THE EFFECT OF THE NEW CAREERS ON WOMEN'S HAPPINESS.
MSS ALFORD'S success in the Classical Tripos following so closely on Miss Fawcett's Senior Wranglership, and two other less brilliant Wranglerships gained by women, :makes it very natural to ask what will be the probable effect of the new careers, the new ambitions which are opening on every side to women, on their happiness. We do not know that the answer to this question, so far as we can give one, in the least involves the answer to the further question whether :a rapidly increasing number of women are likely to enter upon the new careers; or whether, even if they are not the happier 'for them, it may not be still, in a large number of cases, their duty to take up the new duties and responsibilities opened to them, for:we are always seeing instances in which- large numbers' compete for positions of trust and responsibility which diminish rather than increase the happiness of those who enter upon them ; and it is clear 'that it is often a duty to accept a trust which, instead of adding to the happiness of him who accepts it, greatly constrains and weights the 'ease and freedom of his life. No less legitimate inference could be drawn from a rush for any career than that the career so much coveted is one which confers special happiness on those who attain it. Look at the multitudes who covet a Parliamentary career, and the exceeding few who can be said to enjoy it. Look at the multitudes who appear to covet knighthood, or even any inferior social distinction, and the extraordinarily little advantage, beyond additional opportunities for expense, which such distinctions bring. It would be about as wise to regard the swarming of bees as a sign of the happiness of the hive, as to judge from the crush and competition for new careers that those careers open up special enjoyment. And certainly it is not true that the natural shrinking from a career of responsibility and anxiety at all implies that it is not a duty to enter upon it. Capacity to discharge a duty well, by no means necessarily implies much enjoyment in the discharge. On the other hand, it is really often true that the recoil from it is the best test of the true apprecia- tion of what it involves,—the real origin, we suppose, of the notion that nolo episcopari is one of the best indications of the capacity for episcopal rule. It is very rarely that a duty is ideally discharged without modesty. And yet it is often modesty which renders the discharge of it the severest burden. We should not in the least argue, from the number of feminine candidates for high University or other distinctions that those distinctions are likely to confer great happiness on those who succeed, nor should we conclude that because the successful candidates did not gain and did not even expect to gain such happiness, it might not still be their bounden duty to aspire to those distinctions and to the careers that they open. If it is true that noblesse oblige, it is equally true that capacity obliges, that talent obliges, that genius obliges. Indeed, some one has said that " Le droit derive de la capacity," and still truer is it that " Le devoir derive de la, capacity," but no one has said that happiness always results from capacity; indeed, the higher the sphere and the more lofty the duty, the less true is it that happiness results from taking up the burden which duty imposes. Hence, when we ask ourselves whether women are likely, on the whole, to be happier for the new careers, we do not for a moment suppose that the answer to that question in the least involves any answer to the question whether or no women will, as a matter of fact, press into these careers, or any answer to the question whether or no it will be the duty of many women to take up these careers who might nevertheless be all the happier for a different and less distinguished life. The question as to the happiness they will bring has an independent interest of its own, quite apart from any inferences which might result from the answer given to it, bearing upon either the popu- larity of such careers for women, or the right and duty of entering upon them.
