FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76  
77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   >>   >|  
ty that the quickening of conscience, the widening of sympathy, the influence of aggregations, the stimulus to desire and ambitions, should be accompanied by corresponding growth in knowledge and a love beyond the narrow confines of family and church. The cry of the woman emerging from a darkened past was "light, more light," and light was breaking. Gradually came the demand and the opportunity for education; for intellectual freedom for women as well as men; for cultivation of gifts and faculties. The early half of the century was marked by a crusade for the cause of the better education of women, as significant as that for the physical emancipation of the slave, and as devoted on the part of its leaders. Simultaneous with this were two other movements--the anti-slavery agitation, inspired by the new enthusiasm for human rights and carried on largely by the Quakers of both sexes. The woman's-rights movement was the natural outgrowth of the individual-sovereignty idea which the German philosophers had planted, and of which Mary Wollstonecraft was the first great woman-exponent. The keynote of the educational advance was struck by Emma Willard in 1821. She was followed by Mary Lyon, Mary Mortimer, and other brave women who dared to ask for women the cultivation of such faculties as they possessed, without let or hindrance. This demand has taken the century to develop and enforce. The work was so gradual that it is not yet, by any means, accomplished. Schools and colleges exist, but not yet equally, except here and there. They are, however, giving us an army of trained women who are bringing the force of knowledge to bear upon questions which have heretofore only enlisted sympathies. Simultaneously with this question of educational opportunity, has arisen an eager seeking after knowledge on the part of women who have been debarred from its enjoyment, or lacked opportunity for its acquisition. The knowledge sought was not that of a limited, sectional geography, or a mathematical quantity as taught in schools, but the knowledge of the history and development of races and peoples, of the laws and principles that underlie this development, and the place of the woman in this grand march of the ages. The woman has been the one isolated fact in the universe. The outlook upon the world, the means of education, the opportunities for advancement, had all been denied her; and that "community of feeling and sense of distrib
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76  
77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
knowledge
 

opportunity

 

education

 

faculties

 

century

 
educational
 
rights
 

demand

 
cultivation
 

development


giving

 

feeling

 
bringing
 

distrib

 
trained
 

hindrance

 
equally
 
community
 

gradual

 

accomplished


denied

 

colleges

 

Schools

 

enforce

 

develop

 

isolated

 

quantity

 

taught

 

universe

 

mathematical


outlook

 
geography
 

schools

 

history

 

principles

 
underlie
 

peoples

 
sectional
 

limited

 
sympathies

advancement
 

opportunities

 
Simultaneously
 
enlisted
 

questions

 

heretofore

 
question
 

arisen

 
enjoyment
 

lacked