Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/96

 would make women esteem themselves too highly, and that the vocation of motherhood and home-making would thereby suffer. All these fears have been disproved; but it was the work of the pioneer women to win the opportunity of demonstrating their folly.

The earliest amongst the educational reformers was Mary Anstell, who sought in the seventeenth century to establish a school for poor girls and women. Her work was much misunderstood and abused, as was the work of each pioneer in turn; but it had the effect of first introducing the new idea of female public-school education to the nation. Of the individuals who have laboured to promote the well-being of the poor through education, mention ought to be made of Elizabeth Fry to raise the condition of the women prisoners of Newgate, and of Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell, who, through their respective religious agencies, were the means of bringing a certain amount of education within the reach of poorer boys and girls, and who were the pioneers of the great national scheme of education in England which had its beginning in the Education Act of 1870.

Meantime the struggle for the higher education of women went on. Controversy had raged for a century round the question of the exact kind of learning suitable for women. Step by step the young ladies,