During this time, people believed that women were only good at cooking, cleaning, or nurturing their children and couldn’t do much else. Because people thought this way, women were uneducated unless they were in the upper class. Wealthy women would sometimes have private tutors that would teach them.
In her document she claims that, “Women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men”(Wollstonecraft, On National Education). Wollstonecraft dynamically argued that if women had the right to study, they’d be able to prove they aren’t inferior by ignorance and low desires. Despite the fact that these four philosophers had contrasting ideas on how to enhance daily life, they all concentrated the same central idea. They each contributed something unique to their society, which has influenced our daily
Furthermore, since men and ladies are conceived with a similar capacity to reason, ladies ought to appreciate the same amount of training, power, and impact in the public arena as men do. The only reason women don't seem as smart as men, she says, is because they aren't given the same education. Wollstonecraft pursues a few authors who have asserted that women education should concentrate exclusively on making young ladies satisfying to men. Stating that young ladies shouldn't occupied themselves with a lot of reading or studying. They should concentrate on dressing pleasantly and being pretty.
English novelist Marian Evans Lewes exists counter to 1800’s European beliefs of womanhood. Instead of adhering to society’s standards, she adopts the pen name of a man and becomes a successful author, avoiding judgement for her work based solely on her gender. In her letter to Melusina Fay Peirce, however,
She used women’s current social standing as dutiful mothers to propel her argument for state funded education to include women’s learning. She opened the Troy Female Seminary where she created a similar curriculum for women as was being taught to men at that time. Even though she was trying to create an equal environment for learning, she also added in needlework classes “to reassure parents and the public generally that she did not intend for women to renounce their own station” (106-107). Another supporter was the daughter of well-known minister, Catherine Beecher. A strong advocate for feminizing the occupation of teaching, she believed that women were the intellectual equals of men.
“In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous where [skills] do not result from the exercise of [her] own reason. ”(Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792). This explains how absurd it is to call someone’s skills great when it is not their decision to do it. The importance of this is that many women during this time period were not educated so all they can do is work for the men, with not a lot of freedom in their decisions. “Women must be allowed to found them virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men.”
Therefore, women could seldom be who they wanted to be, and express themselves. Very few of these colonial women could read, and they were expected to educate their daughters of all matters
The book reflected Dix’s belief that women should be educated to the same level as men. In 1831, Dix opened up a secondary school on the grounds of her mother’s estate but by 1836, her commitment to teaching and overloaded work took its toll after Dorothea became extremely ill in which she was forced to close down the school once again. It is now known that Dorothea suffered from
Men believed women did not need an education because women were to work at home and tend to the children. Wives of the wealthy had very different lives
Colonial women had far fewer opportunities than their male counterparts did. Many women did not receive any formal education. They learned everything from their mothers. It was thought that a woman did not need an education as they were supposed to work in the home (“Colonial America”). That would be okay if you had no aspirations outside of a family
Higher education for a woman was almost completely unheard of in the early twentieth century. However, in 1869, Emily Davies created the first college for women, Girton College. Davies had to be very careful since she tried to open “a college like a man’s.” She had to be sure that “masculine” subjects were a part of the college so women could get the same education as a man. Davies believed that if women were held at the same standard of education as a man, all achievements would be considered equally valid.
Women are expected to sit quietly and look pretty and as a result they became what people expected of them. In A Vindication for the Rights of WomenVindication Wollstonecraft writes, “In their current state women are weak and artificial: taught from infancy that beauty is a woman scepter the mind shapes itself to the body” (Wollstonecraft 44). These expectations create a reality for women. For example, finishing school is the epitome of women’s sensibility. They’re sent away to learn how to fit into a society that is being dictated by men; they’re taught how to act, how to essentially be sensible.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women written in 1792 can be considered one of the first feminist documents, although the term appeared much later in history. In this essay, Wollstonecraft debates the role of women and their education. Having read different thinkers of the Enlightenment, as Milton, Lord Bacon, Rousseau, John Gregory and others, she finds their points of view interesting and at the same time contrary to values of the Enlightenment when they deal with women’s place. Mary Wollstonecraft uses the ideas of the Enlightenment to demand equal education for men and women. I will mention how ideals of the Enlightenment are used in favor of men but not of women and explain how Wollstonecraft support her “vindication” of the rights of women using those contradictions.
Mary Jemison was one of many white captives who lived a full and happy life with her indian captors. The day Mary Jemison was taken by the indians started out like any other day. A friend of her father’s needed to borrow a horse in order to carry a bag of grain to the Jemison’s house. The friend had also taken a gun with him in case he saw any game fit for killing. The Jemison’s heard gunshots coming from nearby outside and quickly became alarmed. When someone finally looked outside to see what had happened, they found the friend and horse, shot and dead right in front of their house. The indians had first secured Mary’s father, then once he was bound, the indians rushed into the house to keep the others prisoner. Two of her brothers evaded
• The education of Victorian Women with Reference to the