Page 78 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER Two

again and again. As late as the I S 90s, French author Charles V a rigny
wrote that it was "strange instruction that, and strange schools, those, in
which girls and boys sat together." Like Bell, he concluded that women
emerged "sure of themselves, able to compete with men, and capable of
eliciting respect f r om men." 59
Again, gender mattered. Even though such f e male visitors as
Fredrika Bremer noted that "an important reformation in fe male school
is taking place in these W e stern states" largely due to the efforts of
ref ormer Catharine Beecher, they also noted many deficiencies. For
instance, fe male critics of fr ontier schools f o r women believed that the
existence of young ladies' schools, a skill in "accomplishments," and even
coeducation did not indicate the existence of meaningful education fo r
women. After visiting upstate New Y o rk in I S I S , Frances Wright, a
Scottish reformer, decided that although there had been strides in
women's education, it was still puerile. Until it became "the concern of
the state," she argued, women's education would offer little of real use
to women.6� Harriet Martineau added that women's education was
based on rote method rather than intellectual activity.61 She was espe­
cially incensed by a young ladies' school that she visited in New Madrid,
Missouri, during the late I S 30s. "There are public exhibitions of their
[the pupils'] proficiency, and the poor ignorant little girls take degrees,"
she wrote scathingly. "Their heads must be so stuffed with vainglory that
,,
there can be little room f o r anything else. 62 Fredrika Bremer was even
more vitriolic than Wright and Martineau on the subject of western
women's education. Visiting St. Louis in I S 50, she was disgusted to find
girls weakened by an" effeminate education." She charged that they lived
little more than a "harem life." She declared, "The harems of the W e st,
no less than those of the East, degrade the life and the consciousness of
,,
women. 63 Martineau complained that the only possible life course
open to women educated in this manner was marriage. 64
Of course, this direction was not totally inappropriate because in
the West women were in demand as wives. For generations, men had
emphasized the need fo r wives. Assuming, as did most people of the
era, that all women desired matrimony as soon as possible, western men
were f a r f r om subtle in their statements. One Norwegian man declared
the West an "EI Dorado" f o r women, whereas another advised his

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