August 25, 1874 — Lecture Hall, Ladies’ Collegiate School, Belfast, United Kingdom

It is with no small pleasure and gratification that I find myself once more, after an interval of two years and a half, addressing a Belfast audience as representative of the Women’s Education Union, on behalf of the objects for which the Union was constituted. I need not recapitulate what those objects are, since the printed statement of them is, I hope, in the hands of every one present, but I will as briefly as possible tell you what has been done towards accomplishing them both within and without the Union, that you may be better able to measure what still remains to be done, and give your support advisedly to the resolution before you. With regard to the first object on the list, the establishment of the Journal of the Women’s Education Union, which provides a medium of communication between all workers in the cause, and a means of diffusing the information communicated, has aided, and will, we believe, aid more and more, in bringing about that organised co-operation so essential to our success. Our second object, — the establishment of good schools at a moderate cost for girls of all classes above those provided for by the Elementary Education Act, — is being carried out by the Girls’ Public Day — schools Company (Limited), which was formed by the Union for that purpose, and which, although it has existed only two years, has already two schools at work, — that at Durham House, Chelsea, numbering 90 pupils, and that at Notting Hill, numbering over 80; a third will be opened at Croydon in September; a fourth at Norwich in January next; and probably a fifth may be opened a little later in St. John’s Wood, London, while movements are on foot in three other localities in London, and also in Oxford, to induce the Company to start similar schools there. Huddersfield and Manchester have established schools of the same kind , independently of the Union. That at Huddersfield preceded the formation of the School Company. Plymouth has established one also on an independent basis, but in connection with the Union. Here in Belfast you have in this noble building, so kindly lent to us to day, a school offering the same advantages of first-rate teaching at moderate fees; and here individual energy and enterprise, conducted with rare courage and ability, have done what elsewhere has been the result of co-operative effort. I can-not doubt that Belfast will appreciate the inestimable boon conferred upon it by the self-devotion and enlightened zeal of Mrs. Byers, and make her success commensurate with her deserts. Before leaving the subject of schools, I must mention that the cardinal principle of our schools, that they should be open to all without distinction of class or creed, has worked thoroughly well. No single complaint has arisen from the mixture of classes, and we have no symptoms of a religious difficulty. I should add, that we have endeavoured to attain the fourth object on our list, — the training of teachers, by making each of our schools a training school, and having a class of student teachers studying the theory and practice of their profession under the head mistress. As the second resolution deals with another of our objects, the extension to women of the means of higher education beyond the school period, I will only mention that a practical step has been taken by the Union to encourage young women to seek that higher education by offering scholarships to successful candidates at the University examinations open to girls and women, to enable them to carry on their studies for another year; and I am happy to be able to state that the Union scholarship awarded by the Queen’s University of Ireland was won by a pupil of this very institution, — the Ladies’ Collegiate School.

I will now address myself, for the few minutes which I trust you will still allow me, to consider the last subject on our list, — that which aims at improving the tone of public opinion on the subject of education itself, and on the national importance of the education of women. This, which stands last on our list, is yet the first in importance, and lies, indeed, at the root of the whole matter. If we could work into the public mind the conception of education as the external direction given to the growth and development of the whole human being, physical, moral, and intellectual, from infancy to maturity, and the training of all his faculties so as to get the best work out of them, and enable him to make the best of himself under the circumstances of his life; if we could also establish a standard, an ideal, of what that best is, and get it recognised that the paramount objects of education are, as I said yesterday, the training of the reason to form right judgments, of the will to obey the law of duty, of the imagination to conceive, of the heart to love and worship pure and noble ideals, finding their sum and perfection in God, and that a man or woman is well or ill educated just as he or she approaches or departs from that standard, then it would follow as an inevitable consequence that education is equally important, equally necessary to every human being, male and female, poor or rich, peasant or prince. It would also follow that just in proportion as men and women are well or ill educated in that sense, they will do their work in life well or ill, whether the work be that of the housemaid or the Queen, that of the manual labourer or the statesman; and that just in proportion as a nation is well or ill educated, to that extent will that nation prosper or decay. Again, if we could work into the public mind a true ideal of womanhood, a standard by which to test all the different theories of what a woman should be and do, we should set at rest all the angry controversies on the subject, — growing, I am sorry to say, more and more acrimonious every day, — stop, as far as that is possible, the floods of foolish talk about what is feminine or unfeminine, and be able to direct all our energies towards realising through education the ideal we had set before us. Now, what should this ideal be? I think the answer will depend on the position assigned to woman in the scale of creation. Is she a complete human being, the co-equal, and partner of man in all that constitutes true humanity as expressed in the words of Scripture: — “God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”? or is woman only the spare rib of a man; an inferior and incomplete human creature, formed for his use and pleasure, a nought which has no value till another figure is placed before it? I need scarcely tell you that I hold the first to be the true view of woman, and that the second has, consciously or unconsciously, with more or less clearness and definiteness, been held by men in general from the days of Eve till now, and is at the bottom of all their modes of dealing with women in the family, in society, and in legislation. And sorely have too many women avenged the humiliation by using the only power conceded to them, the power all their education has been directed to strengthen, — their power over the senses and passions of men, to degrade, to frivolise, to turn from noble ends and worthy efforts, the manhood that had so failed to recognise their womanhood, the men who sought them as females, not women. It is against this view we must strive to the utmost. We are always hearing in scorn or in approbation of woman’s rights. Let us contend for her right of humanity, her right to be considered a free and responsible agent with a life of her own, a soul of her own, objects and interests of her own, which she may legitimately pursue, independently of the objects and interests of men. Let us also contend that the special function of motherhood which nature has assigned to her, gives us the qualities which constitute the perfect mother as those which constitute the perfect woman; and those are the highest qualities of the human mind and soul, requiring to develope them the highest training. Once we have got this view of woman’s position and functions in the world generally accepted, everything else we want will follow as a matter of course; the education of women will rise to equal importance with that of men; we shall hear no more of the deficiencies of school provision which this resolution expresses; and we shall, I trust, see women awaking to a truer sense of the dignity of their womanhood, of the necessity of serious preparation for the noble functions of motherhood, and men and women walking together as true helpmates in all the work of this world, striving, not in harsh rivalry, but in harmonious co-operation to make of it a better world than it is now, to join in realising our daily prayer, that the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Source: Paper on The Study of Education as a Science by Mrs. Wm. Grey, Read at the Meeting of the British Association at Belfast, to Which is Added The Speech Delivered by Mrs. Grey on the 25th August 1874 also at Belfast (London: William Ridgway, 1874), pp. 20-26.