Dorothea Beale: Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies' College, 1858-1906
9781465677778
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The story of the nineteenth century is one of wonder: a story with Romance written large on every page. It is a tale of great discovery and enterprise in almost every sphere. Under the influence of its discoveries, material life became transformed and new mental and spiritual horizons appeared. The newly-acquired knowledge of forces like steam and electricity opened up to the world undreamed-of possibilities. Scientists at home and in distant places of the earth discovered truths that did much to reveal God’s ways to men. In the world of medicine new theories were applied to take from operations their dread, and fatality from many diseases. In literature it was a time of great riches: an age equal to any, not excepting the great Elizabethan; an age of prophets and seers, of men and women expressing in singleness of heart the truth as it was revealed to them. And those of us who already live at some distance can hardly imagine a time when Scott and Dickens, Browning and Tennyson, Ruskin and Carlyle, George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë will not be held in high esteem by those who love the great, the true, and the beautiful in literature. Springing out of these discoveries and revelations there naturally arose a demand that the mind of man generally should be prepared to enjoy this new world. Dissatisfaction with existing methods of education began to be felt; and humble people who were unable to read and write began to ask that they and their children should be taught. The education of girls at this time was particularly unsatisfactory, though it had not always been so. In the age of Elizabeth, for example, girls of the higher classes had received an excellent education. It was customary then for girls to learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and as Mrs. Stopes points out in her interesting book on “Sixteenth Century Women Students,” the number of really learned women was very great. I do not know when these ideals of education gave way to lower ones, but readers of Addison will remember that one of his aims in his Spectator essays was to rescue women from the utter frivolity and emptiness of their lives. How scathing he is in his description of the way in which ladies killed time! when the buying of a ribbon was held to be a good morning’s work! In the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign, the education of girls was indeed deplorable. An excessive amount of time was given to accomplishments and to the study of deportment; the instruction consisted, for the most part, of a smattering of many subjects: and the whole process of education was shallow and superficial. If the women of that day developed—as many did—force of character and of intellect, it was rather in spite of their education than because of it. Numbers of girls rose in revolt against this mental and spiritual starvation: some managed to become well-educated without any outside help, but to a great number this system meant either an utterly frivolous or extremely dull grown-up life.
