Physical and Intellectual Development : Part 3

Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women
by George S. Weaver

(Page 8 of 17)

My advice to all young women is, that they learn the laws of health and strength as soon as possible, and obey them to the very best of their ability; that they study the physiology of their own systems, and know how fearfully and wonderfully they are made, and what conditions of life are necessary to the fullest and most perfect physical development; that they live with the resolute determination that they will be well, and that not a pain or weakness shall be felt without tracing it immediately to its real cause and applying the proper remedy at once; that health shall be deemed a condition of happiness and its maintenance a religious duty; that sickness shall be considered a sin and pain, a just chastisement of God for it. When our young women are thus physically trained, they will be prepared to bless the world as it never has been blessed; they will usher in a period of moral and intellectual grandeur such as the world has never witnessed; they will exert a strong woman-influence in every sphere of thought and action which will be at once refining, ennobling, and redeeming; they will so establish correct habits of living, so sanctify the altars of home, so adorn the walks of social life, that the very heart of the great body of society will throb anew with fresh impulse of life and send out its currents of health and strength to the remotest parts.

II. With such a physical preparation, we are ready for intellectual action, for the education of mind.

Woman has not had a fair chance for the culture of her mind. She has been continually anathematized and tormented with the idea that she is the "weaker vessel." Her father, her brother, and her husband have always told her that her mind was weak and small, and that it could not comprehend great things nor do great works. Sometimes her mother and sister are joined in this wholesale slander of the female mind. When a little girl she has been paralyzed with the thought of her inferiority. All through her youth it has been a dead weight on her mental activity. Through her life it has ever muffled the harp of her heart and weighed down the wings of her aspirations. It has been an incubus of discouragement in all intellectual pursuits. How could woman be any thing with the whole world against her? with even those she loved best, and in whose judgment she most confided, all the time reminding her of her mental weakness and inferiority?

And as it has been, so it is. Woman is still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine one hundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men, whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride of sex of woman's weakness of mind. I have heard little Lilliputian men, whose minds were as small as a baby's rattle-box, always harping on this worn-out string of woman's weakness of mind. It is an idea not peculiar to enlightened people. The savages believe it, and many of them believe that she is only a pretty beast without a soul that is given to man to bear his burdens. Among savage, barbarous, and half-civilized people, woman's inferiority is never questioned. The idea is entertained in its bald usurpation and black injustice without a questioning thought. Among us it is covered over a little with cotton beauty and rolled up in sugar-plum sweetness so the woman will bear it a little better. Our women are tickled with the idea that they are the beauty. Our public speakers, lecturers, papers, speak of the audiences of intelligence and beauty, meaning by intelligence the men and by beauty the women; a deep insult to the woman-mind.

I freely admit that the mass of men in our country do possess more intelligence than the women; but the reason is not because of woman's inferiority, but because of her oppression and want of opportunity. She has not had half a chance. She has been shut out from almost every field of intellectual labor, barred from every position of trust and profit, laughed at by baby men and silly women if she attempted to devote her life to intellectual pursuits, opposed with the most barbarous legal disabilities and the still more barbarous incubus of public opinion. Yet notwithstanding all this oppression and want of opportunity, she has shown a quickness of perception, an intuitive acumen, a sharpness of forecast and solidity of judgment that among nearly all married men has made her opinion a matter of great importance. Few are the married men that are willing to risk a disrespect of their wives' judgment in any important matter.

An eminent lawyer of Virginia once told me that but twice in his married life had he acted counter to his wife's advice, and in both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men have found their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare not resist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is well known that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with great confidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinion among men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers advise all married men to consult their wives on all important matters, and to be very cautious about resisting the settled convictions of woman, not as a matter of courtesy or policy, but because of the accurate perceptions and sound judgments of woman's mind.

This is not all fustian for the flattery of women; it is the deliberate conviction of our best and wisest minds. And yet a great majority of these same minds can not get rid of the idea that woman's intellect is inferior.

Though the mass of women of all countries have been intellectually undeveloped, we have instances enough to show that the woman-mind is as powerful, close-sighted, and active as man's. Women have ruled the mightiest nations, mastered the abstruse sciences, led vigorous armies to victory, written powerful books, made vigorous and brilliant achievements in eloquence, commanded vessels, conducted complicated commercial relations, edited influential journals and papers, sat in chairs of learning and done every thing necessary to show that the female mind is not wanting in power. Yet if the female mind were weaker, it is not an argument against its education. Mind should be educated, whether little or much, weak or strong. And woman's natural position is such, that all the mind she has should be developed and richly cultivated.

We talk much about female education; we have female schools and colleges; and one might think, to read of them, that we educated the female mind. But it is a sad mistake. The greater part of our female seminaries and colleges are mere shams. They do not develop mind. They do not train its muscles to hard work; they do not discipline its nerves to close application and vigorous research; they do not harden its hands to the toil of thinking, nor strengthen its arms to battle with the intricacies of science nor the problems of metaphysics. They are mere gilding shops, whitewashing establishments, paint factories, where girls are polished to order with the etiquette of boarding-school finish.

Fowler and Wells, Publishers, New York, 1856.