Note (return) — Chapter VI

And as for the progress made by the Russo-Jewish woman, it is wonderful, indeed. It is hardly a quarter of a century since attention began to be given to her mental development, and yet she has seldom lagged behind her sisters in more enlightened lands, and has lately attained to a proud height. Vilna, with her "many well-educated wives," attracted the attention of Montefiore in the early "forties"; Tarnopol speaks in terms of high praise of the Jewish women of Odessa in the "sixties"; they "charm by their culture, by the ease and precision with which they speak several European languages, by the correctness of their judgment, and the beauty of their conversation."21 The memoirs of Madame Pauline Wengeroff throw a sidelight also on the accomplishments of her sisters in the less enlightened districts of Russian Jewry. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, their advance was prodigious.22 When decent Jewish women were prohibited to reside in St. Petersburg, some of the Jewish female students, at the risk of their reputation, secured the yellow ticket of the prostitute rather than sacrifice their education. But the majority went to other countries. The press has lately been interested in what these seekers for light in foreign lands have accomplished, and reported the successes of Fanny Berlin, who graduated from the University of Berne as doctor of law summa cum laude, and of Miss Kanyevsky of Zinkoff (Poltava), who was the first woman to take her degree as engineer at the Ecole des Pontes et Chaussees, in Paris.