Educate the Women

While searching for a pic for this posting I came across a site with beautiful art created for cigar box labels. Apparently they are quite collectible and a complete set is valued at $25,000. I thought the above label was fantastic and had to enclude it in my post.

Now, on with the posting. This weeks readings regarding the importance of educating women were interesting in not only what they had to say, but in the way they were presented. Everything from letters to essays are used to express the importance of education and how it is something that should not be restricted to men only.

In Daniel Defoe's essay, An Academy for Women, he is sympathetic to women, and feels that it is "barbarous" to deny women education. Defoe states that women are taught to read and possibly to write their names, but that is the extent of their education. He goes on to state that men continually upbraid women with folly, but are not prepared to provide them with the tools to better themselves. Defoe repeatedly says women are capable of being equal to or even better than men if they are given ample opportunity. He claims that the capacities of women are greater and their senses quicker than those of men, a somewhat radical thought at the time.

Defoe doesn't understand why society denies women the knowledge to use their natural abilities. "If Knowledge and Understanding had been useless additions to the Sex, God Almighty would never had given them Capacities..." . In An Academy For Women he proposes women be provided an educational system of their own. At times, the system he proposes is a bit absurd, but the intent is still clear. Women should be afforded the opportunity to become educated persons. We could consider his work to be some sort of foundational treatise for feminism or perhaps there is evidence suggesting that Defoe was, once more, simply lampooning his readers with well-timed prose.