Home > The Literary Salon > Educational Process >
Schooling for Young Women

Schooling for Young Women

Based on the believed qualities of gender at the time, many educational experts suggested that girls be minimally educated. The idea was to create individuals who were educated enough to be useful, but not enough to be “aggressive” or ambitious. To ensure this, girls were given an education filled with certain prescribed and feminine elements, including reading, writing, sewing, knitting, drawing, etiquette, posture, dancing, religion, French, singing, playing an instrument, cooking and supervising servants. Women were able to participate in a learning environment, and in these superficial learning areas; however, the intensity of their learning and the subject areas ensured the fact that the educational atmosphere was truly gender-based.

The goal of education for women was to be virtuous, obedient, pleasing and skilled in all that would enable them to care for their families and households. Most of the girls who went through this prescribed education process came through with the values, morals and abilities that were wanted in the female gender. In contrast, girls who later became successful and intellectual women often followed a different educational pattern. In many cases, they were tutored by someone with fatherly or clerical guidance who implemented a “masculine” education, including solid and demanding study of language, history and science. While this process was supposed to create elite and intelligent individuals, the women who went through this type of education still struggled to become known as people with more than mediocre talent – mainly because of their gender.