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Introduction
Many social ills, wrote pioneering suffragist Emily Davies, have their origins in a lack of imagination, that gift of empathy which smooths away much of the roughness of our common life. There was more to be gained from letting a woman use her imagination as an MP, than from teaching her quadratic equations merely so she can shine more brightly at a dinner-party.
EVERY now and then some one recommends mathematics for girls as a curb to the imagination. It might be as well first to ascertain whether the imaginations of commonplace girls want to be curbed; whether, on the contrary, they do not want rather to be awakened and set to work, with something to work upon.
The business of the imagination is not merely to build castles in the air, though that is, no doubt, a useful and commendable exercise; it has other and most important duties to perform. For, manifestly, an unimaginative person is destitute of one of the main elements of sympathy. Probably, if the truth were known, it would be found that injustice and unkindness are comparatively seldom caused by harshness of disposition. They are the result of an incapacity for imagining ourselves to be somebody else. Any one who has tried it must be aware of the enormous difficulty of conceiving the state of mind of a pauper or a thief.
Précis
Victorian campaigner for women’s suffrage Emily Davies expressed frustration that some eager for educational equality tried to direct women towards analytical rather than artistic subjects. It was no bad thing, she said, for a woman to have a lively imagination: that was the basis of human sympathy. What she lacked was the chance to apply it to worthwhile projects. (59 / 60 words)
Victorian campaigner for women’s suffrage Emily Davies expressed frustration that some eager for educational equality tried to direct women towards analytical rather than artistic subjects. It was no bad thing, she said, for a woman to have a lively imagination: that was the basis of human sympathy. What she lacked was the chance to apply it to worthwhile projects.
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