The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-10-17

Gent Rome-always inimical to the
| high status of woment-hat is the root
cause of the inferior education and re-
stricted sphere of activity accorded to
the women of Italy from the close of
the eighteenth century. 1t is only at
the dawn of the twentieth century that
any real educational progress was
achieved Today the "gymnasiums" in
various large towns, notably Rome and
Florence throw open their classes to
young people of both sexes and arr
widely frequented by the girls of the
middle classes, while lycees and pro-
fessional schools for older girls have
been opened in several cities. Year
by year girl graduates are more ire
uuently met with, and II professional
careers are still difficult of access, an
ever-increasing number of women are
studying medicine and surgery ana
even Jurisprudence. Indeed 1t would
seem as though they were already tax
ing possession once more of those pro-
fessorial chairs they once filled with
so much distinction, for quite recent
" Signora Rina Monti was appointed
professor of zoology at Sassari, after
holding important appointments poth
at PaYia and al Siena.
A natural outcome of the growing
desire for educational efficiency Tor
girls is the revolt of some mothers
against the hitherto universal custom
of consigning girls of the upper classes
10 convent boarding schools Tor the
whole of their education, often allow
ing them home but once year. II is
hardly necessary to emphasize for
American readers the i'll effects of
system that makes brothers and sisters
strangers to one another and that keeps
children for so many years away from
the parental roof, that when at length
they return to it they come to no right
full place. no natural duties.
Among those who are taking the lead
in this movement may be mentioned
Countess Sabina di Parravicino, one OF
the most distinguished women in Milan
today, herself the mother of daughters
and an active apostle of Christian fem
inism. She rightly holds that, how
ever admirable convent schools may
be as aids to Christian education, they
cannot fulfill, and were never intend
ed to fulfill, the whole of a mothers
duty toward her children.
1t is pleasant to know that Plus Y
has expressed himself strongly in fa-
vor of home education under suitable
circumstances 1t must not be for
gotten that it is the worldly mothers
who are the most DESTROYS of Riding
themselves in what is apparently an
edifying manner of the responsibilities
of motherhood, for children may be
highly inconvenient witnesses of what
happens in AMI ill regulated household
1t is thoughtful, conscientious women
who want their little daughters under
their own eye, and this new tendency
far from springing from any indiffer-
ence to religious education, is really an
index of a purer and more wholesome
home life.
These, it may be said, are but side
issues, and do not take us very far in
the direction of that active, indepen-
dent career that Scandinavian or An
glo-SaXon woman can achieve for her
self 1t is true that in southern Italy,
and more especially in the smaller pro-
vincial towns, women of the upper and
middle classes still lead what to Amer
lean and English women would appear
lives of almost Oriental seclusion,
scarcely venturing in the streets un-
accompanied by their husbands, and
with interests limited to the most triv-
ial subjects outside a purely domestic
range Social conventions such as these
are hard to break down. Yet in all the
great towns of the north much has
been accomplished, and ladies in Mi
Ian. Turin and Genoa are at least as
free as their Partisan sisters. 1t is
precisely in these towns that there has
been of recent years so remarkable an
outburst of philanthropic activity, SO
much real social effort based on an UNI
Outstanding of actual economic condi-
tons And it is too among the wom-
EN- of these cities that we find the be-
ginning of a definite Christian femi-
mist movement. They have come in con-
tact with the women workers in the
Socialist camp, they know the special
dangers to faith that await the mex
perienced novice in her first plunge
into the controversies of the day, and
they have realized the need of provid-
ing a sound platform from which Cath
Ole women can speak out boldly to the
world. Some are developing practical
social work on thoroughly Catholic
lines; others, more tentatively, are
pleading with their pens for a fuller
recognition of women's activity in the
social and economic sphere.
Concerning the whole position of
women, much to American readers that
will appear obvious and elementary and
even strikes the Italian as daring and
even perilous. To judge of the reli-
gious and social conditions of a coun-
try one must, for the time, try to see
things from that country's standpoint.
Catholic women in Italy have, in a
measure, been brought by recent events
to the parting of the ways. Are they
going to form an active party of prog
ress and strive by all lawful and peace
able means for the triumph of their
ideals and their faith, as the women in
the Socialist ranks are striving for
theirs ?-or are they going to stand
aside, timid and helpless, as in a back
water, while the stream of life flows
irresistibly onward? I believe they are
choosing the nobler alternative, and
that they will be cheered and helped
by knowing that their efforts are fol-
lowed with sympathy by the women
of other nations whose easier lot is