The sense of class worthiness, that is to say of
status, of a honorific differentiation of the sexes according to
a distinction between superior and inferior intellectual dignity,
survives in a vigorous form in these corporations of the
aristocracy of learning. It is felt that the woman should, in all
propriety, acquire only such knowledge as may be classed under
one or the other of two heads: (1) such knowledge as conduces
immediately to a better performance of domestic service -- the
domestic sphere; (2) such accomplishments and dexterity,
quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic, as plainly come in under the
head of a performance of vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to
be unfeminine if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of
the learner's own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on the
learner's own cognitive interest, without prompting from the
canons of propriety, and without reference back to a master whose
comfort or good repute is to be enhanced by the employment or the
exhibition of it. So, also, all knowledge which is useful as
evidence of leisure, other than vicarious leisure, is scarcely
feminine.
For an appreciation of the relation which these higher seminaries
of learning bear to the economic life of the community, the
phenomena which have been reviewed are of importance rather as
indications of a general attitude than as being in themselves
facts of first-rate economic consequence.
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