age.”[6] It is perhaps of interest to us to note that the first hospital for lepers in England was founded by a woman, “good Queen Maud,” in 1101 at S. Giles’ on the East.
The rule of an abbey or a priory called for no mean business capacity on the part of their heads, and as a rule the abbess and prioress were women of great business and administrative ability. Before the Norman Conquest nearly all the nunneries founded in England were abbacies, subsequently priories were the most usual foundations, as according to feudal law women were unable to hold property.
The latter half of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are renowned throughout history for their women, who, occupying foremost positions in the government, were clever, cultured, and liberal-minded. One has but to mention the names of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the “Lady Margaret” of Oxford and Cambridge; of Leonore d’Este, the mother of equally famous daughters, Isabella and Beatrice d’Este; Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francis I., and Isabella of Castile, to conjure up before one’s eyes the whole procession of the proud and capable women of these days.
“One and all have been fruitful as successive stages of growth, yet they can never recur, and only the fanatic or visionary could wish that they 24 should recur, for each is narrow and insufficient from the standpoint of a later age.”
In England “the women who were the mothers of the men who created the great Elizabethan epoch were almost without exception brought up in nunnery schools”[7] and, alas, the destruction of the nunneries and the rise of the Puritan spirit sounded the death-knell of women’s education. After the Reformation the position of woman was peculiarly degrading; in the eyes of the law she possessed practically no status, and “the old chivalrous feeling for woman seems to have faded out with the romance of the Middle Ages—she now figured as the legal property of man, ‘the safeguard against sin,’ the bearer of children ad infinitum.”
So woman was left once more to sink back into a slough of despond, until with the end of the eighteenth century there arose the humanitarian movement and the gradual awakening of woman to the sense of her responsibility, with the inevitable corollary of her rightful position as the social equal of man.
If these ideals are to be realised, woman must recognise her responsibilities and act accordingly. She has proved herself a more than apt student in all the liberal studies, she has practically forced the door of nearly all the professions, now she must realise that she must apply her higher learning to what is probably the most difficult profession of all, the management of the home, or in other 25 words she must see that the knowledge she has acquired be adapted and turned to practical aims.
Up to the present time the conduct of the home has been regulated purely by rule of thumb methods; if however in the future it can only be administered with the same method and scientific exactitude as prevail in other great business enterprises, the drudgery of housekeeping will diminish and woman will cease to be a slave to household duties. She will have more time to devote to the cultivation of her own mind, and thus, while becoming a more real companion to man, she will be free to take a more enlightened interest in the education and development of her children.
“Incidentally this may go to prove that a sound knowledge of the household sciences and arts may serve, not to tie a woman more to the storeroom and kitchen, but to enable her to get better results with the expenditure of less time and energy, by enabling her to apply to everything simple and complex within the household the master-mind, instead of the mind of the uncertain amateur.”
Her responsibilities are great not only as an individual but as a member of the community to which she belongs; and if she is to fulfil these responsibilities in respect to the home, she cannot do so without a thorough scientific preparation.
The home is the “cradle of life,” it was the birthplace of those industries which to-day form the great centres and constitute the means of livelihood for millions. In some of these there is reason to believe that woman took her share as 26 originator. With the process of time, these primitive practices have grown into the great industries and arts of to-day, yet it is still to the woman that the call comes to cultivate and use her taste in these matters, so that when it falls to her to be responsible for the decoration and furnishing of a house, she may be able to choose in all departments of life what is the best, to the everlasting benefit of herself and her family, both physically and morally.
If man be the producer and distributer of wealth, woman is certainly the director of consumption. On her rests the responsibility of expending wisely and well the money entrusted to her for the nutrition and clothing of her family, and how can this be adequately fulfilled if she have no real knowledge of the subject beyond what she is able to pick up as she goes along, a method detrimental to all concerned? Little would be thought of any business house which entrusted its most delicate operations to inexperienced buyers, or of any municipality which allowed its affairs to be conducted by an amateur. Far less would be heard of misery, poverty, and ill-health if the art of buying and preparing food, for instance, were properly understood by those whom it most concerns.
Again, the chief racial responsibility falls on woman; it is just in the most precious years of childhood that her influence is so potent, and it is the mother, who besides helping to sow all the ethical and spiritual seeds, should safeguard the perfect physical condition of her children, in 27 order that an unimpaired vitality and constitution be handed on from generation to generation. No proverb is truer than “Mens sana in corpore sano”; the two go hand in hand together, and their accomplishment is the proud privilege of the woman.
From the family flows the life of the nation, and the power to guide it aright lies largely in the hands of women, whether they be married or single. With the married woman her own family comes first of all, and then through it her duty as a citizen; the unmarried woman’s duties as a citizen are manifold, and each year they increase and expand. Nearly all the activities of public life are open to her; for instance she may sit on County Councils, Municipal Councils, District Councils, urban and rural Parish Councils,[8] 28 Boards of Guardians, &c.; in fact in the growing field of social work, her services are being more and more recognised as indispensable, and it is impossible in a few words to enumerate all the possibilities of service which lie before her, both professional and philanthropic.
Consequently if a healthy nation is desired, the women of a country must be educated both academically and scientifically. “If women are to be fit wives and mothers they must have all, perhaps more, of the opportunities for personal development that men have. All the activities hitherto reserved to men must be open to them, and many of these activities, certain functions of citizenship, for example, must be expected of them. Moreover, whatever the lines may be along which the fitness of woman to labour will be experimentally determined, the underlying position must be established that, for the sake of the individual and race character, she must be a producer as well as a consumer of social values.”[9]
Now how is this most desirable end to be attained? The succeeding papers will deal with the subject in extenso; here can only be briefly indicated the scope and purpose of the majority.
An eminent authority tells us that “the objects of nature may be designated as the objective point of view. It is the standpoint of biology and affords the natural conditions for the successful 29 investigation of the laws of life, not only of the lower organisms but of the human race as well.”[10] This immediately demonstrates the vital necessity that women should know something of these fundamental laws of life, which biology alone can teach, in order that she may apply these to her ordinary daily life and recognise them as operating in all her surroundings.
The transition from this stage to the next is an easy one. Woman having learnt the laws of life, will immediately view her economic responsibilities with a clearer eye and fuller understanding. It is true that throughout