who said that no woman in history ever produced anything great (1995, p.292). But – Hegel was wrong. In the space of just a few years, women earned themselves a place in society, the rights of higher education, and a new respect from men for their intelligence, for which they owed credit only to themselves. This was truly something great, and it was achieved in the face of adversity no man had ever (or has ever) experienced. A crowning glory of it all was in 1887, when Agnata Ramsay or Girton College was placed first in a classics exam (Harrison, 1995, p.170). This was a flavour of the radical changes to follow. This is a particularly impressive result after the opposition of such respected publications as the British Medical Journal. We return to the issue dated April 9, 1859, which states that, “When woman undertakes, as a habit, the duty of man, then she goes beyond her province, and loses all title to our respect” ()
Going beyond her province or otherwise, there is no doubt about the achievements of the movement led, in part, by Emily Davies. Bédarida (1991, p.122) provides very uplifting statistics; in 1881 there were twenty-five women doctors, in itself hardly a small figure given the time scale. But in 1911 there were more than four hundred, which is a phenomenal development. Bédarida is less optimistic, saying, “Progress was slow…equity seemed a long way off” (1991, p.122).
Eric Evans beautifully describes the result of the struggles for Higher Education for women, and on no finer note could one close,
…for a very few by 1914, the gates of medical, legal and
academic professions creaked resentfully ajar” (Evans, 1997, p.273).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Bédarida, F. (1991) A Social History of England 1851-1990, Routledge, London.
Bicinus, M. (1985) Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920, Virago, London. (course handout)
Evans, E. (1997) Longman Advanced History – The Birth of Modern Britain 1780-1940, Longman, London.
Garrett Anderson, E. (1874) Sex and Mind in Education: A Reply, Fortnightly Review, May 1874.
Gay, P. (1995) The Cultivation of Hatred, Fontana Press, London.
Harrison, J. F. C. (1990) Late Victorian Britain 1875-1901, Fontana Press, London.
Kamm, J. (1965) Hope Deferred, Girl’s Education in English History, Methuen and Co LTD, London.
Linton, E. L. (1891) The Wild Women as Politicians, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 30, cited in Jalland, P. & Hooper, J. (eds) (undated) Reproduction as the Ultimate End of Woman: the Normal Division of Labour (1891), Women from Birth to Death – the Female Life Cycle in Britain 1830-1914, Humanities Press International, Inc.
Maudsley, H. (1874) Sex and Mind in Education, Fortnightly Review, April 1874.
May, T. (1995) An Economic and Social History of Britain 1760-1990, Longman, London.
Oakley, A. (1990) House Wife, Penguin books, London.
O’Brien, P. & Quinault, R. (eds) (1993) The Industrial Revolution and British Society, CUP, Cambridge.
Poole, D. (1998) What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Robinson Publishing LTD, London.
Scott, G. (1998) Feminism and the Politics of Working Women – The Women’s Co-operative Guild 1880s to the first World War, UCL Press LTD., London.
Simonton, D. (1998) A History of European Women’s Work, Routledge, London.
Taylor, S. (1977) The Effect of Marriage on Job Possibilities for Women, and the Ideology of the Home, Oral History Journal, volume 5, no. 2.
Wilkes, J. (1984) A Social and Economic History of Modern Britain, CUP, Cambridge.
INTERNET
Doctors in Pettiloons, Punch 22 (1852): 208
Physicians in Stays, Punch 43 (1862): 10
Physicians of the Fair Sex, Punch 54 (1868): 81
All Punch articles cited on:
