Martha Ventura - LITR 420 EMU

 

 

Key:

 

yellow = web definition

green = further web explanation

 

 Text

 

"Many mothers among the upper-middle classes are in these days anxiously puzzling over the problem how best to educate their daughters.  The old order of home training by private-governess education is passing away, and many harassed parents are now asking whether the new schemes for the higher education of women are entirely satisfactory.  The alert mother and the practical fatherof daughters want to know, What future does a university education open out for women?  and how much or how little do girls benefit by devoting some of the brightest years of their young lives to acquiring a higher education than was attained by their mothers and grandmothers?  Some valuable information about the after-careers of university-educated women may be obtained by studying the various reports recently published by the principal women's colleges of Great Britain and Ireland. 

 

Any parent entering upon the examination of these reports should endeavor to do so with an unbiassed mind, and without prejudice for or against the so-called 'higher education of women.'  Pre-conceived ideas should as far as possible be laid aside, and the inquirer try to gain some practical knowledge as to what a university training leads to for women, and how far it is worth while for girls to spend some years and some money in acquiring a solid knowledge of the higher branches of learning, such as mathematics, classics, moral science, &c., and whether this course of training does really, ultimately, make women's lives freer and happier, and if the honours they gain at college enable them to earn their own living by newer and more interesting means than by the old-fashion methods of teaching, companionship, and needle-work. 

 

Mrs. Sidgwick's report of Newnham College gives us the following interesting particulars: The total number of students who have left the college from October 1871 to June 1893 was 720.  Leaving out sixteen who have died, and thirty-seven foreigners who have gone back to their own countries, we find that 374 are at the present time engaged in teaching as a profession.  Forty-seven have married, including nine or ten of the lecturers and teachers.  Of the rest 230 are living at home, of whome 108 are married, five are engaged in medical work, two as missionaries, one as a market-gardener,one as a book-binder, two or three are working at charity organisation, and the remainder are for the most part engaged in secretarial work.  Of the 374 who are engaged in teaching as a profession the following table gives particulars:

 

 

At Girton the number of students who have been in residence since the foundation of the college up to the time when the Report as published in June 1893 was 467.  Of these seventy-five had not yet completed their course of traiing; but of the 335 who obtained degree certificates 123 were engaged in traning, forty-five were married, two were missionaries, six were in Government employment, four were engaged in medical work, and six were dead.

 

Judging from the reports issued by these two Cambridge colleges, the larger proportion of university-educated women do not seem to make marriage their career in life.  Of the ex-students of Newham only 120 out of 720 have married, and at Girton forty-six out of 335.

 

From the report of Girton College we may deduce the following interesting, and, if I may venture to say so, amusing particulars. 

 

Of the seventy-nine students who have obtained the certificate for the mathematical tripos, ten have married; of the forty-seven who passed the natural science tripos, four have married.  Of the twenty-one who passed the moral science tripos, three have married.  But of the forty lady students who have taken the ordinary pass degree, fifteen have married, a much larger proportion, as will be seen, than among the students who have obtained the honours degree certificate. 

 

From the Newnham College report I have not been able to ascertain the percentages of marriages among the ex-students who have taken merely the ordinary degree; but an examination of the tripos lists gives very much the same reslt as those of Girton, namely, out of of eight-give who passed the mathematical tripos, five married; of the sixty-five in the classical tripos, eight married; of the thrity-three in the moral science tripos, six married; of the seventy-four in the historical tripos, nine married; and of the thirty-eight in the medieval and modern language tripos, one married.  The only student who passed the law tripos has not yet married.

 

It appears, therefore, that about one in ten of those who take honours at Girton marries, as against one in nine who take honours at Newnham; while about two in every five marry of those who take an ordinary degree at Griton.  Leaving out Theology and Law, as to which the data are insufficient, the order of precedence (matrimonially) of the various studies is as follows: At Girton: Elementary Studies, Natural Science, Moral Science, History, Natural Science, Classics, Mathematics, and again last Medieval and Modern Languages.

 

I am well aware that a large number of readers will consider these details-viz. the percentages of marriages, &c., puerile and foolish; nevertheless many men, and, I venture to think, some mothers, will consider them suggestive. 

 

Turning to the reports furnished for our information by the women's colleges at Oxford, we find that of the 173 students who left Somerville College between the years 1892 seventy-three are engaged in teaching, twenty-nine are [??] (original text deteriorated here)

 

The report printed by the principal of Lady Margaret's Hall gives fewer statistics, but one gathers that the larger proportion of the ex-students now at work are engaged in teaching.  The number of students in residence at Lady Margarete's Hall averages thirty-eight.  Holloway College has only been at work for seven years, and there has not been time for much development in the after-careers of students, but of the 197 who have left seven are married, about sixty-nine are teaching or preparing to teach, two are nurses, two are studying at the School of Medicine for Women, and about forty-seven are residing at home.

