The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-16 00:00:00

Mr Ruskin on the Education of Women,

On Wednesday evening Mr Ruskin delivered a lecture in
the large room of the Manchester Town Hall, to a fashion-
able audience, in aid of a fund for fitting up schoolrooms in
a densely-populated part of St. Andrew's parish, Ancoats.
Mr Moslem' said this lecture was a sequel to one he de-
livered a week ago, In the former one he endeavoured to
show that there was only one pure kind of kingship—that
which consisted in a stronger moral state, and in a truer
thoughtful state than that of others, enabling us therefore
to guide or serve others. All literature, and all education
were only useful so far as they led to the apprehension and
continuance of that kingly power, first over ourselves, and
through ourselves over all around us. He was going to
ask that evening what portion of the royal authority aris •
ing out of education might rightly be possessed by women,
how far they were called to a true queenly power over
all within their spheres. This could not be determined
until it was agreed what the ordinary and common power
of women should be. List week he said the best use of
education was to enable us to consult wise men on all points
of difficulty. Applying that rule now,' he would inquire
what the greatest, the wisest, and the purest hearted
among the men of all time held as to the true dignity and
position of women. Taking Shakspere first, he had not one
entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slightly
sketched one of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for
the purposes of the stage, and the still slighter Valen-
tine in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona." On the other
hand; there was scarcely a play that had not in it a perfect
woman, Isabella, Queen Katherine, Perdita. Sylvia, Viola,
Hermione, Imogen, Helena, and last and perhaps loveliest,
Vircilat were all faultless, all conceived in the highest type
of humanity. The catastrophe of every play was brought
about always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption,
if there were any, by the wisdom and virtue of a woman.
Observe also that among all the principal figures in Sheik-
spere's plays there was only one weak woman, Ophelia, and
it was because she failed Hamlet at the critical moment
that all the catastrophe followed. There were wicked women
among the principal figures, but they were felt to be excep-
tions, and were fatal in their influence according to the
power of good they had abandoned. As the writer who had
given the broadest and truest view of the conditions of ordi-
nary thought in modern society, he would next ask his
hearers to receive the witness of Sir Walter Scott. In the
whole range of his works only three men approached the
heroic type, Clayerhouse, Rob Roy, and Dandy Dinmont.
Of any deep, consistent character, of any purpose wisely con •
ceived, there was no trace in any of Scott's conceptions of
men—whereas in his conceptions of women—Helen Douglas,
Flora M'lvor, Catherine Seaton, Diana Vernon, even in
Meg Merrilies, and last and loveliest in J eanie Deans—we
had an infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice,
and an entire self-sacrifice. Going back to the testimony of
the:great Italians and Greeks, the plan of Dante's great poem,
was that it was a love poem of thanks to his dead lady for
her watch over his soul. Among the Greeks we found the
simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache ; the
divine, yet always rejected wisdom of Cassandra, the play-
ful kindness and simple princess life of the happy Nausicaa
—the lofty calm of Penelope, with its watch upon the sea;
the ever-patient piety of sister and daughter in Antigone ;
the going to sacrifice of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent;
and finally, the expectation of the resarrection rendered
clear to the soul of the Greek by the return of Alcestis, who
to save her husband had deliberately gone down to the
shades of death. He could multiply such instances from
Chaucer, and Spenser, and others, but ho would content
himself with asking his hearers to give its legitimate value
to this testimony of the great poets and great men of the
world. Lastly, he would take the evidence of facts given by
the human heart itself. In all Christian ages notable for
purity and progress there had been absolute obedience of
the lover to his mistress. What we too often doubted
was the fitness of the continuance of that relation through-
out the whole of human life, It was
.thought that the re-
verence and deity were to be withdrawn when the affec-
tion had become wholly and limitlessly our own. Was
not that most ignoble ? The idea of the guiding function of
the woman was reconcilable with that of the obedience, for
her guidance was that of the compass, not that of the helm.
Hers was the guiding not the determining function. We
were most foolish in discussing which sex had the supre-
macy. The man was eminently the doer, the discoverer,
the defender ; the woman's intellect was for order, ar-
rangement, and decision. Home was the place of peace
and of shelter, not only from injury but also from terror.
Whereever a true wife came such a home was always
around her. Accepting this, then, as the true conception
of the office and dignity of woman, the next question was
what kind of education would fit her for it. Her physical
training and exercise must be continually directed to per
feet her health and beauty. Physical freedom was vain to
produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart.
Wordsworth truly said of a maiden :
" Vital feelings of delight,
Shall rear her form to stately height."
