Women and the Alphabet

琼Women and the Alphabet

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Title: Women and the Alphabet
Author: Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Release Date: September 15, 2004 [eBook #13474]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WOMEN AND THE ALPHABET
A Series of Essays
by
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
1881

PREFATORY NOTE
The first essay in this volume, "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?" appeared originally in the "Atlantic Monthly" of February, 1859, and has since been reprinted in various forms, bearing its share, I trust, in the great development of more liberal views in respect to the training and duties of women which has made itself manifest within forty years. There was, for instance, a report that it was the perusal of this essay which led the late Miss Sophia Smith to the founding of the women's college bearing her name at Northampton, Massachusetts.
The remaining papers in the volume formed originally a part of a book entitled "Common Sense About Women" which was made up largely of papers from the "Woman's Journal." This book was first published in 1881 and was reprinted in somewhat abridged form some years later in London (Sonnenschein). It must have attained a considerable circulation there, as the fourth (stereotyped) edition appeared in 1897. From this London reprint a German translation was made by Fr?ulein Eugenie Jacobi, under the title "Die Frauenfrage und der gesunde Menschenverstand" (Schupp: Neuwied and Leipzig, 1895).
T.W.H.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

CONTENTS
I. OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?
II. PHYSIOLOGY. Too Much Natural History Darwin, Huxley, and Buckle The Spirit of Small Tyranny The Noble Sex The Truth about our Grandmothers The Physique of American Women The Limitations of Sex
III. TEMPERAMENT. The Invisible Lady Sacred Obscurity Virtues in Common Individual Differences Angelic Superiority Vicarious Honors The Gospel of Humiliation Celery and Cherubs The Need of Cavalry The Reason Firm, the Temperate Will Allures to Brighter Worlds, and leads the Way
IV. THE HOME. Wanted--Homes The Origin of Civilization The Low-Water Mark Obey Woman in the Chrysalis Two and Two A Model Household A Safeguard for the Family Women as Economists Greater includes Less A Copartnership One Responsible Head Asking for Money Womanhood and Motherhood A German Point of View Childless Women The Prevention of Cruelty to Mothers
V. SOCIETY. Foam and Current In Society The Battle of the Cards Some Working-Women The Empire of Manners Girlsterousness Are Women Natural Aristocrats? Mrs. Blank's Daughters The European Plan Featherses
VI. STUDY AND WORK. Experiments Intellectual Cinderellas Cupid-and-Psychology Self-Supporting Wives Thorough Literary Aspirants The Career of Letters Talking and Taking How to speak in Public
VII. PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. We the People The Use of the Declaration of Independence Some Old-Fashioned Principles Founded on a Rock The Good of the Governed Ruling at Second-Hand
VIII. SUFFRAGE. Drawing the Line For Self-Protection Womanly Statesmanship Too Much Prediction First-Class Carriages Education via Suffrage Follow Your Leaders How to make Women understand Politics Inferior to Man, and near to Angels
IX. OBJECTIONS TO SUFFRAGE. The Fact of Sex How will it Result? I have all the Rights I want Sense Enough to Vote An Infelicitous Epithet The Rob Roy Theory The Votes of Non-Combatants Manners repeal Laws Dangerous Voters How Women will legislate Individuals _vs._ Classes Defeats before Victories
INDEX

I
OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?
Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Maréchal, thrust in his "Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women."[1] Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that he must be insane, and soberly replied to him.
His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses, and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty reasons. He exhausts the range of history to show the frightful results which have followed this taste of fruit of the tree of knowledge; quotes from the Encyclopédie, to prove that the woman who knows the alphabet has already lost a portion of her innocence; cites the opinion of Molière, that any female who has unhappily learned anything in this line should affect ignorance, when possible; asserts that knowledge rarely makes men attractive, and females never; opines that women have no occasion to peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in advance; remarks that three quarters of female authors are no better than they should