We live in a time when the atmosphere is clouded
and our brains muddled with schemes for the higher
education of women, but none of these, so far as I
know, recognise the fact that when a woman gets
married her whole habit of life and her occupations
are changed. She has now to undertake duties and
responsibilities of which as a single woman she knew
nothing. What is there in the sentimentalism of
novels, or the school-teaching of the middle and
working classes, to fit them for these duties and
responsibilities ? The education of women for the
proper work of women is about as bad as it can be ;
they go to boarding-schools and colleges and learn all
about the transit of Venus and the Zanzibar contract,
and often get married without knowing how to boil a
potato ; their whole school life has been absorbed in
The Education of Girls.
29
showy accomplishments, and they grow up with a
contempt for those household duties which have ever
been the soul of domestic life. I am told that in
some schools ladies have been drilled in curtseying to
old velvet breeches and a red coat stuffed with straw ;
to step in and out of mock carriages ; and to mount
wooden horses, without ever having occasion to do
any of these things after they leave school. "What
a pity these poor creatures are obliged to eat every
year nearly half a ton of cooked food to keep them
alive. The tyranny of fashion, the hypocrisy of trying
to be thought what we are not, has turned many a
good cook into a poor dressmaker, or a seller of
sandwiches and bitter beer, because our pride attaches
a gentility to these occupations. A domestic servant
may not know much about spectrum analysis or
French, but if she knows how to make good stock
and to boil a potato she is an educated woman, and
will often command higher wages than a telegraph
clerk or a governess, and will make a better wife,
because her knowledge will enable her to turn every-
thing to the best account. In almost every country
in Europe ladies of the middle and upper classes take a
pride in cooking and arranging a dinner, and they are
certainly never ashamed of doing so, and will some-
times voluntarily explain at table the cause of any
failure. In several towns in Russia, Germany, France,
Switzerland, and Holland there are model kitchens,
some of them, I believe, partly supported by the
State, where neatness, order, and cleanliness regulate
the work; shining metal and clean porcelain sauce-
pans ornament the kitchen shelves ; and over a char-
3° Biichnaster s Cookery .
coal stove in forty minutes a lady will prepare a
capital little dinner. Educated cooking is as much a
science as chemistry. What you have to think about
and understand there is always associated with some-
thing which you have to do, and this pleasure of think-
ing and doing everyone must be conscious of who has
worked out with her own hands the plans which she
has thought over and matured in her own mind.
This exercise of a woman’s faculties is itself an educa-
tion of the highest order, and a woman is never so
amiable or beautiful as when she is useful. You must
not understand me as speaking against accomplish-
ments. I only wish to speak against the superficiality
and shams which too frequently pass for education,
and which unfit women to be wives and mothers.
Page 11
Presented as published in 1887. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
We live in a time when the atmosphere is clouded and our brains muddled with schemes for the higher education of women, but none of these, so far as I know, recognise the fact that when a woman gets married her whole habit of life and her occupations are changed. She has now to undertake duties and responsibilities of which as a single woman she knew nothing. What is there in the sentimentalism of novels, or the school-teaching of the middle and working classes, to fit them for these duties and responsibilities ? The education of women for the proper work of women is about as bad as it can be ; they go to boarding-schools and colleges and learn all about the transit of Venus and the Zanzibar contract, and often get married without knowing how to boil a potato ; their whole school life has been absorbed in
The Education of Girls.
showy accomplishments, and they grow up with a contempt for those household duties which have ever been the soul of domestic life. I am told that in some schools ladies have been drilled in curtseying to old velvet breeches and a red coat stuffed with straw ; to step in and out of mock carriages ; and to mount wooden horses, without ever having occasion to do any of these things after they leave school. "What a pity these poor creatures are obliged to eat every year nearly half a ton of cooked food to keep them alive. The tyranny of fashion, the hypocrisy of trying to be thought what we are not, has turned many a good cook into a poor dressmaker, or a seller of sandwiches and bitter beer, because our pride attaches a gentility to these occupations. A domestic servant may not know much about spectrum analysis or French, but if she knows how to make good stock and to boil a potato she is an educated woman, and will often command higher wages than a telegraph clerk or a governess, and will make a better wife, because her knowledge will enable her to turn everything to the best account. In almost every country in Europe ladies of the middle and upper classes take a pride in cooking and arranging a dinner, and they are certainly never ashamed of doing so, and will sometimes voluntarily explain at table the cause of any failure. In several towns in Russia, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland there are model kitchens, some of them, I believe, partly supported by the State, where neatness, order, and cleanliness regulate the work; shining metal and clean porcelain saucepans ornament the kitchen shelves ; and over a char-
3° Biichnaster s Cookery .
coal stove in forty minutes a lady will prepare a capital little dinner. Educated cooking is as much a science as chemistry. What you have to think about and understand there is always associated with something which you have to do, and this pleasure of thinking and doing everyone must be conscious of who has worked out with her own hands the plans which she has thought over and matured in her own mind. This exercise of a woman’s faculties is itself an education of the highest order, and a woman is never so amiable or beautiful as when she is useful. You must not understand me as speaking against accomplishments. I only wish to speak against the superficiality and shams which too frequently pass for education, and which unfit women to be wives and mothers.