 

From Victoria College, Belfast, Mrs. Byers sends the following particulars: 

 

'In addition to over 1,500 students of Victoria College certificated by the Queen's University, Ireland; Trinity College, Dublin; Cambridge, Edinburgh, and London Universities; theCollege of Preceptors, London, and the Intermediate Education Board, Ireland, there are fifty-one graduates on the Royal University, Ireland.  These include graduates in arts and  medicine.  Eight former Victorians are at present medical undergraduates, with a view to becoming medical missionaries. 

 

'Many have become wives of missionaries, and sixteen unmarried ladies, former Victorians, are, at present engaged in zenana medical and educational work among the women of Syria, India, and China.  Twenty-one former students are now principals of flourishing middle-class girls' schools in Ireland, in most cases of schools founded by themselves, while a large number who were engaged as private or other teachers have since married.

 

'Twelve are at present head-mistresses or assistant-mistresses in high schools and other middle-class schools in England and the Colonies. 

 

'Many of our students have successfully taken up sick-nursing as a vocation.  Some of these hold important posts as the heads of hospitals and other similar institutions at home and in the Colonies. 

 

'The entire certificated staff of ladies at Victoria College, with the exception of four, has been educated at Victoria College. 

 

'A kind of university settlement from Victoria College instructs and trains for domestic service destitute girls at Victoria Homes, Belfast.  These are detached homes, in which there is now room and the appliances for training eighty-eight girls in every kind of household work.'

 

Alexandra College, Dublin, is a large day-school where girls come up to study painting, music, and various other subjects that are not taught at Newham and Girton, forty-one are engaged in teaching, six have married, one is a medical doctor, one is assistant to Sir C. Cameron, City Analyst, and the remaining eleven are apparently living at home. 

 

The total number of ex-students from Girton, Newham, Somerville Hall, Holloway College, and Alexandra College whose after-careers we have mentioned above amounts to 1,486; of these 680 are engaged in teaching, 208 have married, eleven are doctors or preparing to be doctors, and medical missionaries, two are nurses, eight or nine are in Government employment, one is a bookbinder, one is a market-gardener, and one is a lawyer.  Besides these regular employments, which are enumerated and duly scheduled in these reports, there must be, without doubt, a great deal of unpaid work done by those ex-students who live at home which is difficult, indeed impossible, to put into any list.  For instance, some university-educated women are engaged in literary work, while others employ themselves with various useful works connected with philanthropic and charitable undertakings around their homes, and are doubtless doing their business all the better and more practically for their university training; but these diverse occupations are hardly of a kind to be called a definite career. 

 

The ladies' settlements in Southwark and Bethnal Green furnish an important career for highly educated ladies.  In 1887 a women's university settlement was established at 44 Nelson Square, South London, and in 1889 a guild of ladies from Cheltenham College followed their example, and took a house in the Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green.  In Mansfield the Congregationalist College also started a settlement; and the influence of the Church settlement of the Oxford House, Bethnal Green, established a ladies' branch in St. Margaret's House, Victoria Square, E.  American ladies have promptly taken up the same type of chartiable work in the U.S.A., for education on university lines has taught many women the need for organisation and co-operation in all their charitable undertakings, for few professions and complicated on of philanthropy.

 

In former days marriage, teaching, and philanthropy were the principal professions that were open to women.  The careful study of the reports published by the women's universities, will, I think, incline parents to question if a university training has yet succeeded in opening the doors of any other profession.  A few exceptionally gifted women have entered the medical profession, and a very few (as we can gather from the statistics published) have become workers in other fields, such as book-binding, market-gardening, &c.  But with these very few exceptions nearly all ex-students are engaged in teaching or are preparing to teach, and therefore it would seem that unless a girl has some special capabilities of mind and brain which, combined with a power of organisation, will place her at the head of the teaching profession after her training at the university is completed, she cannot, at present, hope that the years and the money devoted to her higher education will do very much for her in enabling her to enter upon a money-earning career in the future.

 

The percentage of marriages among less highly educated women is greater than among university-trained maidens.

