WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 99 



sex lest their works, if known as the productions of women, 

 should be ipso facto branded as of inferior merit. 



During the period in question women fared no better in 

 the United States than in England. They were subject to 

 the same educational debarment and were the victims of 

 the same snobbery and intolerance. The Pilgrim Fathers 

 and their descendants for many generations made no secret 

 of their belief in the mental inferiority of woman, and 

 applied to her the gospel of liberty contained in the fol- 

 lowing words of Eve to Adam as given in Paradise Lost: 



"My author and dispenser, what thou bidst 

 Unargued I obey; so God ordains; 

 God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more 

 Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise." 



To the Puritan of New England, as to the Puritan Mil- 

 ton, the relative attainments of woman and man were 

 tersely expressed in Tennyson's couplet: 



"She knows but matters of the house, 

 And he, he knows a thousand things." 



To us one of the most astounding facts in the educa- 

 tional history of New England is the long time during 

 which girls were without free school opportunities. Thus, 

 although schools had been established within twenty years 

 after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, it was not 

 until a century and a half later that their doors were 

 opened to girls. The public schools of Boston were estab- 

 lished in 1642, but were not opened for girls until 1789; 

 and then only for instruction in spelling, reading and com- 

 position, and that but one half of the year. There was 

 no high school in Boston, the vaunted Athens of America, 

 until 1852. 



Harvard College was founded in 1636 for the education 

 of ' l ye English and Indian youth of this country in knowl- 

 edge and godlyness," but in this institution no provision 



