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Reade, Charles, 1814-1884

"A Woman-Hater"


This entitled her to 'a Hope Scholarship' for that year.
"Would you believe it? the scholarship was refused her--in utter defiance
of the founder's conditions--on the idle pretext that she had studied at
a different hour from the male students, and therefore was not a member
of the chemistry class."
"Then why admit her to the competition?" said Vizard.
"Why? because the _'a priori_ reasoners took for granted she would be
defeated. Then the cry would have been, 'You had your chance; we let you
try for the Hope Scholarship; but you could not win it.' Having won it,
she was to be cheated out of it somehow, or anyhow. The separate-class
system was not that lady's fault; she would have preferred to pay the
university lecturer lighter fees, and attend a better lecture with the
male students. The separate class was an unfavorable condition of study,
which the university imposed on us, as the condition of admitting us to
the professional study of medicine? Surely, then, to cheat that lady out
of her Hope Scholarship, when she had earned it under conditions of study
enforced and unfavorable, was perfidious and dishonest. It was even a
little ungrateful to the injured sex; for the money which founded these
scholarships was women's money, every penny of it.


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