The Education of American Girls, Considered in a series of essays
Contents: Education of American Girls by Anna C. Brackett; A Mother's Thought by Edna D. Cheney; The Other Side by Caroline H. Dall; Effects of Mental Growth by Lucinda H. Stone; Girls and Women in England and America by Mary E. Beedy; Mental Action and Physical Health by Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D.; Michigan University by Sarah Dix Hamlin; Mount Holyoke Seminary by Mary O. Nutting; Oberlin College by Adelia A.F. Johnston; Vassar College by Alida C. Avery, M.D.; Antioch College by Alida C. Avery, M.D. Letter from a German Woman by Mrs. Ogden N. Rood; and, Brackett’s Review (see: takedown) of Sex in Education.
Green cloth 8vo, 401pp + (6) publisher’s ads. Good with bubbling to the cloth, primarily the upper rear board. Light rubbing and bumping, gentle age toning. Bookplate of editor and publisher Chancy R. Barns to pastedown; gift inscription from St. Louis, 1875: “To an American Girl on her 37th birthday, from an American Boy who loves her.” The remnants of gilt on the upper cover may have been a name beginning “M,” but is too worn away to decipher ownership. See: Notable American Women, 1607–1950.
The book includes contributions by ten highly successful graduates, responding (sometimes directly) to the inflammatory book by Dr. Edward Clarke, Sex in Education: A Fair Chance for the Girls. Published in 1873, Clarke argued that women were not only physically unable to endure continuous study, but that higher education resulted in physical harm—their femininity and uteruses alike would atrophy, they could go insane, even die. Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi’s essay “Mental Action and Physical Health” precurses her 1876 prize-winning essay The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation which thoroughly refutes Clarke’s claims about the effect of education on women’s reproductive business.
Brackett’s assertions are not without cause for scrutiny—matters of dancing and the mental rot from “trashy books” (her words!) are among the many topics covered. But the rigor in her writing and her curation of essays, which come from a broad range of perspectives but are wholly centered around facts, is indisputable. A skeptical review by J. R. Herrick in the New England Journal of Education (March 1875, 133-135) quotes Clarke’s claim that a high proportion of women graduates “have been permanently disabled to a greater or less degree, or fatally injured” by their education; to which several women offer a rebuttal in statistics. The reviewer also noted Brackett’s response, “is one of the best, and shows that women can treat their own education wisely and with ability.” By comparison, Clarke’s writing is ironically hysterical, in multiple regards, though it enjoyed far more printings than Brackett’s. Anna Callender Brackett (1836-1911) is considered one of America’s first women philosophers. She was the first woman to head a normal school in the United States—appointed principal of the St. Louis Normal School in 1863 and serving there until 1872. She believed in high standards, setting entry requirements for normal school students which ultimately put her at odds with officials seeking to maximize the teaching workforce at minimum cost. In 1873 she moved to New York, establishing a private school for girls distinguished by rigorous academics and the absence of grading and written examination. The school was established with her former St. Louis assistant, Ida M. Eliot, who also became her domestic partner and co-parent of two adopted daughters.