ABSTRACT
If neither the State nor the Church took comprehensive steps for establishing a national system of education for boys, both statesmen and churchmen recognised that a certain proportion of the male population had to be educated in secondary schools and Universities to maintain ‘law and order’ and to promote the cultural standards of European civilisation. For these purposes public Grammar Schools and the two Universities existed and supplied the necessary training for future civil servants, for the clergy and the liberal professions. But girls were not included in these cultural requirements of the State and the Church. They were in an even worse position than the boys of the lower classes. The latter could, and often did, break through all the obstacles and attained eminence both as statesmen and as churchmen. In all those fields of activity which boys chose as their professions, the girls could only participate as freakish amateurs, who were tolerated or suffered but not encouraged. There were no public schools, there were no substitutes for academic learning such as the Dissenters had in their Academies; the only way available was limited to private boarding-schools and home education. It is surprising that under these conditions so many women of the eighteenth century attained eminence either in literature or in the sciences. Certainly their numbers were small in comparison with men, but the absolute figure in itself is considerable. 1 We have selected from the D.N.B. 120 English women on the same principles as we selected 3,500 men. We excluded actresses, mistresses of kings and princes, criminals and freaks of all kinds, and included only those women who were mentioned in the D.N.B. for their published works or intellectual and social eminence. We classified these selected women by their social origins and their educational careers and we got the following table: https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
Education
Origin
1
Peers
2
Squires, etc.
3
Professions
4 and 5
Merchants and Civil Servants
6, 7, 8
Farmers, Craftsmen, Workers
9
No data
Total
Home
3
15
31
12
2
—
63
School
—
4
17
5
3
3
32
Self-educated
—
—
2
2
7
—
11
No data
—
—
1
2
1
10
14
Total
3
19
51
21
13
13
120
Percentages
2.5
15.8
42.5
17.5
10.8
10.8
Men—English
6.9
23.9
32.0
20.6
13.2
3.4
The classification of fathers is the same as for men. The majority of professional fathers were clergymen, the rest physicians.