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<title> Why spoil a good mother to make an ordinary grammarian? Nineteenth Century Attitudes to Female Education </title>
The issue of female education was frequently debated in Britain in the Nineteenth century. In most people's opinions the only need for female education was to make suitable wives and mothers out of English girls. By the turn of the century this trend had shifted - but how and why? These are the questions I would like to explore in this essay
First we need to look at what qualifications were asked for in a woman some one hundred and fifty years ago. She was supposed to be a good wife, give birth to healthy children and be an example to them in that she did her duty, whatever it may be, cheerfully and humbly (Ellis, page 81). A woman was not expected to know much about politics or about life outside her own home sphere, since she was not expected to take responsibility for anything but the welfare of her husband and children and the running of a household. Instead, girls were to be protected from the horrors that might have met them had they tried to confront the outside world. The duties of a woman did not ask of her that she knew mathematics or Greek, although it was considered nice if she could read so called suitable books.
Why, then, was there a need to educate women at all? In many families of the upper and upper middle classes a governess was hired to take care of the education of girls and young boys. Boys were to be prepared for going away to boarding schools, while girls were trained in music, needle work and conversation, these were skills that would be appreciated when it was time for them to get married. It was not considered healthy for young women to spend their days bent over books, since women were regarded to be much weaker than men. It was even suggested that to much studying might make it physically impossible for a woman to become what she was aimed at, namely a mother.
Meanwhile, a greater step was being taken at the University of London. Here all university degrees were opened to women already in the 1870s and this also made it possible for women to enter some of the professions. Of course, this was not a development that was welcomed by all. The peolpe who rejected it believed that there were two spheres where men and women should live and act separately and that the two spheres were, and should remain, distinct (Burstyÿn, page 27). Women were therefore not allowed to teach men nor to teach at the old institutions of Oxford and Cambridge.
The new demand for qualified teachers opened way for women to enter into higher education. In 1848, Bedford College was founded in London to improve the qualifications of governesses and in the sixties, women were starting to be admitted to enter Cambridge and Oÿxford universities. At first, women at Cambridge and Oxford were allowed only to study at colleges separate from those for male students and they were not allowed to take any exams at these universities. In 1867 women were admitted to take tests at the university and this was a great improvement for teacher training. Although women would not be granted any university degrees here until the twentieth century, the tests made it possible to set a standard for the qualifications of female teachers. As Joan N Burstyn puts it, they provided women teachers with the impetus to improve their teaching skills (page 2Æ5).
Through all this, it is important to keep in mind that not until 1880 were elementary schools made compulsory and thereby open to all girls, even girls from the working classes and the poor. Most of the developments described here was initiated by and aimed firstly at women from the upper and middle classes. These were the ones who cuold afford to get themselves an education and it would still take quite some time before working class girls in general would let go of the idea that their main purpose in life was to become good mothers of Englishmen (Mitchell, page 2.)
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