The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
But society is relieved of a large part of the excitability that attends
it with us. The wealth and social position of the family and the
ingenious tact of mammas, as a rule, win the husbands, and the daughter
needs only to be in sight. It is not at all rare to go to an evening
party and know no one but the host and hostess, and as introductions are
rarely given, one has only to look about and go home when she is tired.
At a dinner-party she is told the name of the one who leads her to the
table, but she is always at liberty to talk as little as she likes, and
she offends the social taste if she talk very much. English mothers of
this class have very little to do except to give birth to their
children, and go through the established routine of dinners and calls.
If there is any complaint respecting the work they have to do, it is of
the deficit, and the inferior health of the women between their
school-days and their wifehood is to be accounted for by the want of
occupation and independence. They have no more to do, and no more chance
to exercise their wills, than during the first six years of their
lives.
After the early years of marriage the health almost uniformly improves,
and by the time they are forty or forty-five, they have usually attained
a ripe perfection of health, which gives them a physical superiority
over the men for the remaining twenty-five or thirty-five years of their
lives, and also over the women who have remained unmarried.
The sentiments that pervade, and the circumstances that control our
life, and the habits they engender, are very different. It is not
possible for us to have habits whose regularity shall so nearly convert
them into instincts as is the case with the English. We have to make our
lives out of the conditions about us, and these conditions change year
by year. The opportunities for acquiring wealth and social distinction
are so great that they stimulate us to great exertion.
Our schools give all classes an opportunity for education, and by
associating the poorer classes with the wealthier, implant in the
former, tastes for the life of the latter, and a keen ambition to attain
it, and this imposes upon the latter the necessity of struggling to
maintain their position. All our men are over-active; our girls are
educated along with the boys, and they not only acquire equal mental
power, but common intellectual tastes. Men and women are able to be, and
are, the companions of each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account