ABSTRACT
By the early nineteenth century the tone of the debate about girls’ upbringing had shifted. Enlightenment ideas that valorised the domestic female featured, but a strong critique of ‘useless’ education reflected a growing sense that females should have access to useful education. Karoline Milde claims the right of women to act rather than be passive, to employ their wits and abilities in an intelligent manner. The critique of accomplishments was alive and well, as Finn Minna Canth attests, couching her disapproval in the context of women’s responsibilities as wives and mothers. Emily Faithful’s comments on public education for French girls show that education was more widely accepted, if only through voluntary efforts. The tension with church-provided education is apparent. Céléstine Hippeau takes this further, arguing, through her idealised comparison with the United States, that funding should be provided through taxes and thus quality education for girls be safeguarded. The other tension, made explicit by Swede Laura Fitinghoff, was with home education. She was wary of practical subjects being taught at school, arguing that homes could do it better. Spaniard Emilia Pardo Bazán draws a comparison with men’s education, arguing that the principles underlying education for the two sexes was fundamentally different, so that an intensive education was seen as making women unfit for their natural role while for men that same education was a badge of honour. Emily Davies, champion of higher education in Britain, challenges the idea that she and others wished to make women’s education identical to men’s while arguing their right to be tested in an academic world.