They must be of delight to be vital. We mast not think
make a, girl lovely without making her happy. The per-
fect beauty of a woman's countenance could only come out
of that' majestic peace which arose from a well-remem-
bered past of happy times, full of sweet records, and from
the joining of those with that more mejestio childishness
which was yet full of change and promise, and bright with
presage of things to come and to be bestowed. Then, as
the strength would permit, we had to fashion the girl's mind
with all manner of thoughts which tended to confirm its
natural instinct of justice, and to unfold its natural instinct
of love. Ali such knowledge should be given her as would
enable her to aid the work of man ; and it should be given,
not as knowledge, but only to enable her to feel and judge.
It was of no moment whether she knew many languages or
sciences, but of the greatest importance that she should be
trained to habits of accurate thought, Chiefly she should
be taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with re-
spect to the sufferings which were continually befalling
those around her. A girl's education should be, in its course
and material of study, the same as a boy's, but quite dif-
ferently directed. A woman in any rank of life ought to
know what her husband was likely to know, but to
know it in a different way ; he for a complete command of
it—she for a daily and helpful use of it, Man should know
the subjects thoroughly ; woman should know them only
so far as to enable her to sympathise with and to enhance
all the pleasure of them. She should, however, know them
accurately, and not have a mere smattering of them, or
she would but tease, and not help, her husband. Of the
two, a girl should be led earlier than a boy into serious,
subjects, as her mind developed earlier, as they would
make her less frivolous, and would be calculated b add
the qualities of patience and seriousness to the buoyancy
of her thought and wit, and to occupy her mind with the
loftiest and purest elements of thought. The books for her
reading should be chosen; they should not be all those that
fell out of the package from a circulating library wet.with
the spray of folly. It was not the badness of a novel that he
would dread, but its overwrought excitement. The weakest
romance was not so stupifying as the 1 west form of religi-
ous penny-a lining; the worst romance was not so corrupt-
ing as false history, philosophy, and politics. Good novels,
such as modern literature gave examples of, might be made
serious use of, being nothing less than treatises on moral
anatomy and chemistry, and on the study of human nature
in all its elements. But he attached little weight to their
teaching, as they were not read with sufficient seriousness,
Whatever novel, poetry, or history was read should be
chosen not for what was out of it, but what was in it. Scat-
tered evil in a powerful book never did any harm to a noble
girl ; it was the emptiness of a book that oppressed her, and
its amiable folly that degraded her. If she had access to a
library of old and classical books there need be no choosing
for her; she would find what was of use for herself. The
difference between a girl and a boy was that they might
chisel a boy as they would a rock, or might hammer him
as they would bronze, but they could not hammer a girt
into anything. She grew as a dower did, and would
wither if not treated kindly. In art there should be
kept before her the finest modela, which were the truest,
simplest, and most useful. Her practice in accomplish
ments should be accurate and thorough. One more help she
could not do without; it would do more than all other ins
Anences beside. De Quincey, in his beautiful essay on Joan
of Arc, stated that her early life was passed on the borders
of a boundless forest, haunted by fairies. It was the soli-
tude and the quiet thought that came out of the loveliness
and divinity of nature that made her noble soul raise her to
what she became. If they had a garden large enough for
their children to play in, with just as much lawn as they
could run about upon, they would be wrong in displacing it
by a coal shaft, even if they increased their income thereby
sixtyfold. Yet this was what they were doing with England.
It was only a little garden, scarcely too large for all the chil-
dren to run about in; and this they would turn, if they
could, into furnace ground and heaps of cinders. The chil-
dren suffered from thirefor the fairies would not be banished,
There were fairies of the furnace as well as of the
wood ; and the first gifts of those fairies of the furnace were
arrows of the mighty, but the last were coals of juniper.
Snowdon was our Parnassus; the Holyhead mountain our
island of mina. Where was its temple of Minerva f In
the ieport of 1848, published by the Committee of
Council on Education. the examiner stated that, in a
school under the shadow of the Christian Parnassus, and
near a town containing 6,000 persons, he examined a
large class of girls, three of whom declared that
they had never heard of Christ, two that they had never
heard of God, two thought Christ was still on the earth
(not so bid a thought,
by the way), and throe knew nothing
about the crucifixion. The women of. England, from the
truemust
fo
indo
of
thinkf rest,
tPhrairthesesir ocfhilWdraelnesootuoidthbee
brought ttoof t hael
while such as he had mentioned were scattered on the hill as
sheep without a shepherd ; or that their daughters could be
trained to the truth of their human beauty, while the plea-
sant places which God made for their schoolrooms and play-
grounds were desolate and defiled ; or that they could
ever be baptised rightly in the inch-deep fonts until they
were baptised in those sweet waters which the Great Law-
giver struck forth for ever from the rocks of their native
land, waters which Pagans would worship in their purity,
but which we only defiled. The last and widest question
was, what was to be the queenly office of those children with
respect to the State? Generally speaking,
they had the
impression that a man's duties were chiefly public, and a
woman's private, but this could not be altogether so. A man
had a private work or duty relating to his own house, and a