And in pursuing the
very essential subject of "Clothes and Fabrics" we have not
infrequently found ourselves in the midst of spacious preliminary
dissertations on the structure of the loom, beginning with that
which was used by the Anthropenguins.
Now we would not for the world speak disparagingly of looms or
huts. We have ourselves examined some of them in the Hull House
Museum in Chicago and in the woods of Canada, and have found them
instructive. We suggest only that college life is short, that the
college curriculum is crowded, and that (except possibly for
those students who are especially interested in anthropology or
in industrial evolution) it would surely be a misfortune to learn
the Simianian hut and to miss Rossetti's "House of Life," or to
get the impression that as a "cultural background" for
shirtwaists the Anthropengruinian loom can really compete with
Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus."
If this occasional tendency toward exaggerating the importance of
drain-pipes, window-curtains, and door-mats were to grow strong,
and if girls, as a class, should be required to spend any large
proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology
of feminine implements and tasks while the boys were still in the
current of the affairs of the race, we should indeed want
President Thomas of Bryn Mawr to repeat on a thousand lecture
platforms her indignant assertion of the fact that "nothing more
disastrous for women, or for men, can be conceived of than
specialized education of women as a sex.
Pages:
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365