are, it forms a chief part of their business. And what do ladies talk about at morning calls and evening parties? Children, servants, dress, and summer tours—all very good subjects in themselves, but so treated, partly through sheer ignorance, that as the conversation advances, tedium grows, till at last all signs of intelligence disappear, and the weary countenances too faithfully reveal the vacancy within. Of literature, women of the middle class know next to nothing. I am not speaking of religious literature, which is extensively read by some women, and to which they owe much. I speak of general literature, and of ordinary women, whose reading is for the most part confined to novels, and of novels not the best. The catalogue of a bookseller's circulating library, in which second-rate fiction largely preponderates, is a fair criterion of the range and the taste of middle-class lady readers. Newspapers are scarcely supposed to be read by women at all. When the Times is offered to a lady, the sheet containing the advertisements, and the births, deaths, and marriages, is considerately selected.
This almost complete mental blankness being the ordinary condition of women, it is not to be wondered at that their opinions, when they happen to have any, are not much respected. In those cases, indeed, where natural sagacity is a sufficient guide, women often form just conclusions, but manifestly, wherever a knowledge of facts is required, they are almost sure to be at fault. And very few questions of any importance can be decided without such knowledge. Of what is going on in the world women know little and care less. When political or social questions are forced upon their notice, they commonly judge them from some purely personal point of view. Right and wrong are elements which scarcely enter into the calculation.
In taking this melancholy view of the middle-class female mind, I am aware that I lay myself open to the attacks of two classes of objectors. By one class the picture will be condemned as a caricature; by the other it will be accepted as faithful, but it will be maintained that the defects pointed out are traceable, not to want of education, but to the natural inferiority of the female intellect. To the first I can only reply that I speak from personal knowledge, supported by the experience of other observers, and that, for all that has been said, I could, if space permitted, adduce abundant evidence. The second objection is not easy to meet, in the paucity of material for proof on either side. I believe I may say, however, on behalf of the advocates of female education, that any objector is welcome to assert anything he likes about the inferiority of the female intellect, if only he does not rate it so low as to be incapable of improvement by cultivation. We are not encumbered by theories about equality or inequality of mental power in the sexes. All we claim is that the intelligence of women, be it great or small, shall have full and free development. And we claim it not specially in the interest of women, but as essential to the growth of the human race. This is not the place to discuss whether women have, or ought to have, any
