© Pemberley
The society in that lived the writer we are studying was not easy for women. The women character was only as a man partner, without many rights and without the freedom of try. Sometimes, the women only were an object, which was controlled exhaustively.
A continuation, we are going to
study the quotidian aspects in a woman life. The aspects of marriage, family,
education and another accomplishments had a specific role to the female
society.
© Pemberley
Instead, "genteel" children might be educated at home by their parents, particularly when young (as the Morland children are in Norhtanger Abbey); or by live-in governesses (such a Miss Taylor in Emma) or tutors; or by going off to a private boarding school or to live with a tutor (as Edward Ferrars went to Mr. Pratt's in Sense and Sensibility; several boys went to Steventon to be tutored with Jane Austen's father). There might also be lessons with outside "masters" (specialists such as piano teachers, etc.). Some local "Grammar" schools did exist, teaching the educational basics (including Greek and Latin) to higher-class or upwardly mobile boys -- but did not admit girls. The type of education depended on the preferences and financial resources of the parents in each family (thus without Darcy's father's help, Wickham's father "would have been unable to give him a gentleman's education").
Of course, women were not allowed to attend the institutionalised rungs on the educational ladder: "public" schools such as Eton (which Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park attends), and the universities (Oxford and Cambridge). The (somewhat dubious) prime symbol of academic knowledge, and more-or-less exclusively masculine educational attainments, was the Classical languages Greek and Latin, to which a great deal of time was devoted in "genteel" boys' education, but which few women studied. Jane Austen never refers to Classical literature, except in a joking way in some of the Juvenilia, such as Love and Friendship (in one of her letters to Mr. Clarke, Jane Austen cites her ignorance of the Classical languages as one of the factors which would prevent her from writing a novel on a subject suggested by Mr. Clarke).
Since women did not usually have career's as such, and were not "citizens" in the sense of being involved in politics, there was little generally-perceived need for such higher education for them, and most writers on the subject of "female education" preferred that women receive a practical (and religious) training for their domestic role -- thus Byron once spouted off the remark that women should "read neither poetry nor politics --nothing but books of piety and cookery" (leavened with the conventional "accomplishments" of "music--drawing--dancing"). See the account of Mrs. Goddard's school in Emma for the frequent relative lack of attention to academies in the female education of the time (the London "seminary" attended by the Bingley sisters would have been much more elegant, but not necessarily much more academically rigorous).
In his play The Rivals (1775) the playwright Sheridan satirised the debate over women's education:
Sir Anthony Absolute:
Mrs. Malaprop:
"Fie, fie, Sir Anthony, you surely speak laconically!"
Sir Anthony Absolute:
"Why, Mrs. Malaprop, in moderation, now, what would you have a woman know?"
Mrs. Malaprop:
"Observe me, Sir Anthony. -- I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don't think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance -- I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or Algebra, or Simony, or Fluxions, or Paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning -- neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; --But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. -- Then, Sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; -- and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries; -- but above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not mis-spell, and mis-pronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do, and likewise that she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying. --This, Sir Anthony, is what I would have a woman know, --and I don't think there is a superstitions article on it."
As for domestic training, in those
days before sewing machines, a relatively large amount of girls' and women's
time was spent on sewing or needlework (often just abbreviated to "work");
this is not incompatible with "gentility" (as long as it is not done for
money, of course), and even such a high-ranking woman as Lady Bertram,
the baronet's wife in Mansfield Park, occupies herself this way. The sheer
amount of sewing done by gentlewomen in those days sometimes takes us moderns
aback, but it would probably be a mistake to view it either as merely constant
joyless toiling, or as young ladies turning out highly embroidered ornamental
knicknacks to show off their elegant but meaningless accomplishments. Sewing
was something to do (during the long hours at home) that often had great
practical utility (this doesn't apply to Lady Bertram's "carpet-work",
of course) -- and that wasn't greatly mentally taxing, and could be done
sitting down while engaging in light conversation, or listening to a novel
being read. (But if you personally just happened not to like sewing, then
you were pretty much out of luck...) Jane Austen once wrote a satirical
"charade" (word-puzzle) on the subject. Here "my whole" is the word to
be guessed, "my first" is its syllable, and "my second" its second syllable:
When my first is a task to a young girl of spirit,
And my second confines her to finish the piece,
How hard is her fate! But how great is her merit
If by taking my whole she effects
her release!
