

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 103 



followed by a footman carrying her prayerbook and a long 

 stick ; she can play on the guitar and the piano a few easy 

 pieces which she has learned. She knows a few words of 

 French, which she produces at frequent intervals; as to 

 history, geography, science, the condition of the people, 

 her mind is an entire blank; she knows nothing of these 

 things. Her conversation is commonplace, as her ideas are 

 limited; she can not reason on any subject whatever be- 

 cause of her ignorance; or, as she herself would say, be- 

 cause she is a woman. In her presence, and indeed in the 

 presence of ladies generally, men talk trivialities. There 

 was indeed a general belief that women were creatures 

 incapable of argument, or of reason, or of connected 

 thought. It was no use arguing about the matter. The 

 Lord had made them so. Women, said the philosophers, 

 can not understand logic; they see things, if they do see 

 them at all, by instinctive perception. This theory ac- 

 counted for everything, for those cases when women un- 

 doubtedly did 'see things.' Also it fully justified people 

 in withholding from women any kind of education worthy 

 the name. A quite needless expense, you understand. ' ' 



Her amusements, we are told, were "those of an ama- 

 teur a few pieces on the guitar and the piano and some 

 slight power of sketching or flower painting in water- 

 colors." The literature she read "endeavored to mold 

 woman on the theory of recognized intellectual inferiority 

 to man. She was considered beneath him in intellect as 

 in physical strength ; she was exhorted to defer to man ; to 

 acknowledge his superiority; not to show herself anxious 

 to combat his opinions. . . . 



"This system of artificial restraints certainly produced 

 faithful wives, gentle mothers, loving sisters, able house- 

 wives. God forbid that we should say otherwise, but it is 

 certain that the intellectual attainments of women were 

 then what we should call contemptible, and the range of 

 subjects of which they knew nothing was absurdly narrow 



