An Address Delivered Before the Frederick Female Seminary at its Annual Commencement, July 11th, 1850.

“The paths of science far too steep and rugged…”

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No women allowed in the chemistry lab aka “STEM for me, but not for thee.” 1850 commencement address delivered at Frederick Female Seminary, an all-girls school founded in Frederick, Maryland in 1840.

Initially, Rev. Thomas C. Porter, professor of natural science at Marshall College, [now Franklin & Marshall], appears in favor of women’s equality:

“To dream of woman, therefore, as an inferior, does her infinite wrong. Let any people treat her as such, and they must sooner or later degenerate into barbarism. Can her rights be invaded and not the rights of all at the same time?” (p7)

But this statement seems to be a metaphorical Trojan Horse for later words that followed:

“The resorts of men, the work-shop, the counting-house, the bar, the legislative hall, are far too boisterous; the paths of science far too steep and rugged. Her moral and intellectual culture should be something different from that of man. Whatever the vehement advocates of her so-called rights may say, the true aim of her education is not to make lawyers, preachers, physicians, statists, and philosophers, not to fashion presidents and governors, not to train up scholars, who may produce works, like the Novum Organum of Bacon, the Mechanique Celeste of La Place, or the Commentaries of Blackstone. Such rivalry were vain; for though a queen may sit upon a throne, yet must she rule by her ministers; though brilliant names like those of Miss Herschell and Mrs. Somerville may adorn the lists of science, yet are they rare instances, not to be cited as examples for imitation. (p13)

She is best fitted to excel in all those branches, which tend to improve the imagination, to refine the taste, and to polish the manners. To collect choice flowers, to weave garlands of Poesie, to write letters sparkling with sentiment, wit and fancy, to execute delicate works of embroidery, to enchant all listeners by the pathos of her song, to call forth from the strings of the instrument tones of unearthly harmony, to shine conversation, in one word, to reflect the image of her beauty…

If there were ever a day to throw a shoe at a speaker, the day of July 11, 1850 was probably a decent one. In October, the first National Women’s Right’s Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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