The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-04-11
WOMAN As A RATIONAL AND REsPoKsI'
BLE BEING.

Gated for the same degrees, pfoIess1ous nnu
pursuits as men, under q common system OF
instruction, is one whose decision should be
reserved until science shall have determined
whether there exist essential and ineradicable
differences between the nervous organizations
and the mental structures and faculties of the
two sexes. A mistake in this matter such as
should run counter to the normal relations of
the two sexes would, he conceived, be equal
" mischievous and fundamental, inasmuch
as these relations lie at the very foundations
of society. But whether or not women are
qualified by nature for the kind of intellectual
training and culture which law and custom
have arrogated almost exclusively for the
other sex, it is certain that the method and
the sphere of education to which they are
now for the most part restricted, are in many
respects false, anachronistic, unsatisfactory,
and deleterious Brought down from the
skeleton nurseries of dead past, it is dread
fully out of keeping with the living wants,
exigencies, and illnesses of the present. 1t
represses, it dwarfs, it distorts, reminding
one of the arts of the Comprachicos, as de-
scribed by Victor Hugo; arts which origi-
mated, he believes, in China, where the per-
lection of feminine refinement is achieved by
suppressing the digital growth of the foot SO
that the high breeding and grace of Chinese
beauty are measured by the painful feeble
ness with which she wabbles along on hoof-
like pedicles. Or, look at another llustra-
ton from the same country. In China,
" they take child of two or three
years old, and put it into a porcelain vase,
more or less quaint, but without lid or bot
tom, so that the head and the feet are ex-
posed. In the day time the vase is kept up
right at night it is laid on its side, 80 that
the child may sleep. Thus the child grows
bigger, filing up the ENDORSEMENTS of the
vase with its compressed flesh and twisted
bones. This growth in the bottle lasts sew
eral years. At a given period it is without
remedy. When it is decided that the mould
is taken and that the monster is nude, they
break the vase, the child comes out from it,
and they have man with the form of pot"
And what comes out of the vase of our tradi-
tionary female education? "A girl of the
period" will doubtless be the ready reply of
many, borrowed from current criticisms of
much abused and profoundly misunderstood
character. But no, it is not the girl of this
period; it is fantastic creature fashioned in
o medieval mould, and having about as much
relevancy to the great problems of these times
as the lance and buckler, the mail and helmet,
the jousts and errantry of the knights of old.
The phantom of the ancient chivalry which,
under pretense of an idolatrous gallantry,
made woman toy and perpetual infant,
would seem to be at this moment the presid-
ing genius over education in the female hem
isphere of society, while every vestige of
chivalry is passing away from all conditions.
from all institutions, from all avenues, enter
prises and achievements in the masculine
hemisphere. Men are required more and
more, in all their works and ways, to square
their notions and actions by the hard lines of
calculation based upon principles universally
applicable to one sex as well as the other.
This state of things exacts the utmost reason
ableness, the utmost self-control, the utmost
self.help, the utmost resoluteness and
vigor of self-preservation from everybody.
But it somehow happens that the edu-
cation OF women, as general rule,
is exquisitely adapted to UNFIT them for
meeting this exaction. 1t is an educa-
ton that tends to intensity and confirm
all their native weaknesses without bring
ing out any of the latent forces of their
nature. Where there is predisposition 10
nervous agitations, to morbid susceptibilities
to hysterical whimsicalities and decisions,
this is apt to be developed until it perma-
nently marks the whole temperament and
character. The result is that the victim of
this species of psychological perversiou and
dislocation has about as much power of ra-
tionh selfguidance as gust of wind, or as
ga boat sent forth to drift alone at midnight
on moonless sea-" She has not been taught
to estimate accurately the relative importance
of things to weigh probabilities to distin-
guish between the optable and the attainable
to compare her wishes with the obstacles to
their fulfllment; to trace causes to their i'm
pending results to study out those problems
of life which force themselves upon every in
telligent and responsible being for some sort
of practical solution. In short, she lives in
state of chronic suppression of the reason
ing faculties, a slave to inordinate fantasies
and yearnings, and consequently the most
exacting, pitiless and ruinous of tyrants
when she happens to have a weakly indulgent
father or a doating husband who accepts her
capricss as law. Now all this would not be
SO much amiss if the spirit of the AEGEAN
indefinite but irresistible power = which
men are compelled to acknowledge,
were not in irreconcilable disaccord
with it The masculine mind is less and less
disposed to sympathize and bear with, much
less to admire, chronic perversity, unreason-
ablenes and want of self-mastery in women.
A contemporary English writer pertinently
says: cit is very important to show that the
loss of selfcontrol, whatever it may once
have been, is no longer interesting, even with
youth and beauty to back it; and when these
potent forces are in the wane, the remark of
Lady Charlotte Lindsay on Queen Caroline's