Henry+Maudsley,+'Sex+in+Mind+and+in+Education'

Henry Maudsley was born on Feb.5 1835 near Giggleswick, Yorkshire. The following information is paraphrased from T. H. Turner’s biography of Maudsley on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He began studying medicine at age 17, following two years of classical studies at a dissenting academy, and graduated in five years with numerous accolades. He graduated with his Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA), MD, and various prizes in many fields ranging from surgery to comparative anatomy. He edited the //Journal of Mental Science// from 1863-1878. He devoted his career to ‘alienism’ - the Victorian term for the study and treatment of mental illness. Maudsley published 11 books and countless articles over the course of his life. His contemporaries frequently described him as “not a clubbable man” (Turner para. 5) meaning that he was not likely to be accepted into any sort of club due to his disagreeable personality. Maudsley was also “described by contemporaries as a positivist and a materialist” (Turner para. 4). In 1866, he married Anne Caroline but bore no children. Upon his death in 1918, Maudsley left £30,000 to the establishment of a teaching hospital for the treatment of mental illness in its early stages – London’s Maudsley Hospital.

The article “Sex in Mind and Education” was originally published June 1, 1874 in Volume XV of //The Fortnightly Review//. //The Fortnightly Review// was a widely circulated Victorian periodical founded by Anthony Trollope and a set of associates with the goal to “endeavor to further the cause of progress by illumination from many minds, with every contributor to speak on his own responsibility. In all matters of conduct and discussion the //Fortnightly Review// is to be impartial and absolutely honest, thoroughly eclectic, opening its columns to all opinions, without any pretensions to editorial consistency or harmony” (Trollope para. 3). Maudsley’s article addresses the issue of women’s education, and is centered on the idea that “women are marked by nature for very different offices in life from those of men” (198). The piece is written in sober prose aimed at the layman that appeals strongly to ethos and logos. The way he employs allusions to the Bible and //Paradise Lost// (both significant Christian texts) is particularly interesting due to his nature as a positivist. This shows a keen awareness of the audience he appeals to. He begins the article by placing great importance on the education of women, but decrees that there needs to be an alternative education system created to cater to women’s physiological differences. He highlights the menstrual cycle as having a potentially damaging effect on woman’s health, not to mention their ability to undergo the rigorous education system men are subject to; “when Nature spends in one direction, she must economize in another direction” (198). Maudsley defines adapted education as an education system that places priority on women’s “peculiar functions and to their foreordained work as mothers and nurses of children” (199). He places the intellectual development of women as second to their potential for role of caregiver. He claims “women do not and cannot stand on the same level as men” (199). By the end of the excerpt, his appeal to reason becomes, to the modern reader, rather ludicrous and unreliable. This is exemplified by his claim that “it would be an ill thing, if it should so happen, that we got the advantages of a quantity of female intellectual work at the price of a puny, enfeebled, and sickly race” (199). Maudsley’s comment, however fallible today, certainly held sway with the populace due to a combination of his ethos and Victorian gender norms.

Maudsley’s article provoked a vehement response, also in //The Fortnightly Review//, from the eminently qualified Elizabeth Garrett Anderson – she was the first woman to be “awarded an MD from the University of Paris” (Leighton and Surridge 200). Her reply consisted of the points that: there is need for “adoption of a common standard of examination for boys and girls” (201), there is little to no risk of harm in disregarding physiological functions in daily life, and both men and women undergo strenuous physiological changes during adolescence. Maudsley’s article is emblematic of the constrictive Victorian idea of sexuality. Sexuality, in the eyes of Maudsley and many others, referred strictly to gender and the supposedly natural gender constructions. His viewpoint perpetuated separate-spheres ideology from a basis of scientific rationality.

What insights (scientific or otherwise) were responsible for the decline of separate spheres ideology and the associated gender constructions? JW/Fall2014/UVic/ENGL387

Works Cited Anderson, Elizabeth G. “Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply.” //The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Prose 1832-1901.// Ed. Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2012. 80-86. Print.

Leighton, Mary Elizabeth and Lisa Surridge, eds. //The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Prose 1832-1901.// Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2012. Print.

Maudsley, Henry. “Sex in Mind and Education.” //The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Prose 1832-1901.// Ed. Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2012. 80-86. Print.

Trollope, Anthony. "An Explanation of the New Series." //The Fortnightly Review//. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.

Turner, T.H. “ Maudsley, Henry (1835–1918). ” //Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//. Oxford University Press, 2004. Sept 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.