The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1884-02-07
Shakspeare's Women and George
Eliot's Heroines.

One argument for the ''higher educa-'
ton" of women is that it makes them
filter companions for highly educated
nen. This view should be looked at
in the light of the ideal women that
have been created in literature by men
and women of genius. If genius has
the instinct to discover the highest
qualities, and to portray them for our
instructions, we should get guidance
here. Women have been painted by
our poets, dramatists and creative writ
ers of fiction, by the thousand. Many
persons would accept the ideals thus
sketched for them as a surer guide than
the labored deductions of the scientists.
Men of genius ought to have known the
kind of women whose companionship
they liked, and whose influence on them
was best. While they have had to
create every kind of woman in peopling
the ideal worlds they have made for us,
it is certainly very remarkable that the
ideal type of the very highly book-edu-
Gated woman of the modern education
alist is scarcely met with at all. In
1.-The Princess" of our poet-laureate
the fancy cannot be said to be a seri-
Gus or imitable one. Though the SEN
timent of the ''sweet girl-graduates
with their golden hair is this:
"Oh lift your natures up,
Embrace our aims; work out your freedom,
girls.
knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed.
Drink lD deep until the habits of the slave.
And SANDER die. Better not be at all
Than net be noble
yet the poet paints the sweetness so as
altogether to overpower the learned
ness in the picture, and the Princess
ideal and purpose come to naught.
And Lady Psyche's dream of likeness
and equality is as far as ever from be-
ing realized:
Everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth.
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,
Two p ,ummets dropped for one to sound the
abyss
Of science and the secrets of mind.
Musician, painter, sculptor, critic move;
And everywhere the broad and bounteous
earth
Should bear a double growth of those rare
souls
Poets whose thoughts enrich the blood of the
world"
Shakspeare's women are certainly
not of the learned sort. Their years of
adolescence were not taken up in get
ting book knowledge exclusively
Their emotional nature was not dried
up by the strain of intellectual work in
youth. Their constitutions were not
spoiled by study. They had fair faces,
and womanly forms, and warm affec-
tions, and strong impulsive passions,
and mother wit, and keen discernment,
and most vigorous resolution, but moth
inc that we could call learning-not
one of them. Portia, who acted the
most learned part of all Shakespeare 8
women, vehemently decribes herself as
| "An uniessoned girl, unschooled, unpractic
ed"
George Eliot has created for US 8
whole host of young women, all real,
| all true to nature. Herself woman,
and genius of the highest order, pene
trating. learned. accomplished, subtle,
and with power of discriminating
language unequaicd in our generation
| a wife and mother, too-she was the
best tiCted woman of the age unques-
| .tionably to draw for us picture o.
young womanhood highly educated il
knowledge, up to the educationalist'
ideal Where do you find such a char
acter in her writings? Dorothea il
'-Middlemarch'' had exactly the max
ing of the successful omnivorous young
female students of the present day; in
tellectual, conscientious, hyperion
scientious-as such young women Otter
are to their cost-"studious, her minC
was theoretic, and yearned after some
lofty conceptions of the world.
She was enamored of intensity
and greatness. She was self-sacrifc
ING to fault. She was often ardent
and not in the least self-admiring
] Yet Dorothea is not highly educated il
the modern sense. Perhaps moderI
educationalist would say that that wa!
the reason poor Dorothea made such ,
mess of it, and threw herself away frs
on selfish. shallow old brute, think
ing he was a hero. anu then on the
least interesting fellow in the book.
| confess | more agree with
Hannah More's notion of education
for such girl: 81 call education not
that which smothers a woman with ac-
omplishments, but that which tends
to consolidate firm and regular sys-
TEN of character, that which tends to
form friend, companion, and wife.
l call education not that which is made
up of shreds and patches of useless arts,
but that which inculcates principles
polishes tastes, regulates temper, culti-
Yates reason, subdues the passions, di
rects the feelings, habituates to ret1ec
ton, and trains to self-denial-that
which refers all actions, feelings, sen
timents, tastes and passions to the love
and fear of God"