SOURCE: "Motives and Future of the Educated Woman," in The Educated Woman in America: Selected Writings of Catharine Beecher, Margaret Fuller, and M. Carey Thomas, edited by Barbara M. Cross, Teachers College Press, 1965. pp. 158-69.

In the following essay, originally published in 1908, Thomas observes the state of women's education at the time and makes recommendations for its future.

The passionate desire of women of my generation for higher education was accompanied thruout its course by the awful doubt, felt by women themselves as well as by men, as to whether women as a sex were physically and mentally fit for it. I think I can best make this clear to you if I refer briefly to my own experience. I cannot remember the time when I was not sure that studying and going to college were the things above all others which I wished to do. I was...