Boarding schools for girls in eighteenth century England: A first step towards the improvement of women's education

Résumé du document

In the eighteenth century, a huge debate on girls' education began to take place in England. It questioned the way young ladies should be educated, the curriculum they should follow as well as the place where this education should be set. At that time, the question was centred on the public-private debate, which means that authors wondered whether domestic education was better or not than the one provided in boarding schools for girls.

The fact is that these new public places for the education of young ladies were very recent at the time. If it showed a will to improve women's education, the curriculum taught there was not really intellectual. The aim of girls' education seemed to remain the same one as before, that is, to find a husband and to acquire the good manners necessary to enter the polite world. In response to this criticism, many authors expressed themselves in this debate, most of them advocating for a more intellectual instruction. In any case, the public-private debate remained the most important one about education at that time, even more than the one on the content of the curriculum for women, whether it was in schools or at home. As a consequence, boarding schools were highly criticized.

First, it is interesting to wonder how these boarding schools developed during the eighteenth century and to find to whom they were addressed. Then, the curriculum will be further analyzed in order to be able to understand what was taught in these institutions and how this instruction was provided. Finally, these elements will permit us to understand the public-private debate that took place at that time and to highlight the criticisms made against boarding schools.

Until the mid-sixteenth century, the education of girls and women in England was given in convents. When Henry VIII decided to close them, another way to provide women with education was needed. Many authors made proposals on this subject, leading to the rise of boarding schools for girls in the middle of the eighteenth century.

In the mid-sixteenth century, England entered a period marked with religious events that profoundly modified the country. The most important one is the Protestant Reformation, with the emergence of Anglicanism as the official religion. Henry VIII, king who ruled over England during that period, ordered the dissolution of the monasteries and convents in 1536, because of their belonging to the Catholic Church of Rome, the new enemy of the country. When considering the term monasteries, one should understand all the Catholic institutions of England, including convents and nunneries.

At that period, girls and women of higher social ranks used to enter convents and nunneries to receive their education. It was essential for them in order to find a situation in the world, as well as a husband, and to be able to converse in mundane places in England. As soon as the dissolution of monasteries began, they were facing a new difficulty, one of the place of their instruction: “La dissolution des monastères et couvents a brutalement mis un terme à une instruction féminine de qualité.” or "The dissolution of the monasteries and convents brutally put an end to female education quality."

Extraits

[...] See Gisborne 64. See Mandeville 48. See Gisborne 76. See Reeve 135. The Annual Register (1759): 425. See Reeve 127. See Reeve 136. [...]

[...] Thomas Beccon is the first author to propose the setting of a school for girls in 1534, two years before the official closing of the monasteries: It is expedient that by public authority schools for women children be erected and set up in every Christian commonwealth, and honest, safe, wise, discreet, sober, grave and learned matrons made rulers and mistresses of the same, and that honest and liberal stipends be appointed for the said schoolmistresses which shall travail in the bringing up of young maids[4]. Another author, Richard Mulcaster, a grammar-school master, provided almost the same idea in Positions in 1581. [...]

[...] First of all, this could be seen through the reading of novels, which many girls studying in such places used to read at the expense of more intellectual or religious work. Young ladies were not supposed to dream of a better situation; they were only supposed to become good wives attached to the principles of religion and of the family. Hannah More insists on this pattern in one of her works: “They spent the morning in bed, the noon in dressing, the evening at the spinet, and the night in reading novels.”[25] In her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, Mary Wollstonecraft also criticises the reading of such “improper books” highlighting the fact that or two vicious children” in such schools could “infect a number”.[26] In this work, she even argues that virtues are best learnt at home” clearly standing on the side of domestic education in terms of immorality. [...]

[...] During the centuries preceding the creation of boarding schools for girls, a significant rise in the proposals about women's education could be noted, showing how important this question became for many thinkers of the period. This was also the case of women themselves, as Kenneth Charlton points out in his work: Significant too, however, was the increasing part played by women themselves, not only arguing for a greater equality of the sexes but also in following this up with proposals for the better education of girls and women as an essential means of achieving such a change.[7] Whereas women themselves took part in the education debate, the idea of a place where girls could be provided with an education would soon become a reality. [...]

[...] Boarding schools could be considered as a first step towards women's education and the recognition of their capacity to receive an intellectual training. They were also the first public places where girls could receive a kind of instruction, like boys in grammar schools, even if the curricula are clearly not comparable. The fact is that this recognition remains directed to the most privileged ranks of the society. All parents could not offer their daughters this kind of education, or a domestic one, since both of them were highly expensive. [...]