Victorian Men and Women's Fears of Educating Women

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Victorian fears of educating women were addressed in Martha Vicinus' novel, Independent Women. However I think that one very important issue not discussed in by Vicinus was the joint and separate fears of men and women of educating women. I also think that these fears were not realized entirely in her book and during the Victorian period. In order to determine if their fears were realized we need to look at the individual fears and also apply whose fears they were. I will examine the three view points that I think had the greatest fears and realizations of educating women; men and women together, then men and women's separate fears.

After reading Vicinus' book and attending lectures I realized that many Victorian fears of educating women were simply absurd. However they were widely believed by both men and women. While this might have been the result of a lack of education on women's part I could only hope that these ideas were not as widely believed by men as historians say they were. I think that men often played off of women's fears and that women backed these ideas because they were afraid of the alternative. For example the idea that educating women would cause them too much mental excursion and could cause them to become sterile seems almost laughable today. However it was something that was believed by both sexes during the Victorian period. Along with mental strain causing sterilization in women it was also believed that too much learning would unsex a woman. This idea was widespread, fanned by Social Darwinists concerned about "the decline of the species" and by doctors convinced that time spent studying would drain maternal energy. So by educating a woman you would have been unsexing her, draining her of her maternal energy and sterilizing her. During this time being a mother was one of the very few privileges that a woman could have, so without that opportunity what else would she have to live for? With these ideas floating around it was a wonder that women were even allowed to think for themselves, because who knows what harm that could have caused them. While many women pursued careers it came with a price. Vicinus used the example of Constance Maynard to articulate this. Maynard opened her own college in 1882, which had been a dream of hers for a long time.

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