Read Bluestockings for Free Online Page A

wise enough to mend it. 16
    Surprisingly, those Happy Days were not so far ahead.

2. Working in Hope
    I want girls educated to match their brothers. We work in hope. 1
    In 1872, two generations before Trixie Pearson went to Oxford, a young woman from a very different background prepared to make history. Constance Louisa Maynard was a pioneer of Girton College, and the first woman to read philosophy (or ‘moral science’) at Cambridge. No women actually graduated from Cambridge until 1948; they just passed through the university as more or less welcome guests, sitting the requisite exams (if they chose to) without the right to formal recognition. At this stage, that hardly mattered. To Constance and her peers, unable to imagine being awarded a degree, it was the work that counted; the means rather than the end.
    Despite her independent spirit, and the fact that she was twenty-three when she planned to go to college, Constance still needed her parents’ permission. The omens were not good: she was considered whimsical and rhapsodic, and was rarely taken seriously by her family. She had little formal schooling behind her and no need to make a living; why (argued Mr and Mrs Maynard) should she suddenly resolve to join some dubious establishment purporting to offer a university education to ladies? Reputation was more valuable an asset in life than learning.
    At worst, the college was described as an ‘infidel place’; 2 at best it sounded more like something out of Tennyson’s Princess , with a comic cast of ‘sweet girl graduates’, ‘prudes forproctors’ and ‘dowagers for deans’, 3 clamouring uselessly after learning like dainty little moths at a lamp. It was hardly the sort of place a respectable man would commit his daughter.
    Constance, however, was determined. Her father was the easier parent to manage, so choosing her time carefully, and wearing her prettiest smile, she asked him – ‘because learning is a beautiful thing’ – if she might go to Girton. His initial response was not promising. He laughed. ‘I say, Conse, this is something new… But what’s the use ? What’s it for?’ Constance then embarked on a treatise about the soul-enhancing properties of Greek, philosophy, and science. Papa murmured something about staying at home and being like her sisters, before pulling out a trump card by offering to buy her a new pony if she would abandon altogether the idea of Cambridge.
    At last, Constance managed to bring him round. He was prepared to allow her to leave home, he wearily agreed, and to pay her fees – but only if Mother concurred. Mother did, but on strict conditions. Constance was to be on her guard at all times at Girton: it was likely to be a ‘worldly’ place, and its inhabitants ‘not at all our sort’. She must not degrade herself by taking university exams, nor stay longer than a single year. When she returned home, she must never entertain the idea of becoming a teacher or entering some other equally wretched employment. She must treat the whole enterprise as a long visit to slightly unsuitable friends, and when it was over, do her best to forget all about it. ‘And I promised anything,’ remembered Constance, ‘everything!’ 4
    Why should someone like Constance have been so desperate to go to university? Florence Nightingale, like most intelligent young gentlewomen, knew the answer to that. Florence was bred to be passive in all things. She was shownhow to read, and more, but never taught to learn independently, nor explore new ideas. She was even discouraged from choosing her own books, ‘and what is it to be “read aloud to”? The most miserable exercise of the human intellect. Or rather, is it any exercise at all? It is like lying on one’s back, with one’s hands tied and having liquid poured down one’s throat.’ She was force-fed received wisdom, and it choked her. ‘Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity – these three – and a place in society