When Xantippe describes her soul as one that “yearned for knowledge,” she describes a desire that classical society discouraged in women. This yearning reflects Amy Levy’s own intellectual ambitions and her struggle to access education in a world that restricted women’s academic opportunities. Levy pushed against these limitations of her time. She became the second Jewish woman ever admitted to Cambridge University and the first Jewish woman to enroll at Newnham College, one of the women’s colleges founded to expand access to higher learning. Levy’s personal experiences with gender barriers enhance her portrayal of Xantippe’s longing. By giving a classical woman, the same thirst for intellectual life that Levy felt as a Victorian woman, the poem creates a bridge between eras. Xantippe’s desire becomes not merely personal but representative of a long history of women whose intellectual aspirations were dismissed or deemed inappropriate. Through this moment of self-revelation, Levy highlights the emotional cost of systemic exclusion and places knowledge-seeking as both a private desire and an act of resistance.

Comenius championed not only lifelong learning in Didactica magna, but he also argued for educating females, something not commonplace in the 17th century.

I do wonder what the reasoning was for this (I mean, besides the blatant "women and the lower class are too stupid to understand our Great Books and/or will lead lives that do not require a 'polite' education"). We've already read arguments that the "polite" education supposedly improved the virtues as well as the mind, right? Wouldn't all of society benefit if women and the lower class were virtuous, as much as possible?