Women and the Alphabet

Women and the Alphabet

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Wentworth Higginson
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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 Fräulein
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