It is, of course, very doubtful whether happiness does generally increase in proportion to the increase in the scale of life's interests and duties. It is generally thought, and, we imagine, thought truly, that a really happy child- hood is about the happiest part of life ; that the responsi- bilities and ambitions, and even the large interests which come with maturity, though no man or woman worthy to enter into them would ask to be relieved of them, do very materially lessen the mere happiness of life. Indeed, many people venture to believe (though on very little that can be called evidence) that the happiness of some of the lower animals, a dog, for instance, that is well cared for and heartily attached to its master or mistress, is more un- adulterated than even the happiness of a happy child. But here, of course, we draw inferences from the most dubious indications, as none of us can really appreciate what the happiness of a different race of creatures amounts to. But most of us know by our own experience that the enlargement of the sphere of duty is by no means equivalent to the enlargement of happiness, and is very much the reverse when we undertake what is fully up to, or, worse still, a little beyond, the limits of our physical or intellectual or moral strength. It is only when our inclinations and duties are all but identical, and when our duties are well within the limits of our powers, that an enlargement in the sphere of those duties usually adds to our happiness. No doubt these lady-wranglers and class-women will have felt, and will continue to feel, the genuine enjoyment which always accompanies the first development and exercise of quite new powers. Miss Fawcett will thoroughly enjoy co- operating with the greater mathematicians in working out new mathematical problems. Miss Alford will thoroughly enjoy the sympathy and respect which scholars and philolo- gists will show her, and the delight of entering thoroughly into a new world of literary interest and achievement. But the new sphere will probably bring new duties which will by no means be so enjoyable. Suppose any of these new learners finds that her first use of her distinction must be to add to her resources by teaching, and that teaching happens to be to her very far indeed from an enjoyment ? That has certainly been the lot of thousands of men who have gained the high prizes in mathematical and classical careers ; and though not a few have enjoyed the teacher's life, thousands of them have bitterly lamented over the slavery of teaching, a slavery which they could never have incurred but for their aptitude in learning. Women will have just the same experience, and, indeed, it may to many of them be even more burdensome, for as yet at least, unpalatable intellectual toil is probably easier to men than to women. Again, to many of these new scholars it may seem a duty to undertake some of those laborious tasks which have strained all the energies of the strongest men,— like the compilation of cyclopEedias or dictionaries, or syste- matic treatises requiring continuous application from day to day for years together, and the organisation and criticism of a vast quantity of routine work. Will the work of intellectual mill-horses suit the tenderer and more sensitive natures of women ? Yet it will inevitably fall upon some of those who are competent to discharge these duties, and who will not see any other means of earning the incomes which they will soon come to feel that it is their duty to earn for those less able than themselves to add to the resources of the family group to which they belong. We think it all but certain that the more mechanical departments of high intellectual toil will exhaust women even more than they exhaust men of the same calibre, and yet that they will not feel that they can in good conscience avoid them, where they are the most obvious means of adding to the resources of their families. Undoubtedly the inevitable consequence of finding a new capacity for laborious duties will be the undertaking of a great many laborious duties which will render women's lives a heavy burden to them in countless cases, as it has, of course, rendered men's lives a burden to them. Just as childhood escapes some of the most serious pangs of life by virtue of its incapacity to bear the burdens which inflict those pangs, so women have hitherto escaped some of the most serious pangs of life by reason of the incapacity to bear the burdens which inflict those pangs, —an incapacity which is now rapidly vanishing away.
As we have already said, we do not for a moment suppose that considerations of this kind either will influence the majority of women, or ought to influence them, in evading the higher class of intellectual responsibilities which they are now preparing themselves to assume. They will say, as men have said, that the capacity brings the duty with it, and that it is not their business to ask whether the duty will make them happier or less happy. And in many cases, doubtless, it will make them happier, and a great deal happier. Where the back is equal to the burden, and too often where it is not, women have not shrunk from bearing the heaviest burdens. In some countries, as we all know, women have even done the physical drudgery from which the selfishness of man has shrunk. And of course it will be the same with intellectual drudgery. If, as is generally supposed, women are oftener unselfish than men, they will oftener risk bearing intellectual burdens to which they are not equal ; in other words, they will oftener slave themselves to death with a kind of work for which they are not well fitted. But, at all events, it is well that they should open their eyes to the fact that their new careers are not mere prizes, mere additions to the happiness of their lives, but will involve in a very large number of cases the taking up of a sort of independence which will be very irksome to them, the more irksome the more love of leaning on others
there is in them, and the performance of tasks which must often exhaust their strength, and more or less exclude thou from the exercise of that happy and gentle vigilance for the- well-being of others for which their nature appears specially. to fit them.
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