 

It is, of course, in these days of progress an open question, that must be decided according to each woman's individuality, whether marriage is to be considered an achievement or a 'come down;' but mothers will be prudent if they realise that, on the whole, the statistics, so far as we can judge at present, do not lead one to the conclusion that marriage is either desired or attained by the majority of very highly educated women.  These are some notable exceptions, which wil readily suggest themselves, and doubtless many of the other students whose names are upon the list of those who are still 'in maiden meditation fancy free' will marry eventually.  But it must be remembered that education has, in most cases, this ver valuable result: it does make women more fastidious in their choice, and as university training, at any rate, enables many of them to earn their living more or less by teaching, it obviates the necessity of their having to rely on matrimony as a means of support, and therefore prevents many early, uncongenial, and improvident marriages.

 

But whereas 680 of the ex-students are engaged in teaching only 208 can be traced as having yet married; therefore, according to the law of averages, if a mother  sends her daughter to one of the universities she is more likely to become a teacher than a wife.  Morever, it is a question if the kind of training that girls receive at these universities does not, on the whole, make them inclined to look upon the prospect of married life as a rather dull and unintellectual career.  All women would be glad to marry their ideal hero; but heroes are scarce, and the average man who proposes marriage to the average girl can at best offer her no wider prospect than a round of careful hosekeeping, motherhood, and thrift; and it must be doubted if, taking all things into consideration, a university training is adapted for developing these homely and prosaic virtues.  But though the development of the higher education of women has not opened any new profession for women, it has most undoubtedly succeeded in enlarging the sphere of the old ones, and teaching, secretarial, and charitable work must benefit greatly by being undertaken by well-educated, instead of superficially accomplished, women; and there is food for reflection in these wise words of the Principal of Somerville College, Oxford:

 

'The wider interests, the larger outlook on life which students gain in the college life, and trained intelligence which they can bring to bear on their work, whatever it is, are of unspeakable value in any sphere, small or large.' "

 

Alice M. Gordon, The After-Careers of University-Educated Women, Nineteenth Century, (1985): 955

 

 

 

 Commentary on Text: by Martha Ventura

 

Alice M. Gordon's article, The After-Careers of University-Educated Women, provides detailed statistical evidence that women, as well as the majority of society at the close of the nineteenth century, struggled with the importance of receiving a higher education.  Though there were many opportunities continually opening up to women, there was a social struggle if women took advantage of those opportunities, and a social struggle if a women did not.  As society's perceptions of women's roles evolved, Gordon's article acurately portrays what those social stuggles were. 

 

An education was highly encouraged and a higher college or university education was even more greatly esteemed.  For women, though, the question and struggle was "Is it worth the time and effort?"  This question was posed because, as Gordon's facts state, many of the women receiving a higher education generally chose to marry and have a home and family, which almost always took precident over finding or continuing a career after a woman's education was finished.  Unlike the times of today where women are more likely to aspire for both an education, family, and career, as well as follow through with having all three carried out as priorities in their lives, education and a career versus home and family was the choice of the time.  As the article states, many women chose to attend schools which prepared them for keeping house, entertaining, and encouraging studies of the fine arts.  Next came the majority of educated women receiving an "ordinary" degree who almost always went into a form of teaching, charity work, or secretarial career.  Then there were the women who were of "extrordinary brains" and received "honourary" degrees in medicine, law, government, and the like.  There was a clear ladder of acceptable class and standards for these women pursuing an education.  Though society prepared them for this choice, women were given only three options: focus your life on needle-work and raising children, receive a degree so you can teach but then be prepared to give it up in order to fulfill your duty of being a wife and mother, or stay single for the rest of your life and devote yourself to your career.

 

It seems that Gordon's thinking is pointing to the future.  She states the truth of the times, compares it to the past and acknowledges that education is more important and accepted as well as provides stability for women as single people, all while genuinely hoping for the future acceptance of a change in the expectations of society's views on what a woman's life should be and what it should entail. 

 

 

Commentary by K.S.

March 16, 2008

 

