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The most persuasive argument used to combat this narrow attitude toward female education was woman's important role in training her children and maintaining high standards in the home. As rural society broke down in the second half of the nineteenth century and the spheres of the sexes became more clearly divided—income production for men and domestic life for women—the idea of a girl's being trained to fill her role with professional competence became more common. It took firm root in the Baptist mind because of the importance of the home in their theological scheme of ordering all aspects of one's life to fit a biblical pattern. They believed a man was the head of the family, but for all practical purposes, his wife carried out the day-to-day management of the home and family and she needed to do it well.
A short story written for the Baptist Standard in 1892 illustrated the growing acceptance of this rationale for providing women not just with minimal schooling, but with a college education. The story begins with Farmer Craighead insisting that his daughter Fannie can do no better than to follow her mother's example: unspoiled by
"grammar, and algebra, and Latin and such stuff,"Mrs. Craighead applies herself industriously to her cooking and housekeeping.
"Hifalutin 'cademies and colleges,"according to Farmer Craighead, were
"makin' butterflies out of gals what God intended to be helpmeets for their husbands."A visit to the home of the Craigheads' son George and his college-educated wife Telula opens the farmer's eyes to the advantages of an education for a housewife and mother. Telula, having easily mastered the techniques of cooking and cleaning, adds dimensions of refinement and intelligence to their homelife. Her children are thoughtfully trained and her influence for good is felt throughout their neighborhood.
"I'd rather risk an educated girl, though ignorant of the kitchen, if she had pluck,"George confides to his father;
"if anybody on earth needs to understand natural philosophy, Christianity, and hygiene, it's a housekeeper, a wife and mother."Predictably, Farmer Craighead, convinced that there was no more worthy recipient of a higher education than a young woman, sends Fannie to Baylor.
BS , July 14, 1892, p. 6; BS , July 21, 1892, p. 6.
Just as the domestic sphere was delegated solely to women in the nineteenth century, culture and the arts were also appropriated by them as men generally narrowed the range of male pursuits more to matters economic, scientific, and academic. The curricula of Baptist female academies reflected this affinity of women and the arts, and most schools offered instruction in drawing, painting, and both vocal and instrumental music. Student recitals and concerts were popular entertainments in the small towns where the schools were located. Besides the arts, domestic and otherwise, courses were given in religion, languages, math, science, and history, but the assumption was that the fruits of these academic pursuits
"would be largely hidden from the public in the modest lives of the girls as they. . .take their unpublished places in the sweet homes they are to help build."
BS , June 15, 1897, p. 10.
Homemaker and mother was clearly the vocation most nineteenth-century Baptist schoolgirls expected to fulfill; their other possibilities were limited to teaching school and performing music.
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