CHAPTER IV - THINGS AS THEY MIGHT BE,

Summary

SUPPOSING so much to be granted, it will be asked, What can be done? Clearly, girls cannot be kept at school indefinitely till they marry. When they leave school, say at eighteen, what are they to do next? The answer must chiefly depend on circumstances. Where the resources of the parents are such that there is a reasonable certainty of an abundant provision for the future, an education corresponding with that given by the universities to young men—in other words, ‘the education of a lady,’ considered irrespectively of any specific uses to which it may afterwards be turned—would appear to be the desideratum. And clearly ‘the education of a lady’ ought to mean the highest and the finest culture of the time. The accurate habits of thought and the intellectual polish by which the scholar is distinguished, ought to be no less carefully sought in the training of women than in that of men. This would be true, even if only for the sake of the charm which high culture gives to social intercourse, a charm attainable in no other way.