     The article "The After-Careers of University-Educated Women" seems to embody the tension that young women faced during the latter half of the nineteenth century. I certainly would not have wanted to make the decision between being a mother-wife or a career woman.  On one hand, women who went to college for a degree or certification could be hailed for taking a step forward and for advancing women's rights and their role in the public sphere. However, it appears that colleges and society were unprepared for these women who exhibited the potential to become great leaders and contributors. Colleges seemed content to have women study the noble, but traditional fields of teaching, nursing, etc. After women graduated and re-entered society, their education did not seem to be an asset unless their career was in one of the traditional fields. Furthermore, the educated woman became an isolated woman because most, as depicted in the studies, did not marry. While this single status of a career woman could be seen as an assertion of independence, there were no doubt many drawbacks. For instance, the woman would not have children and be a mother. How could she? Her individuality and independence would certainly threaten the authority of her husband within the home and in the public eye. Thus, this childless status certainly would limit a woman's role, acceptance, and involvement in society. For example, the single woman probably could not participate in organizations headed by married women. Unfortunately, for a woman, it was still more important to be a mother than an independent laborer. A college education would allow a woman to shine among her peers at school, but few, including herself, would ever know her true potential. This article is interesting to consider with Jane Eyre. While Jane Eyre did not go to a university, she certainly faced this dilemma. As a teacher at Lowood she was devoted, but she was isolated. As a governess and church-school teacher, she was further isolated though praised for her instruction and her pupils' progress. Thus, she was presented with two alternatives: First, she could have married St. John, but she would have to give up her work to become a missionary's wife. Second, she could have become a wife and mother with Rochester. Jane marries Rochester and becomes a mother. While she appears to give up her career, she does not lose her independence; in fact, she gains authority over Rochester. Plus, Rochester was educated and well-traveled, so her life would not be dull or one that lacks knowledge and intellectual conversation. Furthermore, he respected her and knew she was talented. Therefore, I would hope that after considering the statistics, women would have chosen to gain a college education. Even it means finding a balance or equality within a marriage like Jane, that would have been a step in the right direction, one that would open more career opportunities to women and make the choice between being a wife-mother and a career woman less censured by the public and less divided from the other role/identity.

 

Comment by Leah S 4-3-08

 

 

“The alert mother and the practical fatherof daughters want to know, What future does a university education open out for women?  and how much or how little do girls benefit by devoting some of the brightest years of their young lives to acquiring a higher education than was attained by their mothers and grandmothers?” 

 

 

 

“Any parent entering upon the examination of these reports should endeavor to do so with an unbiassed mind, and without prejudice for or against the so-called 'higher education of women.'  Pre-conceived ideas should as far as possible be laid aside, and the inquirer try to gain some practical knowledge as to what a university training leads to for women…”

 

 

 

These two passages that stand out immediately from this article are very contradictory.  First the author puts in the minds of the readers the idea that women who seek a higher education will do so frivolously as it will lead to no prosperous career, then it proceeds to invite readers to continue on with an open mind without any “pre-conceived ideas.”  Unfortunately, most of society agreed with the author’s initial ideas and warnings at the time.  The bias aside, it would have been an extraordinary accomplishment for a woman to excel in her studies and enter the medical profession.  However, and as is still present in today’s society, a woman who earns more than a man, has a better profession than a man and is more highly respected than a man, has problems… finding a man.  The article clearly places the importance and value of life on that of having a husband and family.  Unfortunately for women in the 19^th century, survival did mostly depend on having a husband; only a select few could support themselves with a dignified career (one that did not involve prostitution or hard manual labor), and although they may have entered careers as teachers and those of other traditional roles in order to still be able to marry and live respectably amongst their peers, they managed to take a step in the right direction for the future so women no longer so often have to make a choice between a career and a home with a family.  As it turns out, it seems the slower route was one to lead down, for I could only imagine if women who entered college defied the roles of wives and mothers and entered the work force full force two hundred years ago.  The only result would have been a set back for all the ladies who are currently seeking a university education.

 

Kristin H 05/04/08

 

This article is interesting for many reasons!  Certainly, as the other commenters have pointed out, there is a definite bias toward marriage as the ultimate goal for any woman.  What I found most fascinating though was that the author merely focuses on whether women have more plentiful options after attaining higher education, rather than examining whether the options themselves had undergone any change.  For example, the author points to the fact that women are still, by and large, finding positions teaching after achieving their degree, but she does not detail in what ways this influx of highly educated women were received.  Did they raise the bar for teaching, placing themselves in high demand because of their advanced education, or were they shunned for having chosen higher education?  The same could even be asked of these women's opportunities for marriage.  Did they become more or less valuable on the marriage market because of their education?  Certainly, the article would seem to imply that their chances of marriage potentially decreased and therefore having a wife who pursued higher education must not be positive.  However, one wonders to what extent these women may have chosen not to get married as a self-conscious act rather than a way in which they were acted, or in this case not-acted, upon.

 

 

Works Cited

 

1. The After-Careers of University-Educated Women, Gordon, Alice M., Nineteenth Century, vol. 37, (1895): 955.

 

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_College   

 

3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/puerile

 

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheltenham_College

 

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Teachers

 

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_College_London

 

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Mildred_Balfour

 

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girton_College,_Cambridge

 

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Margaret_Hall,_Oxford

 

10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnham_College,_Cambridge

 

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_University_Belfast

 

12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerville_College,_Oxford

 

13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cambridge

 

14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oxford

 

15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_College,_Belfast

 

16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_College,_Dublin

 

17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripos

 

18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenana