Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic

Conclusion: Education, Equality, or Difference

164 Conclusion Education, Equality, or Difference Pray you excuse me, if I have gone too far In telling you what we’ve learnt: and what we are We’ll strive to show, if you will deign to hear us; If worthy, let your approbation cheer us.1 Miss A. M. Burton read this poem at commencement exercises held at Susanna Rowson’s Female Academy in October 1803. The poem was published in the Boston Weekly Magazine, making Burton ’s acquisition of education at once a lived experience and a literary representation . The interplay between the personal and prescriptive was also reflected in the poem itself, which asserted women’s steadfast determination to acquire and demonstrate knowledge (“we’ll strive to show”),along with persistent concerns about male reception (“if you will deign to hear us”). Such worries about male criticism were not unfounded, but the story is more complicated than that. As early national women acquired education, many advocates expressed confidence that women would easily achieve a state of near, or mere, equality with men. “By giving mind to the fair sex,” as one author asserted, “we shall make them equal to any thing that is attainable by rational beings.” Another essayist proudly noted that human qualifications, “when properly cultivated and exerted, put men and women nearly on an equal footing with each other, and share the advantages and disadvantages of life impartially between them.”2 EDUCATION, EQUALITY, OR DIFFERENCE 165 Left unresolved were more precise discussions of what it meant for women to live merely as the equals of man—how near an equal footing was possible , given the legal, political, and economic realities of early American life? Many women succeeded, as one essayist noted, in achieving “moments of transient equality,” demonstrating intellectual “ability equal to ours.”3 But those moments remained transient. After promoting women’s intellectual capacities and celebrating their importance to civic society,prescriptive writers failed to advocate for women’s legal, political, and professional equality with men. Unable to concede the possibility of women’s full participation in political and economic spheres, social and political thinkers instead relied on the murky notion of mere equality in an effort to contain the potentially liberating aspects of their own rhetoric. Educated women learned to settle for social and cultural expressions of “approbation” rather than more expansive opportunities to fully utilize their intellectual capacities. Despite these tensions, early national Americans clearly recognized that women’s acquisition of education represented a critical step in their path to equality. Yet more than fifty years later, the subject of women’s intellectual equality remained open to debate. In an 1840 essay published in Godey’s Lady Book, author Mary Hale echoed sentiments expressed half a century earlier, insisting, “with proper cultivation, with the enjoyment of equal advantages, the intellectual attainments of women may equal those of men.” Over the course of fifty years, educated women had proven their intellectual capacities in ever-increasing numbers and in an ever-expanding variety of subjects. “Has the short space of a half century given woman new powers,” Hale wondered, “or is the spirit of our institutions more favourable to an enlarged cultivation of those she already possessed?” According to Hale, the answer was obvious: expanded access to educational opportunities had clearly led to women’s increased attainment of knowledge and understanding.4 Women had repeatedly demonstrated that they possessed intellectual capacity equal to that of men; why, then, did Hale still have to defend this assertion? Moreover, why had expanded access to education not led to even more expansive opportunities for women? In 1840, when Hale’s article was published, only a handful of colleges admitted women. The clergy, law, and legislature all remained closed to women. Women continued to occupy “a less public station” than men, not from lack of intellectual capacity but from lack of access and opportunity. Despite her ardent support of women ’s educational capacities, Hale largely accepted these constraints as the will of Providence. Yet her essay also pointed to a more secular explanation— the continued criticism leveled against “a literary lady.” Any woman who appeared too interested in education risked being tainted with the stain of 166 CONCLUSION Figure 8. “The Circulating Library,” 1831. This woman could be a pedant, as she fashions books from the library into an affected display of learning. The Library Company of Philadelphia. “pedantry, self-sufficiency and...